Abstract
Universities throughout the USA have adopted family-friendly policies to enable life and career balance and to encourage the attraction and retention of women scientists. Although family-leave policies are designed to provide job protection for parents and ensure that faculty can remain productive scholars, it is unclear whether or not formal family-leave policies have played a positive role in areas of academic productivity such as publishing and teaching. This research investigates the relationships between university family-leave policies and productivity among faculty in six fields of science using responses from a national survey of 1,598 faculty at 150 research universities and data from status of women reports and faculty handbooks. The hierarchical multi-level analysis indicates that generous formal family-leave policies, on-site childcare, and spousal hiring policies differently affect the productivity of women and men academic scientists.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 750-764 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Science and Public Policy |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1 2014 |
Keywords
- Family-leave
- Maternity leave
- STEM
- Women in science
- Work-family balance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Public Administration
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law