Abstract
Faculty members face many challenges, among them maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and although this need is not gendered (i.e., males who have sole custody of their child[ren], gay couples with children), in this chapter, the authors have chosen to focus on the challenges women faculty members in higher education face, particularly balancing their work and personal lives. In the examination of research studies and literature, the authors sought to address their research questions, which concerned which women's development theories might frame and explain women professors' academic identity, the recognition of unique pressures faced by women faculty members in their quest for tenure and promotion, and how these issues impact faculty members who are striving to balance personal and professional lives. Several recommendations for institutions of higher education are discussed, among them employing an ethic of care to design and implement supportive mentoring and other programs for women faculty members.
TopWomen’S Developmental Theories
We are two women faculty members who are at different stages of our academic career and have experienced personally the struggle to balance work and personal life. To explore ways to manage our roles as faculty members with our personal lives, we examined some of the foundational developmental theories, Gilligan’s A Different Voice (1982), Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule’s Women’s Ways of Knowing (1986), Josselson’s Finding Herself (1987) as well as, surveyed current literature.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Organic Mentoring: Mentoring relationships that occur naturally, without any outside help or formal arrangements.
Women’s Development Theories: Models and concepts that attempt to explain the role gender plays in women’s the development of females.
Gilligan’s Different Voice: Gilligan proposed that stages of moral development were male-oriented, limiting their ability to be generalized to females, and proposed her own concepts of female moral development based on the concept of moral voices.
Mentoring Cohorts: The purpose of is to find a space that students or protégés can practice the thinking and skills necessary to develop into scholars as they develop their future careers in academe.
Mentoring Mosaics: Similar to mentoring cohorts, they empower their members through nonhierarchical and reciprocal mentoring.