Social Science Grant Examines Impact of WSU Partner Accommodation Policies
Proposal Title: Measuring Impacts of Partner Accommodation Policies on Recruitment, Retention and Promotion of Female Faculty at WSU.
Project Overview and Link to ADVANCE Initiatives:
Scholars have documented that women are under-represented on university faculties, especially in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines and at the Full Professor level. The American Association of University Professors’ Recommendations on Partner Accommodation (2010) argue that a lack of partner-accommodation policies may be having an undesirable effect on the careers of academic women. Washington State University (WSU) has had such a policy in place for some time. In this proposed research, we seek to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of partner and spousal accommodation policies on WSU’s recruitment, retention, and promotion of academic women. This is part of a larger research agenda. A larger project (evaluating policies and data from many universities) has been also proposed but is not yet funded. This proposed project will complement and strengthen the larger research agenda and provide insights into WSU-specific policies and outcomes.
Link to ADVANCE Initiatives:
The first ADVANCE initiatives we plan to address with this research are recruiting a diverse faculty and facilitating dual careers. Spousal and partner accommodation is important for increasing female representation because academic women are highly likely to be part of an academic couple. Astin and Milem (1997) suggest that as many as 40% of female faculty members and 35% of male faculty members in the United States are married to other academics. Scheibinger et al. (2008) show that dual hires comprise an increasing proportion of all faculty hires over the last four decades, from 3% in the 1970s to 13% in the 2000s. They find that academic women are more likely than men to refuse a job offer if their partners cannot find adequate employment. They further make the case that in male-dominated disciplines, such as STEM disciplines, women are much more likely than their male counterparts to be partnered with another academic.
WSU, like many land grant institutions is located in a “college town” where opportunities for the spouse of an academic are often limited. Costa and Kahn (1999) point to geography as a key factor in determining the employment situation of couples. They examine why college educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas. They find this phenomenon can mostly be explained by the growth of dual-career households who are maximizing the potential for both partners to find suitable employment. We hypothesize then that WSU’s accommodation policy is a significant factor in recruiting a diverse and high quality faculty. Empirically testing this hypothesis is the first aim of our proposal.
Another ADVANCE initiative we plan to address with this research is on advancement. We plan to evaluate how partner-accommodation policies affect the retention and promotion of female faculty. Ragan et al. (2007) argue that dual-career academic couples have higher costs of moving. Dual-career couples must find two acceptable jobs rather than one when seeking superior employment opportunities, and they tend to have deeper roots in their community owing to a higher probability of having a family. Thus, we anticipate that employing both partners of a dual-career academic couple increases the retention of women in academia. Wolf-Wendal et al. (2003) also suggest that accommodating academic couples may result in higher retention rates because a faculty couple may choose to keep academic positions rather than leave for an opportunity that is more attractive for one member of the couple but less attractive and/or secure for the other. A rigorous empirical examination of the retention effects of WSU’s partner accommodation policy is another aim of our proposal.
