<p>It certainly is a tough juggling act for women who have a career and a family. It is difficult for female faculty, and being a college faculty member is probably the most family-friendly job on earth. Just imagine how hard it is for women with less flexible careers.</p>
<p>But, if college faculty is a family-friendly career, what is causing the dissatisfaction? Maybe husbands who don’t help enough. Maybe it is inherent in being a junior faculty member. Maybe they don’t appreciate how lucky they are to be college faculty.</p>
<p>Being an academic is family-friendly in terms of scheduling–you have more freedom in accommodating things like daycare pickup, school dropoff, doctor’s appointments, sick days, and so forth. </p>
<p>But the overall time demands remain. Faculty may have flexibility about what hours of the day or week he or she performs tasks like research, grading, reading, lecture preparation, writing, and so on, but it all still needs to be done in order to be considered successful and productive, to be a good teacher, to get tenure. The demands never go away–you don’t turn out the light in the office because it’s 5 pm. </p>
<p>That’s what makes it so challenging to balance family life with work life when you’re an academic.</p>
<p>There are statistically significant differences by gender with respect to just about every aspect of work life addressed in the Cornell faculty survey, with women reporting significantly lower levels of satisfaction than men.</p>
<p>But part of the difference in overall satisfaction levels is clearly Ithaca. Far more women than men—about 25% of the women but only about 10% of the men—reported being in a “commuting relationship” with a partner who lived elsewhere or with one or both partners needing to commute long distances to work. Also, more than three times as many women were single, i.e., reported having no spouse or unmarried partner (17% of women, 5% of men). Both single men and single women agreed that living in Ithaca was an “impediment to establishing personal relationships,” and 75% of the single women thought Cornell did not do as good a job meeting the needs of single faculty as it did of other faculty. Adding these two groups together, that means over 40% of the women were either not in relationships (many of them not happy about it), or in relationships that put additional demands on them because they were living apart from their partners or one or both needed to spend extra time commuting long distances. Young faculty beware! There may be some gender split on these questions on other faculties, but my guess is Cornell’s remote, small town location exacerbates these issues.</p>