Written by Dr Emma Waltham | Parental Returners Expert
Returning Works® is partnering with Advance HE and UHR to produce a Whitepaper to investigate the impact of motherhood on women’s careers in the higher education sector.
As part of this research, we launched a survey this summer to help us better understand the situation for parents with caring responsibilities in higher education. We had an absolutely fantastic response to the survey; thank you to everyone who took part.
We plan to publish the Whitepaper early next year, and will be holding an event in the summer where we will share the findings and explore next steps for the sector. We will be in touch again soon with more details. In the meantime, we are delighted to share with you the key themes from the survey.
Overview
The survey ran during June and July 2023, and received 172 responses from 58 institutions. Of these, 44% of participants feel their organization aren’t making fast enough progress in providing a supportive and inclusive environment for parental carers.
Progress: what is being done well
Respondents told us that their institutions are doing well with:
Family friendly policies such as flexible working
Active parent network in place
Organisational awareness of the impact of caring duties
The following are direct quotes from respondents, when asked to elaborate on their answers:
Flexible and agile working:
Understanding and supportive of parents needing to attend appointments and important events with children. A lot depends on your line manager for the more discretionary elements.
I have taken the option of temporary reduced hours when I returned from maternity leave, which has meant I could find my feet with work again after a year off and learn how to juggle parenthood with work.
It is now very common for meetings to be arranged during central "core hours" and remote working has revolutionised being a working parent.
Networks/support:
We have established a strong Parent & Family Network with a member of the Executive Board as a visible champion.
We have places for breastfeeding/expressing are now available; most areas are enforcing that workshops shouldn't take place before 9:30 or after 3pm.
[My institution’s] senior managers are happy to talk about balancing parenting and careers.
Transition back to work:
Support for those returning to work, flexibility of the return and caring needs.
We have also introduced a more robust process for those embarking on family leave to meet with them and their line manager to ensure everyone understands their responsibilities. We are also early adopters of the neonatal leave with full pay.
Room for improvement
The most common areas where there is room for improvement:
Support for research trajectory following significant period of parental leave
Almost everyone is unquestioningly supportive of parental obligations
Senior-level parental champion in place
The key barriers to participation are felt to be a lack of awareness of the impact of motherhood on women’s careers, working culture/environment, being out of the workplace due to maternity leave and limited access to examples of best practice in the sector.
When asked to elaborate upon barriers to participation, respondents shared their experiences in the following areas:
Career progression
The longer [women] are out of sight on the international scene, the harder it is to get back.
Being absent from the workplace during maternity leave puts you at a real disadvantage when you return. There is a lack of support in small teams - I was the only person who's been on maternity leave and there was no support in a wider University setting.
I’d like to progress, but I don’t see how this is possible on part-time hours. Job shares aren’t seen as a viable option.
Higher education culture
Culture and practice across our university is mixed… there is an inequality across the organisation depending on where you happen to work.
HE has a culture in which working outside of hours is expected, if not encouraged, and in my experience this is much easier for men than women who have children. Things like expressing milk are not taken into consideration properly.
PhD/academics
A PhD is done in your own time, on top of a normal workload. This is simply not possible with caring responsibilities.
It’s taken seven years after my second child was born to complete my PhD and secure a promotion from SL. Now I'm here, the workload is impossible without working evenings or weekends, I'm considering dropping back down to SL to accommodate my family life.
Managers and senior leadership
Heads of Department are absolutely well intentioned, however in my experience have not been sufficiently trained or supported in adequately supporting mothers both with planning maternity leave and also returning to work.
For me as a parent, what I noticed the most is arbitrariness. Some parents benefits from very good arrangements, and some don't, and there is a strong element of luck (as in: being lucky to have a supportive manager).
Difficulties/realities of working part time
It is difficult for senior leaders to fully appreciate the challenges for part-time staff unless they have worked part-time themselves.
Dates and times of activities should not be outside normal working days and hours because of childcare arrangements.
Returning to part-time hours due to childcare - workplace is flexible to allow this, but in reality workloads can still be high, or work isn't covered on none working days or deadlines are set as though role is still full-time. Less job development/career progress. Higher jobs are not flexible/part-time for returning mothers.