Tag: Caregivers

All forms of caregiving including children and elderly.

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Supporting Pregnant Faculty, Staff, and Students

As summarized in the recent Harvard Business Review article, 5 Ways Managers Can Support Pregnant Employees, there are ways to reduce detrimental experiences that affect health and well-being outcomes for pregnant faculty, staff, students, and their babies. The article links to two studies that examined workplace experiences related to pregnancy discrimination specifically and to health-related . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Faculty Caregiver Support: We Need More Data

In the corporate world, employers are finding ways to support employees who are caregivers because they realize it provides a competitive advantage to attract and retain employees. The need for robust resources, benefits, and policies is apparent: a Harvard Business School study found that “73% of all employees have some type of current caregiving responsibility.” . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Emotional Labor Disrupted Research Productivity During Covid

The transition to remote or hybrid work during the Covid pandemic was more disruptive to women faculty’s academic research than to men’s because of the additional caretaking work they often had to manage, a finding confirmed in several recent studies. Now, research suggests that the pandemic also disproportionately impacted women faculty (particularly Black, Indigenous, and . . .

EEOC and Caregiver Employment Discrimination

From the EEOC Newsroom: EEOC Releases Information about Employment Discrimination Against Caregivers.Although this article references COVID-19 situations specifically, discrimination based on a protected characteristics is always prohibited by federal and state laws/regulations. ADVANCE has written about the impacts COVID has had on caregivers in STEM. Articles of particular note are from July 31, 2020, March 10, . . .

ADVANCE Roundup: Institutional Ideas for Responding to Faculty Exhaustion and Demoralization

Although the early years of the pandemic are behind us, and we are beginning to adjust to a “new normal” in our classrooms, labs, and professional activities, faculty continue to report feeling exhausted and over-stressed. Two recent essays in Inside Higher Ed suggest unique institutional responses: a “Chapter 11” work relief declaration and a return . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Eliminating the penalties for motherhood in STEM

The COVID-19 pandemic has called attention to the impediments that women in STEM face as mothers, including a multipronged “maternal wall” with career-long ramifications. This week’s Roundup takes you to a virtual conference, “Motherhood and career retention in STEM: Systemic barriers and actionable solutions” held on May 5, 2021. The event was sponsored by Mothers . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Gender Matters: The Unique Challenges Facing Women in Education

Gendered expectations impact nearly every aspect of our professional and personal lives, but we can learn to push back against biases.  This is what Jennie Weiner, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Connecticut, addresses as the guest on Harvard Graduate School of Education’s EdCast with Jill Anderson.  Dr. Weiner is also the . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: The ongoing challenge of childcare availability that has been heightened by the pandemic.

The pandemic has heightened awareness of the challenges of access to quality child care at campuses around the country, and the inequities that result when this child care is not available. This is not a new challenge, but it is one that universities are clearly going to need to help address to retain quality faculty, . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Unintended effects of gender-neutral tenure policies

Policies that allow for pauses in the tenure clock have been discussed as a potential solution to the gender disparities observed in faculty promotion, such as those which have become more evident during the pandemic. But what evidence do we have that these policies produce desirable outcomes? A 2018 study using aggregated economics department data . . .