"This is just leveling the playing field."
--Mary DeLong, associate professor, public health, and chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW)The Academic Exchange What was the genesis for the PCSW's efforts?
Mary DeLong The idea originated in the PCSW's ongoing efforts to support increased chances for tenure for women. We considered conducting a study of women and tenure in general, but it's not reasonable for us to do a tenure study until we are able to have outside help, because this would be a sizable undertaking. So we looked at the kinds of initiatives that would attract women to Emory or support the women who are now at Emory. One of these would be to have a very liberal or meaningful leave policy and then during that leave to stop the tenure clock.
AE How did the administration respond to your recommendations?
MD These would be major changes to our present policy, so President Chace took considerable time in responding point by point in a very thoughtful and comprehensive letter. One of his points was that he would like to separate the issue of leave policy from the issue of the tenure clock because any change in the leave policy would have to be made with the assurance of no discrimination in favor of highly paid individuals at the expense of lower paid individuals.
Another point was, if a person is to be given leave for parental serious illness or for a child's serious illness, what constitutes serious illness? Who makes that decision? Does the doctor? For what period of time?
He also raised the question, What do "full-time"and "part-time" mean for a faculty member? Our proposal includes a period of full-time paid leave, followed by an optional period of working at a reduced work load (down to 50 percent) after the birth or adoption of a child. A faculty member's effort in different areas would vary if the position were funded by "soft money" [a salary percentage funded through external sources secured by the faculty member] versus "hard money" supplied by the department or administration. Suppose a faculty member's work is partially funded by a contract with the National Institutes of Health or the federal government or a funding agency, as often occurs in the schools of medicine and public health and the sciences. If that contract specifies that the faculty member is to give a 20-, 40-, or 60-percent effort on this grant, then that obligation may precede departmental needs.AE What other obstacles to this kind of policy do you perceive?
MD University-wide, I think it's the different departmental needs among the various schools. It's difficult to make a university-wide family leave policy. At the moment, often the taking of family leave is at the discretion of the department chair, and the time allowed varies. This is a critical issue because not every department has equal resources for additional faculty support measures, and thus inequities have occurred.
AE How does Emory address those obstacles?
MD In order to develop a policy that would work across the university, we would need to clearly define what is full-time and what is part-time work. For instance, a clinical faculty member reducing his or her workload to 50 percent would have different ramifications than a faculty member in the arts and sciences working at 50 percent. It might mean covering research responsibilities in one school and covering teaching responsibilities in another. But I think equitably, we need a similar arrangement for leave across all schools, and we should also have some kind of general administrative fund that smaller departments can go to for financial support of persons taking leave.
This has to rise to the top of the priorities list. We have to involve the administration, the various department chairs, and the faculty, so that it is neither a dictum of the administration nor a grassroots revolt, but it is a collegial discussion that resolves very difficult issues. We would be changing tradition, and it would mean the department chairs would have to adhere to new guidelines.AE In the national arena, in debates at other schools, one argument is that stopping the tenure clock would create a double standard and undermine the principles of tenure. How do you respond to that?
MD There already is a double standard--one person is usually the primary caregiver, and that person is very much compromised in the time he or she has to put in to work. There is a double standard of how much time he or she can work versus somebody who does not have childcare or family responsibilities. This proposal just makes the scales equal.
AE The other issue that comes up is that stopping the clock might earmark someone as not competitive, not serious about their work.
MD I think that is something of an old school idea, and it's time for it to die. The pendulum swung many years ago toward the belief that there would be careers for women or for men. I think we have found that women can be very professional and also still have very strong family interests. I see this proposal as addressing life as it occurs. Life is work; life is also family. And we give credence to the importance of the family and person in terms of vacations, leaves, and so on. What we are talking about in this proposal is the natural evolution of women in the workplace. This is not rocket science. This is just leveling the playing field.