Women and the Academic Life

Last night I went to a small event for women grad students which included a question-and-answer panel with three women faculty members from the College of Engineering. My fellow grad students had a lot of good questions. One student asked, "What do you consider the biggest barrier to advancement for women in academia?" Almost immediately the answer was, "Having children." One of the woman professors had a small child and she explained that although ND has fairly good policies, it is still very stressful and the perception of women professors who choose to have children can sometimes be damaged. There is a policy here where a woman professor can "pause" the tenure clock after having a child, in effect gaining an extra year before the tenure review, which is typically in the 7th year after appointment. Although she was still teaching and doing research, returning to work six weeks (!) after her baby's birth, the perception was that she had an unfair advantage because of the extra year! She explained that she practiced attachment parenting (AP) and breastfed full-time, and that her son never took a bottle. I was thoroughly impressed with her since I think it would be challenging even for a full-time mom to do these things.

I don't think it was a coincidence that neither of the other two women had children (although I am not sure, I don't think they are married either). Academia can be a very stressful environment, and women bear the added burden of home and family responsibilities. It makes me sad that I even have to describe having children as a "burden." As of now I am steadfast in my goal of going into academia, but the more I hear other women talk about it, the more I realize that goal may very well change.

Sometimes I feel as though women like me get it from all sides. From secular colleagues we face the perception of being "unserious" if we choose to prioritize children above work. When I express that I would love to have children, fellow students tend to look askance at me. From traditional and conservative Catholics, we face accusations of being selfish because we choose to work. It really irritates me that in some Catholic circles, the implication is that you are a "bad mother" and "unwomanly" if you have any ambition or desire beyond that of being a SAHM. I've been excoriated several times on Catholic forums for daring to suggest that women can and should work for reasons other than extreme financial necessity. It makes little sense to me that God would give gifts and talents to all people and then expect half of the human race never to use those gifts. I have the utmost respect for SAHMs - my own mother was one - but to have it implied that I am a "bad Catholic" for not wanting to be one is really galling, especially when Church teaching says nothing of the kind.

I also think that Notre Dame can and should do more to support a balanced family life among faculty and students with children. The policy on pausing the tenure clock is a good one, when compared to secular universities, but is that enough to foster a healthy family life as the Church envisions it? I'm thinking no. Being supportive of families requires more than a good maternity leave policy. For example, I was surprised that the day care center on campus does not accept children younger than 2 years. (I know some Catholics think that if you put your kids in day care, you might as well feed them to Moloch, but it's a reality of modern life and it would be best for the very little ones to at least be on campus and in a Catholic environment.) I feel the goal should be, "As a Catholic university, we honor the primacy of the family in the spirit of Catholic teaching" rather than, "Hey, at least we're more family friendly than Harvard or Yale!"

There are no quick and easy answers here. Right now the best I can do is work hard, keep my options open, and be willing to go wherever God leads me, even if it ends up not being the path I would have chosen for myself.

Dappled Things Magazine

A big thank you to Shrine of the Holy Whapping for pointing me towards this month's issue of Dappled Things. The feature story is written by John C. Wright, one of my very favorite Catholic bloggers. Short, but very, very good. Also check out the interview with Mr. Wright. I've been reading a biography of Tolkien, who was an extraordinary writer and a devout Catholic -- I think in John C. Wright we have another fine writer who understands the role of Myth. This essay, on autism and Catholicism, is also very thought-provoking. Go check it out, all of you!

Olive branch?

So I've been thinking a bit about this letter, from Fr. Jenkins, which was emailed to Notre Dame students Wednesday. I appreciate the commitment to pro-life action, and I'm glad that Fr. Jenkins will be attending the March for Life. But I can't help thinking - why not last spring? Why not demonstrate this commitment when all eyes were on Notre Dame? Now that the cameras are gone, now that everyone has forgotten the commencement, now he wants to tell us that he's committed to the cause of life? It makes me kind of mad, because the greater public won't see this. They saw what they wanted to see last spring, when ND and its administration blew a giant raspberry at the bishops and the established teaching of the Church and honored the most pro-abortion president this country has ever had. It feels like he's closing the barn door after the horses have already run off.

I know I need to be charitable, and that I should just take it for granted that this is a sincere effort on the part of Fr. Jenkins to demonstrate ND's faithfulness to the teaching of Holy Mother Church. But the cynic in me wonders if it isn't an effort to attract donations from alumni which might have been lost last spring. (Did I also mention that I'm heartily sick of the hackneyed phrase "constructive dialogue?")

I sincerely hope this "task force" Jenkins proposes will be truly effective and not just a token. I know Prof. Cavadini has a reputation for orthodoxy - hopefully he can use his position to effect real change. And I'm delighted that the Women's Care Center was mentioned. They do great work and they really do give the lie to the notion that "pro-lifers don't care about women."

In short - I appreciate the conciliatory gesture and hope pro-life and orthodox organizations will respond in charity to this olive branch. But Fr. Jenkins can't undo what's already done.

Discouraged

In moving forward with the book club, I emailed our club's contact at Campus Ministry, and he requested to meet with me. I was half expecting to be given a tour of CoMo and handed a sheet of guidelines for reserving rooms on campus, but he actually wanted to talk with me about my idea.

Basically the gist of the conversation is that most efforts to do something like this for grad students have fizzled out, because they don't attract enough interest and students who are interested get pressed for time and quit coming to meetings. It was more than a little discouraging. He was very nice about it but I was really surprised at some of the things he said to me. I mentioned that we are thinking about reading an encyclical and he just sort of smiled and said he didn't think too many people would be interested in that. Really? At a Catholic university nobody wants to study Catholic doctrine? (I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at that considering what the events of last spring revealed about Catholic identity at ND, but still.)

We did throw around some useful ideas but frankly, where he wants to go with it seems a bit far afield of my original thoughts. For example, he thought my group wouldn't be marketable if I put a "Catholic" label on it, and that I should publicize it as a "faith sharing" group for graduate students. Frankly that seems a little deceptive considering my intent for the group. Of course everyone would be welcomed, but I want a group that studies Catholic doctrine and thought, not some vague, nebulous spirituality. And I am not into "faith sharing"...ugh. I don't want to sit around in a circle talking about my personal image of God, I got enough of that in my pre-Cana.

I understand the need to cast a wider net...but I do feel a little discouraged right now. I do want our group to be unabashedly Catholic, and I do want the kind of people who are interested in going deeper with their faith and aren't afraid of an intellectual challenge. I don't want to cater to the lowest common denominator and water things down to make them inoffensive. Are there really so few graduate students on campus who would be interested in a group like that? It makes me a little sad. Time to go back to the drawing board...

Book club

Here on campus there really isn't much support for graduate student spirituality. In sharp contrast to the undergraduate student body which is 80% Catholic, only 54% of graduate students identify as Catholic, and I would guess that fewer are weekly Mass-goers. Most graduate students I've met are either not Catholic or rather apathetic about their faith. There are masses in the chapel at FOG, as well as a weekly rosary, but the majority of grad students are off-campus like me and there are few activities especially for us. There is one club, the Thomas Aquinas Society, that exists for the Catholic graduate students, but due to the demanding schedule of grad students it isn't always very active. The guys that run it are great - but busy just like the rest of us! It doesn't help that we don't get a whole lot of support from Campus Ministry - but I digress.

TAS had a happy hour at Legends two weeks ago to mark the beginning of the semester, and we were invited to share our ideas and thoughts for activities for the coming year. I suggested the idea of a book club for Catholic reading, which was enthusiastically received by a number of students. Since we have a pretty small group so far, I would like to invite my Domer readers to join up. This semester I will have the participants vote on the book they want to read. We will be choosing between a study of Pope Benedict's encyclical Spe Salvi and the book Life of Christ by Abp. Fulton Sheen.

I am trying to find a place for us to meet, either on or off campus. I'm going to try to contact Campus Ministry about meeting space in CoMo (a building I'm totally unfamiliar with) but eventually I'd like us to meet off-campus to make things a bit more relaxed. I'm in the process of checking out area cafes and coffee shops. This is going to be a busy semester for me - but I'm excited about the book club and hoping it will provide some intellectual and spiritual stimulation.

Summer's ending

Wow, has it really been more than a month since my last update? Summer is waning fast - classes will start next Tuesday here at Notre Dame. I'm currently trying to prepare an abstract and presentation for a graduate student conference which my department holds at the end of the summer. Right now I have awful writer's block. I tried the old trick of just typing whatever comes to mind until I hit the required number of words - but I'm about a paragraph shy of the needed half-page. So I decided to write a blog entry to attempt to "unblock" the writing part of my brain.

Research has gone tolerably well this summer. I'm taking a former student's project in a completely new direction, so there's been a lot of "hurry up and wait" as I order the needed supplies and learn things by trial and error. Sadly I don't have a whole lot of actual data to present at our conference - but I do have a more definite sense of what I need to do and why I need to do it. That's a pretty important accomplishment in and of itself - and my advisor doesn't seem displeased by it, which is important.

I've decided that I need to start making semester plans with definite goals to accomplish each week. Our advisor had everyone in the group do that this summer and I liked it. I do best in a structured environment, but graduate school can be very unstructured compared to undergrad. It's been a bit of an adjustment realizing that nobody is going to tell me exactly what to do and when it should be done. This semester I have an abstract that needs to be submitted for a conference, as well as my qualifying exam to prepare for. I'm also thinking about applying for an external fellowship, what with money being so tight around our house. So, there are a lot of things on my radar that could sneak up on me if I'm not careful.

My husband is still looking for jobs, and becoming somewhat discouraged, I think. There just isn't much out there, even for someone with his skills and qualifications. The biggest setback is his lack of experience, since he only worked one year at The Place that Shall Not be Named. He was hoping to stay with his former employer until I'm done with my Ph.D. to get that required experience - but obviously that didn't work out. We've talked about him going to grad school here, but his particular area of interest isn't really researched here, and only Ph.D.s are funded. It is certainly an option, though, and I'm hoping he'll get to talk to some of my professors at our conference. I think it would be terrible if no one would give a brilliant, hardworking guy like him a chance.

Since my last post, I found out that my dad's older sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor after experiencing paralysis in her right leg. She has done a round of chemo but the tumor unfortunately is growing. I would appreciate it if you all would pray for her.

The Domestic Arts

Lately I've been taking up some projects around the house which are more housewifely than I realized at first. I've been teaching myself to sew, and have suddenly found myself the possessor of two sewing machines - one a cheap Overstock special, and the other a 70s-era Singer bought on impulse from the Salvation Army. The old Singer still needs work and I'm refinishing its cabinet since its previous owner was apparently a chainsmoker - but the cheapo machine has been great for learning on.

I've begun to bake my own bread in the interest of saving money. Thanks to a fantastic book (Artisan Bread in 30 Minutes a Day) even this baking-impaired woman can make tasty bread. I also made my own yogurt for the first time yesterday. I got the yogurt maker as a wedding present from my wonderful undergrad advisor, and this was my first opportunity to use it. I had some of the yogurt for breakfast - it was great! And would you believe I'm seriously thinking about learning how to make my own preserves with our awesome local fruit?

These seem like unlikely projects for an engineering grad student, don't they? But I find an immense satisfaction in making useful and tasty things. For me these things harken back to an older time, when women took pride in domesticity and self-reliance was key. I feel that the spirit of "do it yourself" is deeply ingrained into our American culture - if less honored today than it was in an earlier time. I think it is very sad that these skills of "home economics" were scoffed at once women entered the workplace, and seen as incongruous in a world where women and men should play an equal role in the home.

Fortunately I see a trend back towards these domestic skills - but the emphasis is on sustainability, helping the environment and reducing waste. Hey, whatever works, right? But for me the focus is on thrift - and the sheer pleasure of "doing it myself." I believe that whenever we make something useful or beautiful we are participating, in some small way, in God's work of creation. The work of our human hands honors Him.