Musing about Spousal Hires
Oct. 3rd, 2011 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajnabiehOne of the things about coming to a new school means encountering new academic cultures, which differ by huge amounts from institution to institution. Some elements are systemic to particular sorts of schools; some are idiosyncratic. It's hard to puzzle things out, sometimes.
But I've noticed a quirk here, and I wonder what it means. Here at my new school, I've seen three different people openly disclose that they were 'spousal hires.' For those not in academia, that means that 1) their spouse/partner was hired for a permanent job here 2) said spouse/partner said "I will take the job if you give my spouse/partner a faculty position as well" 3) such an offer was made and accepted. Two of those spousal hires I've met are in my incoming faculty cohort (which is huge: 33 people, I think?), but one was a faculty member whose office is on the same floor as mine, who I got talking to in the break room.
And that's the thing: all three of the people I've heard identify themselves as spousal hires are men with female partners. On the one hand, that means that my school is doing a great job recruiting female faculty and making them good deals (an offer that comes with a job for your spouse? is an excellent offer). It's also congruent with the faculty culture here, which is very geared towards equality among faculty and support for junior/institutionally disadvantaged faculty. (There's pay equity between tenure-stream and non-tenure-stream faculty, for instance, and near-equivalent research/travel money available, and a higher-than-average-number of people jump from non-tenure to tenure-stream positions. We non-tenure-stream faculty were told to remind people that we're not tenure-line, and that we therefore are excused from certain service duties, because permanent faculty apparently tend to 'forget' and ask us to do things we're not required to do, because they see us as equal colleagues. Etc.)
On the other hand, I'm wondering if men are less anxious about identifying as spousal hires. For a woman to get an academic job (hugely competitive, seen as a sign that you have been victorious in a meritocratic race towards excellence) on the basis of her husband's/partner's work smells like affirmative action; it smells like failure. Is the identity penalty for men in identifying as a spousal hire less? (I'm also wondering, because I know several other academic couples here, some even where both spouses are in the same department; nobody has identified as "the spousal hire" in those pairings, and in at least one of them I'm fairly certain it was the female partner. Are they less likely to leap into the identity?)
So I'm wondering what other academics' experience is. Do people openly identify as spousal hires in your academic contexts? Have you noticed any difference between men's and women's willingness do to so? Or is this, like so many things, just something odd about my new institutional place?
(I should note, here, that people hired as 'spousal hires' are frequently awesome and excellent colleagues and teachers. One of my undergraduate advisors was the wife of a much more famous and noted scholar, and was one of the best scholars I've ever worked with. One of my graduate advisors left my institution to go to a full professor position at her husband's university, which enabled them to live together to raise their children. So, I'd like not to have this turn into a conversation about how spousal hires are evil and wrong; they're complicated, and many places can't do them in any real sense, but they provide some excellent scholars with jobs, and some dual-academic families with solidity, which I can't knock.)
But I've noticed a quirk here, and I wonder what it means. Here at my new school, I've seen three different people openly disclose that they were 'spousal hires.' For those not in academia, that means that 1) their spouse/partner was hired for a permanent job here 2) said spouse/partner said "I will take the job if you give my spouse/partner a faculty position as well" 3) such an offer was made and accepted. Two of those spousal hires I've met are in my incoming faculty cohort (which is huge: 33 people, I think?), but one was a faculty member whose office is on the same floor as mine, who I got talking to in the break room.
And that's the thing: all three of the people I've heard identify themselves as spousal hires are men with female partners. On the one hand, that means that my school is doing a great job recruiting female faculty and making them good deals (an offer that comes with a job for your spouse? is an excellent offer). It's also congruent with the faculty culture here, which is very geared towards equality among faculty and support for junior/institutionally disadvantaged faculty. (There's pay equity between tenure-stream and non-tenure-stream faculty, for instance, and near-equivalent research/travel money available, and a higher-than-average-number of people jump from non-tenure to tenure-stream positions. We non-tenure-stream faculty were told to remind people that we're not tenure-line, and that we therefore are excused from certain service duties, because permanent faculty apparently tend to 'forget' and ask us to do things we're not required to do, because they see us as equal colleagues. Etc.)
On the other hand, I'm wondering if men are less anxious about identifying as spousal hires. For a woman to get an academic job (hugely competitive, seen as a sign that you have been victorious in a meritocratic race towards excellence) on the basis of her husband's/partner's work smells like affirmative action; it smells like failure. Is the identity penalty for men in identifying as a spousal hire less? (I'm also wondering, because I know several other academic couples here, some even where both spouses are in the same department; nobody has identified as "the spousal hire" in those pairings, and in at least one of them I'm fairly certain it was the female partner. Are they less likely to leap into the identity?)
So I'm wondering what other academics' experience is. Do people openly identify as spousal hires in your academic contexts? Have you noticed any difference between men's and women's willingness do to so? Or is this, like so many things, just something odd about my new institutional place?
(I should note, here, that people hired as 'spousal hires' are frequently awesome and excellent colleagues and teachers. One of my undergraduate advisors was the wife of a much more famous and noted scholar, and was one of the best scholars I've ever worked with. One of my graduate advisors left my institution to go to a full professor position at her husband's university, which enabled them to live together to raise their children. So, I'd like not to have this turn into a conversation about how spousal hires are evil and wrong; they're complicated, and many places can't do them in any real sense, but they provide some excellent scholars with jobs, and some dual-academic families with solidity, which I can't knock.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-03 08:37 pm (UTC)-J
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 01:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-03 09:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 01:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 12:03 am (UTC)My impression is yes.
My advisor's husband wasn't a spousal hire, since she got hired before she finished her PhD and didn't have the negotiating leverage, so he basically managed to get grants to keep himself on as a postdoc, but everyone in her lab knew that if she started looking for a tenure-track job elsewhere, it would be contingent on a spousal hire for him. And he is a fine, fine researcher in his own right--his career just didn't take off in the same direction as hers.
I'm not sure it's the kind of thing men would mention at dinner parties, but there doesn't seem to be nearly as much academic stigma attached to being a male spousal hire--almost a kind of "my wife is SO AWESOME they made sure we both got jobs" pride, in a way? IDK. It would not surprise me at all if men are unlikely to view being a spousal hire as any reflection on their relative value as a researcher/teacher but rather a pragmatic thing that's good for their family, but if women might see it as a "oh, I'm not as good as my husband" thing that affects self-valuation.
I wonder if anyone's studied this? It would be reeeeeally interesting to get at self-perceptions of spousal hires, perceptions of the 'star' spouse, and perceptions of colleagues outside the couples.
But this is all impressions from a bit outside, and I may be wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 02:05 am (UTC)One of the spousal hires in my cohort is like your advisor's husband--he worked in industry, lost his job in an economic downturn, and keeps getting hired to teach labs in places where she's working. So I can see that feeling different than the other way.
I do wonder if there's research! Instead, I will just rely on anecdata from the intarwebs.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 02:18 am (UTC)There should be research! It sounds like fodder for a Chronicles of Higher Ed article, at any rate. Hmmmmmm.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 09:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 07:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 02:56 pm (UTC)I mean, this is not quite affirmative action; to the contrary...
I come at it from a position of observing white people bring their white spouses on board, but never in other cases. There's kind of a problem there.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 07:11 am (UTC)