ABSTRACT

Even though academics are routinely engaged in care activities for their students, colleagues, institutions, and families, care is often overlooked in the culture of academia. This study focuses on how care work affects gender equity in academia, along with work and personal lives of women academics. Through female professors, the study explores the extent, variety, and lived experiences of care practices in academia. Utilizing care and gender theories in an organizational context, we analyzed qualitative interviews with twenty-two female academics from two Canadian universities, purposively selected to represent different disciplines and stages in the academic career trajectory. Regarding their life and health trajectories, our interviewees spontaneously utilized a vocabulary of care to describe their teaching, supervision, and administrative tasks. This acknowledgment of care as an important aspect of academic practice can be helpful in addressing gender inequalities in academia. Specifically, self-care remains a largely overlooked—yet important—category of care theory. Based on our fieldwork, we argue that self-care needs to be more closely and extensively studied to create a more supportive academic work culture.

摘要

尽管学者们经常为他们的学生、同事、机构和家庭参与关怀活动，但在学术界文化中，关怀往往被忽视。这项研究的重点是护理工作如何影响学术界的性别平等，以及女性学者的工作和个人生活。通过女教授，该研究探索了学术界护理实践的范围、多样性和生活经验。在组织环境中利用关怀和性别理论，我们分析了对来自加拿大两所大学的 22 名女性学者的定性访谈，这些女性学者有目的地选择代表学术生涯轨迹中的不同学科和阶段。在生活和健康轨迹方面，受访者不约而同地用关心的词汇来描述他们的教学、督导、和行政任务。承认护理是学术实践的一个重要方面，有助于解决学术界的性别不平等问题。具体来说，自我保健仍然是一个在很大程度上被忽视但很重要的护理理论类别。根据我们的实地调查，我们认为需要更密切和更广泛地研究自我保健，以创造更具支持性的学术工作文化。