Empowering Shakespeare’s Sister: Parental Leave and the Level Playing Field

Paid family leave remains among the most commonly discussed public policy proposals for alleviating the work-family stresses experienced by increasing numbers of dual-career parents. The passage of the nation’s first paid leave bill in California in 2002 provides momentum to leave policy proponents. This paper reports empirical findings from the Family, Gender and Tenure Project at the University of Virginia, a nationwide study of 168 randomly selected universities, that investigates the extent and effect of paid parental leave in academia and examines whether or not the expressed goals of parental leave policy are realized in its implementation. Paid leave is part of a larger constellation of policies that are designed to address the issue of gender equity in the workplace. In academia, as in the workplace more generally, one of the principal objectives of paid leave policies is to “level the playing field” so that female professors who give birth will have a fairer chance to get tenure without neglecting their child-care responsibilities. My operationalization of this goal articulates three specific aims related to positions, pay and promotion. In short, the data provides mixed results related to the effects of paid parental leave policies on these measures of achievement for women. Schools with paid parental leave policies have higher percentages of female faculty and higher promotion rates, but slightly less equal female/male salary ratios, controlling for rank, type and size of institution. Additionally, the data indicates that more equal salary ratios also have a relationship with higher percentages of female faculty, but no relationship with female promotion rates. These results indicate a need for further research into the effectiveness of paid leave policies specifically related to leveling the playing field, and into the comparative effectiveness of economic factors and dynamics. However, I conclude that there is foundation for tempered optimism regarding the effectiveness of paid leave policies for advancing gender equity in the workplace, measured at the institutional level. Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 2 Empowering Shakespeare’s Sister: Parental Leave and the Level Playing Field Charmaine Yoest Department of Politics University of Virginia What is the state of mind that is most propitious to the act of creation . . . to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty . . . Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. . . But for women . . . these difficulties were infinitely more formidable . . . In the first place, to have a room of her own . . . was out of the question . . . Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929 1. A Room of One’s Own In Virginia Woolf’s famous 1929 address at Cambridge University, in which she contemplated the accomplishments, or lack thereof, achieved by women, she challenged her audience to imagine the possibility that Shakespeare had an equally talented, but unknown, sister. As conjured by Woolf, Shakespeare’s sister, Judith, quite possibly a woman of genius, nevertheless would have been a woman bound down by material circumstance and societal prejudice. Without the empowering intellectual freedom provided by “500 pounds and a room of her own,” Judith Shakespeare would have been constrained by the biological imperatives and relentless responsibilities of womanhood, bearing children and consigned to tedium “in a kitchen chopping up suet,” and her talents would have been – perhaps were – lost in the mists of history.(Woolf 1993) The contemporary debate over the “glass ceiling” sounds these same themes. (Crittenden 2001; Friedan 1997; Fuchs 1988; Goldin 1990; Hewlett 1986; Hewlett 2002; Hewlett and Vite-Leon 2001; Hochschild 1989; Kessler-Harris 1982; Schwartz 1994; Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 3 Schwartz 1989; Valian 2000; Williams 2000) Woolf had been asked to address the undeniable fact that there were, at that time, vanishingly few women of significant accomplishment, particularly in the arts. Contemporaneous commentators argued that women as a gender were incapable of brilliance; professional terra was the sole province of men. Today we confront a vastly transformed landscape: given the opportunity, women have advanced into virtually every field of accomplishment and have distinguished themselves. Nevertheless, despite their impressive gains, a gap remains between the professional advancement of men and women. Woolf appears to have been right on two related but separable counts: female achievement was constrained by lack of resources, but it was also inhibited by childbearing and gender-linked caregiving responsibilities; the former was a barrier more easily removed than the latter. One of the answers advanced most frequently to this dilemma, as a matter of public policy, is paid leave of some kind. Nearly alone among western industrialized nations, the United States does not provide, or mandate, paid maternity, parental or family leave. (Kamerman 2000, p. 1) This comparison provides a starting point for some to argue that America is a “laggard” welfare state and call for policy change. Among others, Theda Skocpol argues that “universal access to paid family leaves,” should be a top national 1 South Korea also has no leave mandates, paid or unpaid; New Zealand and Australia have mandated unpaid leave. All other OECD countries have some provision for mandated paid maternity or parental leave. A brief word about terms: maternity leave, whether paid or unpaid, is the policy crafted to provide for a woman’s leave needs related to childbirth. Those policies have been expanded in recent years to include paternity leaves for men in an effort to promote gender-neutrality and decrease the stigma attached to utilizing the benefit. I will call these policies that include both men and women, “parental leave.” In their latest evolution, these policies have been further expanded to include leave needs for care of older children, spouses, or other dependents, including elderly parents. These I will refer to as “family leave.” Although family leave is important because it is the final version of “leave” that passed Congress and an unpaid version is now legally mandated, the focus of this work will be on parental leave in order to keep the analytical framework centered on pregnancy, childbirth and infant care concerns. See (Bernstein, Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 4 priority.(Skocpol 2000) Steven Wisensale concludes a book examining the politics of family leave policies with a recommendations section that begins: “Make family leave paid leave and do it now!” (Wisensale 2001, p. 243) Other researchers describe the lack of parental leave in the United States, along with other policies like subsidized childcare that enhance maternal employment, as a “cause for alarm.” (Gornick, Meyers, and Ross 1997b) These academic researchers are joined by policy entrepreneurs like the Work and Family Institute, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and others, in intense advocacy of federal mandates for paid leave. Current American policy on parental leave is governed at the federal level by The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Clinton’s predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, twice had vetoed the same legislation, providing telling evidence of the strong political divisions over this issue. The FMLA established a job-protected leave of twelve weeks for parents of either sex at the birth or adoption of a child. This leave is unpaid and applies only to companies with fifty or more employees, although some companies voluntarily augment the mandated unpaid leave with a paid leave benefit of variable lengths. By contrast, the European Union mandates a paid parental leave of three months. And Sweden provides the oft-cited gold standard: a one-year paid parental leave at 80% of earnings. (Kamerman 2000; Parry 2001) This rather stark contrast in provision of mandated benefits is a source of political pressure for a reexamination of our parental leave policies and fuels the movement to establish a federal paid leave mandate. Political 2001), for a discussion of the political compromises that necessitated the passage of family leave instead of parental or maternity leaves. Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 5 activity on the issue is fairly extensive: in 2000, legislation providing for paid leave was introduced in 16 states; in 2001, 15 legislatures considered some form of paid leave. With the passage in California of the Paid Family Leave Act in 2002, which provides for up to six weeks of paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, this public policy is gaining more momentum in the American context. Nevertheless, despite this concerted and focused activity aimed at a domestic movement for paid leave, the issue has received very little specific attention from political scientists. This paper reports empirical findings from the Family, Gender and Tenure Project at the University of Virginia, a nationwide study that investigated the extent and effect of paid parental leave in the academic arena. Two separate surveys have been conducted – the first gathered institutional-level information, while the second provided individuallevel data on junior faculty on the tenure track with and without children. This paper focuses on results from the institutional survey in which school administrators were queried about the nature of their policies intended to help faculty balance work and family. More detail on the methodology used is reported below. This study, while broader than a case study, offers many of the strengths of a “crucial-case” study, which is a case that provides a fit so close to the subject under 2 National Conference of State Legislatures, see: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/employ/01babyui.htm. See also for comprehensive listing of state family and medical leave legislation: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/employ/fmlachart.htm. See also Wisensale, 2001, Chapter Five for discussion of state initiatives, pp. 109-132. 3 Modeled after FMLA, the bill also provides for leave in the case of other family care needs, like personal, spousal or parental care, and so it is “family” leave instead of “parental” leave. 4 Harry Eckstein argues that this method, utilized rigorously, offers powerful possibilities for theory development and testing. In the crucial-case study, the presenting case “must closely fit” the theory such that “it must be extremely difficult, or clearly petulant, to dismiss any finding contrary to theory as simply ‘deviant’ and equally difficult to hold that any finding confirming theory might just as well express quite different regularities.” In other words, there must be a clear fit between the characteristics of the crucial case, and the variables related to the theory investigated. Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 6 investigation that the findings can be characterized logically as representative.(Eckstein 1975) The academy does so. If paid leave has the potential to work effectively and advantageously anywhere, it should do so in academia. (Raabe 1997) Motivation to recruit and retain female faculty is high. University communities are typically characterized by a commitment to justice concerns. And female faculty members are, by definition, well educated and have high levels of professional commitment. These women may also be more likely to be married to men less invested in traditional gender roles. Furthermore, academia provides a clear example of the pressures that feed into the work-family crucible. Junior faculty members in academia contend with a set of career pressures that are unique: the highly structured, time-constrained career ladder of the tenure process is a system that is specific to the academic arena. Nevertheless, the intense academic career track exhibits pressures similar to those faced in other professional occupations, and is analogous to the experiences of other professionals in other disciplines trying to balance career and family. The average Ph.D. recipient is thirty-four years old. (Drago and Williams 2000) Therefore, the average academic woman confronts the beginning of the intense tenure process precisely during years when she might be beginning her family.(Finkel and Olswang 1996; Young and Wright 2001) In fact, a recent study using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, found that the majority of academic women who do achieve tenure, do not have children in the post-Ph.D. time period. (Mason and Goulden 2002) 5 The tenure process typically spans seven years, which is the official recommendation of the American Association of University Professors. For tenure procedures and recommendations, see http://www.aaup.org/Issues/tenure/index.htm Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 7 Similarly, men and women who enter the legal profession face the challenge of making Partner in their law firm in their late 20’s and early 30’s, which notoriously conflicts with childbearing; the military has a time-bounded “up or out” system very similar to the tenure process; the medical profession, with its residency system is similarly indifferent to parenting concerns; and the corporate world -birthplace of the “mommy track” -while lacking a specified industry-wide “system” for advancement, does place a high premium on an “overtime culture,” that makes high achievement and childbearing difficult to reconcile. (Fried 1998; Schwartz 1989) For these reasons, I argue that data developed on academic professionals is representative of professionals in other areas. The Level Playing Field Hypothesis Paid leave is part of a larger constellation of policies that are designed to address the issue of gender equity in the workplace. In academia, as in the workplace more generally, one of the principal objectives of paid leave policies is to “level the playing field” so that female professors who give birth will have a fairer chance to get tenure without neglecting their child-care responsibilities. Providing a common thread, this objective, and even the sports metaphor framing terminology, parallels that used in the debate over Title IX and gender equity in collegiate athletics and federally-supported education programs. One work-family researcher describes the lack of a maternity leave as a barrier that “might prevent women with children from competing on an equal footing in the labor market.” (Waldfogel 1998) Additionally, the AAUP describes a paid leave policy as one among several that demonstrates “commitment to gender equity.” (AAUP 6 Joan Williams of American University is currently conducting Sloan Foundation-funded research into the Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 8 2001) Perhaps even more importantly, even when the level-playing-field goal is not explicitly outlined, paid leave is frequently discussed in the context of furthering gender equity and ensuring women’s ability to compete with men professionally.(Kamerman 2000; Valian 2000; Williams 2000) But is paid parental leave effective in addressing the level-playing-field goal? The study of this particular question is still in its early stages, and researchers have identified the effect of leave policy on gender equity and career advancement as a question in need of further examination. (Gornick, Meyers, and Ross 1997b; Raabe 1997; Schwartz 1994) In this paper, I report data from the institutional survey related to the question of leveling the playing field. Frequent categories used to measure gender equity in the workplace are the extent of gender segregation in occupations, pay equity and relative promotion rates. (Blau and Ferber 1986; Ferber and Loeb 1997; Schwartz 1994; Valian 2000; Winter-Ebmer and Zweimuller 1997) Therefore, my operationalization of the level-playingfield goal articulates three specific aims related to positions, pay and promotion. I assess whether or not parental leave is effective at the institutional level in enabling larger numbers of women to combine a professional career with childbearing by examining three dependent variables at surveyed institutions: first, the percentage of female professors; second, female promotion rates; and third, the ratio of female to male salaries. I test the following hypotheses related to the theory that parental leave is an effective public policy: possibility of a part-time partner track for lawyers who want to be parents. Charmaine Yoest, Writing Sample 9 Leveling the Playing Field Hypothesis -Institutional Level 1. Assuming paid parental leave policies are effective at leveling the playing field for women professors, then we would expect universities with paid leave policies to have higher percentages of female professors than schools without these policies. 2. Assuming paid parental leave policies are effective at leveling the playing field for women professors, then we would expect a higher percentage of female faculty members to achieve tenure at institutions with paid leave policies than those without these policies. 3. Assuming paid parental leave policies are effective at leveling the playing field for women professors, then we should see no difference in the salary levels of male and female professors at paid leave schools, and any difference that does exist, should be less than any difference that exists at schools without a paid leave policy. In short, the data provides mixed results related to the effects of paid parental leave policies on these measures of achievement for women. Schools with paid parental leave policies have higher percentages of female faculty and higher promotion rates, but slightly less equal female/male salary ratios, controlling for rank, type and size of institution. Additionally, the data indicates that more equal salary ratios also have a relationship with higher percentages of female faculty but no relationship with female promotion rates. I conclude that these results indicate a need for further research into the effectiveness of paid leave policies specifically related to leveling the playing field for professional women, and further research into the comparative effectiveness of economic factors and dynamics.