Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Short End of the Stick

I discovered a personal account by a female academic in The Chronicle of Higher Education's Site titled"The Womanly Art of Negotiation", in which she discusses the various struggles she faced negotiating her salary as a recruited assistant professor candidate.  Oh, also, she happened to be nine months pregnant while battling it out with the department over her contract.

Reading this article made me consider for the first time how negotiation is supposed to work, and how it actually works in the case of female candidates for employment.  It's not surprising to me that we live in a society that substantially values employing white heterosexual males over non-whites, or those who aren't male-gendered or don't identify as heterosexuals.  I am a part of one of the most prestigious university debate unions in the northeast, and beat out 45 other university teams (including teams from Cornell and Colgate) to make it to the semifinals of a recent tournament.  I was one of only 3 females who made it to the semifinals, whereas 13 males had gone through.  The top ten speakers of the tournament where all males, and predominantly white males at that.  Believe me, the message has been loud and clear that the value of intellectual and hardworking women hardly correlates to the value of men.

So, how am I supposed to combat the obstacle of my gender once I start (hopefully) receiving job offers?  Now, this may be a bit like putting the cart before the horse, however, I find it very disconcerting to hear that even when applying for positions in academia (where one would think existing hiring  biases around gender/race/and sexuality would be acknowledged and combated) that there are certain limitations to one's ability to negotiate based on gender.  Are we still really operating on that whole "we like quiet and submissive females" thing that the West is so popular for? Because from what this article states, as a female either you take an offer without asking anything in addition, or, you suffer through a nerve-wracking ordeal of negotiations.  The latter strategy being the effort of a woman who recognizes her right to state her worth in the market of ideas.  Although I champion these women who push back when a salary proves to be unsatisfactory, when so little ground is gained at the end of the whole thing it makes me wonder why institutions seem to get defensive when a woman asks for more? 

There is totally a stigma around women taking control of the negotiation process, and I think this is a huge deterrent for many female professionals who might not be happy with the salary they're offered to negotiate.  As the author of this article explained, many females in academia are just thankful they got offered a position in the first place, and don't want to jeopardize their chances by asking more of their employer.  Although it seems as if negotiating on your own terms as a woman is a somewhat grueling and stressful process, I've learned that employers are more likely to come to the table when you appeal for a promotion or raise in the future.  If you stand your ground from the getgo, the less likely you'll be shortchanged by your institution in the end.  All those women who accepted positions without blinking an eye, on the other hand, are less likely to receive substantial pay increases (since raises are usual performed as a percentage increase of a current wage, and when you start with a lower-than-average wage then your net raise as a whole is low) or promotions.


For part-time work and internships, I've been quick to accept the offer on the table.  I mean, I'm lucky as a college student to get hired anywhere, right? Wrong.  Now That I'm about to graduate, I want to educate myself on how best to a)plan what I want my career to look like, and b) understand what my value is as an employee/academic.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Survivor's Guilt


While perusing the Chronicle of Higher Education's website, I came across an interest piece titled “They're Mad as Hell” by Leonard Cassuto, an English professor at Fordham University. He was writing to explain further the implications of an article he had recently written about the importance of providing professional development skills to doctoral students before they enter the job market, titled “Changing the Way We Socialize Doctoral Students.” Both pieces are very interesting and discussing the various points Cassuto makes could certainly take up multiple blog entries.

However, what I found to be truly interesting was a term Cassuto used in his piece, “They're Mad as Hell” - the term being “survivor's guilt”. As a tenured professor in one of the most competitive fields of academia, Cassuto explains that he is flooded daily with questions from graduate students asking him what is his secret to success, and how these students might work to emulate him. Reflecting on his own experience searching for a job after receiving his PhD, Cassuto writes, “Like so many graduate students, I didn't start thinking carefully about the job market until it was upon me. When I got a good job, it felt less like an achievement than an improbable success in the lottery.” This certainly indicates a major issue about how an institution of higher learning might go about fostering career development for graduate students. When potential graduate students, such as myself, find themselves faced with professors who are unable to particulate any real reason why he or she got the job, then that to me is a problem.

Cassuto sees this as being a problem as well, and he finds himself unable to give the advice his students need from him because he himself never received such information as a graduate student. He managed to “survive” without it, and miraculously landed a job. But graduate students today can no longer just settle to survive. In an age where there's an increased percentage of students pursuing higher education after college, students need to be able to have access to resources that will help them conceptualize their graduate experience as another step in their overall career development, and that the degree itself doesn't guarantee a job.

Now, I have totally caught myself prodding my advisors and professors for insights on how to manage the path to securing a career in academia, and I've been given responses that reflect this feeling of survivor's guilt. Like, “Things were different twenty years ago-” or “I got this interview purely because I knew so-and-so.” Frankly, I think professors are selling their students short by this sense of nostalgia, and I feel as if professors should be held accountable for knowing how to navigate the job market in today's higher education system. I certainly don't want to be another jobless person with a PhD, and I don't intend on being one. I am slowly starting to educate myself as to what role my PhD will play in my career development, but not having professors who are mindful of how the PhDs function in students' career development today robs me of a potentially vital resource.

Articles referenced:

http://chronicle.com/article/Changing-the-Way-We-Socialize/125892
http://chronicle.com/article/Theyre-Mad-as-Hell/126199/