Transition back to work after parental leave in academia

This project aims to explore structural issues of gender inequality in academia, to understand how these existing institutional rules and practices known as the ‘rules-in-use' act to support or work against parents. A widely accepted explanation for gender inequality in the workplace has been the perceived conflict between women’s caring and childbearing obligations and the work environment that has been shaped around an ‘ideal worker??? who is male, able-bodied and with no caring responsibilities (Acker, 1990). Parental leave policies provided by both government and employers are intended to address gender inequality. However, formal policy tends to focus on the period of leave immediately prior to and after birth along with who pays for this leave and the form such paid leave takes (Prothero, 2023). Far less thought is given to how parents leave, re-enter and remain in the workforce, and how these patterns intersect with institutionalised norms, rules and narratives such as expectations around workloads and career progression. Indeed, the formal measures for leave are often undermined by broader informal institutional norms and expectations (Hamilton et al., 2022), in academia as well as other workplaces.

The project builds on a transdisciplinary pilot study that is currently exploring the experiences of women academics from universities and business schools in three countries: Australia, France and the United Kingdom. It investigates how formal rules and informal practices surrounding parental leave affect women’s career trajectories within academia after returning from parental leave.