Bowler: OpiniOn

A&G • February 2010 • Vol. 51 1.9

Work–life Balance was the theme of a workshop last September, organized by Sarah Bridle (UCL), Kathy Romer

(University of Sussex), Anais Rassat (Service d’Astrophysique, French Atomic Energy Com-missariat, Saclay), Katarina Markovic (Univer-sity of Munich) and Carolin Crawford (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge). They chose to tackle work–life balance as a part of the recognized problems facing women in astronomy and in science in general, exemplified by the contrast between the 35% of astronomy postgraduates who are women, and the 3% of professors. Somewhere along this leaky career pipeline, significantly more women than men are leaving astronomy; do problems with work–life balance play a part in this?

From the online survey and the workshop, three areas of concern stand out: working part time and taking career breaks; fitting the work in alongside family responsibilities; and changes institutions could make to better sup-port work–life balance for staff. Details of the responses are available in a report posted online and summarized on page 1.10.

Work–life balance is a problem for everyone at some time or another, but tends to be brought into focus for parents – mothers especially – by the demands of family life. These issues are, however, likely to affect both men and women, especially in an ageing population, when a wider cross-section of society takes on caring respon-sibilities. The demands of family life are now more often shared, which of course means more people trying to juggle career time with home life. But career breaks such as maternity leave and part-time working are taken for granted in many careers – what makes scientific careers, including research-centred roles, so different? Or are we taking ourselves a bit too seriously here? Should we rather be thinking of a career in science as a way of earning money by doing something that we are good at, rather than a vocation that rules our lives?

Having children brings the dilemma into sharp focus. Part of the leaky pipeline may come from women making a pragmatic response to the dif-ficulties of career breaks and part-time work in the traditional academic career. In research, where personal success is a key factor in career progression, it is difficult to excel when you are not full-time and able to work full-on: no-one can do your research for you while you are on maternity leave, for example. And many strat-egies suggested in the survey (page 1.10) involve not actually taking a career break, continuing to work at key aspects of the job while nominally discharging family responsibilities full-time. Similarly, many strategies for coping with lim-ited-time working or part-time work compro-mise aspects of the job that bring opportunities and future career success: avoiding travelling to meetings or visiting colleagues, for example.

Support for those returning to work after a career break was also seen as important. While there are many and varied strategies to get back up to speed – including specific fellowships from the Daphne Jackson Trust, for example – the process would be easier if the opportunities that do exist, in the form of dedicated fund-ing and suitable fellowships, were more widely promoted. This is an element of good practice identified by Athena SWAN case studies. There are fellowships that carry the option of flexible and part-time work, and STFC rules and regula-tions cover parental leave.

STFC and other UK research councils and universities have signed up to The Concor-dat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, which draws attention to the effects of career breaks: “Employers should recognize that ... the ‘early career’ period may be prolonged, and this may be a time where the risk of attrition from the research path is most acute. Working conditions should allow both female and male researchers to combine family and work, children and career.” Although in the past parental leave has been seen as a women’s

issue, increasing interest in and uptake of fam-ily leave by men may in future make this less gender-specific.

Institutional permission and support for flex-ible working is key: so many of the comments and responses to the survey stress working at times and in ways that suit individual cir-cumstances. As the Concordat puts it: “It is important for employers to respond flexibly to requests for changed work patterns and to resist instant refusals on the assumption that, because research has always been carried out in a par-ticular way, it cannot be done differently.” Indi-vidual solutions will vary, but institutions might benefit from wider knowledge of what works. A period of part-time work that supports an indi-vidual’s research, for example, at the expense of other aspects of their role, could be a satisfac-tory solution, where those other aspects can be temporarily covered by other staff.

However, for flexible hours, part-time work-ing and career breaks to become commonplace in academia as they have in many professions (in teaching, for example, and in medicine), there needs to be some practical appreciation of the impact on research productivity.

Metrics such as number of publications are routinely used for research assessment and to compare grant and job applications. If used simplistically, they downgrade the work of the part-time researcher, or the researcher who has recently taken parental leave. At present there is the risk that a candidate who has taken a career break merely appears to a panel to be a less effective researcher – unless the candidates, or their referees, or someone on the panel who happens to know them, explains. Some agreed, consistent and fair means of taking these factors into account would be valuable in ensuring fair recruitment and assessment.

Work–life balance is never going to be easy to achieve in an absorbing and competitive career. But the strategies employed to keep working make clear the committment and dedication of the researchers involved. Surely employers should demonstrate the same flexibility and con-fidence, in order to retain and support the best researchers, regardless of circumstances? ●

Further readingThe Work-Life Balance Survey http://www.sarahbri-dle.net/wlba09/WLBA09-Report_20091110.pdfThe Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, signed by research councils and universities http://www.researchconcordat.ac.ukThe Athena SWAN Charter recognizes excellence in science, engineering and technology employment in higher education http://www.athenaswan.org.ukThe UK Resource Centre for Women in SET (UKRC) provides a range of data on women in STEM and research grant success http://www.ukrc4setwomen.org/html/research-and-statistics/statistics/he-insti-tutions-2009

●  What do you think? Send your opinions to the Editor, Sue Bowler, at s.bowler@leeds.ac.uk.

Try not to work too hard

Success in education, and subsequently in research,

often comes from sustained hard work. Research is

rewarding, satisfying and often a lot of fun, but it makes practitioners susceptible to working long hours at the

expense of home and family life. How do researchers

maintain a balance between work and leisure when

careers are competitive, and posts scarce and often short-

term? Sue Bowler ponders the outcomes of a work–life

balance workshop.

opinion

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Bowler: OpiniOn

1.10 A&G • February 2010 • Vol. 51

There were 425 responses to the survey, and among those responding from the UK, 65% were men, which is comparable to the overall proportion of men and women in UK astronomy. Top concerns about work–life balance were career breaks of more than three months, restrictions on job locations, limited time to work, limited quality of work time, difficulties in travelling for long periods, and limited salary.

Responses to the survey questions called on opinions and experience. It is clear that anyone juggling family life with an academic career needs to find solutions that do not compromise either – no easy task. Sugges-tions for coping with a career break generally centred on not actually having a career break – working a few hours a week or keeping up with colleagues once a week, were popular, but may not be possible or productive.

Working part-time can ease the pressure, for example during a child’s early years, but carries its own difficulties, notably the impact on research output, the perceived loss of respect from colleagues and superiors, and the loss of income. Flexible working allows some compromise, but can end up with researchers working evenings and weekends as well as most of the day. Suggestions for how to manage ranged from the obvious – work when children are sleeping – to the counterproductive – avoid all discussions with colleagues, do not go to internal or external meetings and don’t travel.

Be ruthlessThe key seems to be to keep up with the demands of your career by ruthlessly pri-oritizing your life. Working smarter rather than longer comes into play here, but the solutions that suit individuals faced with the care of a young baby or an ageing parent will depend on that individual’s circumstances. A position that offers maternity leave can make a career break feasible. An early-career researcher in a short-term post may have less choice. They have the option of stopping research work while a child is very young, if they can afford it, although the competition for posts makes this a course that few choose. Uncertainty about how any sort of career break is perceived by grant and interview panels came through in the responses to the survey, and is an area where clearer guidance could make a lot of difference.

Poorer quality time leads to different sug-gestions, but time management remains at the heart of them, along with planning, and organization, networking, keeping up with

your reading, and writing review articles. Suggestions from respondents directly addressed work–life balance, such as taking time off to get some rest and clear your head, exercising, taking a nap, and working in bursts when you are most likely to be able to concentrate. The same need to priori-tize came through these suggestions very strongly, along with the need to accept that you may not be in a position to do your best.

Keep in touchKeeping in touch with collaborators and current research was a high priority for most respondents, although some suggested stopping going to seminars and avoiding meetings. Getting lots of postdocs and students was a fairly popular suggestion, but of course involves time getting funding and time spent in support and discussion. No-one disputed the value of such collaborative work in career terms or in research rewards for the time spent, but respondents acknowledged that finding the time in the first place is the main problem. The obvious answers – get into work early, set priorities, keep a day a week free for research – are hard to put into practice. Other suggestions help in the short-term, but have the potential to damage careers long-term: don’t stop to chat, don’t take on too many responsibilities or too much teaching, work shorter hours.

Job location is a major area of compromise, because of the rarity of finding jobs for both members of a couple in the same location. This is all the harder if partners work in research, in the same or related fields, but is an issue for any two-career couple. As a result, one or both can face long commutes and a lot of time away from home, with the ensuing extra pressure on work time and quality. Technology can have some benefits here, in the form of teleconferencing to main-tain collaborations, but trying to get a local visiting position in addition to the distant post, or to work from home for part of the week were valued suggestions. Respondents advised travelling by train where possible, and using the train as your office. But tele-conferencing was not seen as a substitute for face-to-face contact in every aspect of research, for example in supervising students. Other strategies suggested were to apply for funding for collaborators to visit you, and to have a long-term career plan. The sugges-tion that short postdoc positions or research visits away from home would help careers was approved by most respondents, but not thought useful by most of those currently

affected by job location restrictions. Research travel stands out as a significant

barrier to success, because of the recognized value of direct collaboration and presenta-tion of research. The mobility required in research positions means that many people do not have immediate family available to care for children during long trips, and keep-ing maternity leave short makes it harder to develop networks of local friends who can help out. Those with experience of limiting travel in this way favoured concentrating on short or local meetings; those without felt that combining many events into one trip was a better idea. Showing up for a short period of longer meetings had responses both for and against. Again, the suggestions made by respondents focused on planning and getting the most out of the meetings that you can attend: go to those that do most for your career, talk to people and organize meet-ings with collaborators in the breaks, favour workshops because you get more done, organize meetings at your home institution.

Take the moneyThe issue of money was not seen as especially important, unsurprisingly for a career that attracts enthusiasts. Academic pay is above average for the UK, and responses suggested that people should either accept salary levels as they are or take on extra work – the latter a course of action that is unlikely to ease anyone’s work-life balance.

It was clear from the survey responses that many people are uncertain about the policies and levels of support offered by institutions and funding agencies for flexible working, part-time posts and career breaks. Clear, sta-ble and transparent support for these courses of action would clarify choices for academic staff, for example. It was suggested that assessment panels should include someone with experience of career breaks and their effects in the relevant field; panels should also actively seek out evidence of life factors in CVs and reference letters. The workshop also drew attention to the rarity of examples of researchers who have taken career breaks at the postgraduate and postdoctoral stage and carried on with their careers; three such women spoke about their experiences. It is important that both young staff and senior faculty taking hiring decisions know that women with or planning to have children can succeed in academia in the long-term.

●  See the full report at http://www.sarahbridle.

net/wlba09/WLBA09-Report_20091110.pdf

Summary of the survey from the Work–life Balance workshop