4.4.1. Omnipresence
A significant result is that interviewees speak about the importance of having the mul8ple pillars of academia/research, as it offers a balance between research, teaching and collabora8on. Most newly tenured males work more than 8 hours a day, oVen also evenings and some8mes also weekends. However, in contradic8on to this need expressed of mul8ple and varied tasks, one major topic that emerged not only for male, but also female newly tenured in ELI is the frustra8on of “omnipresence”in mul8ple tasks, which does not leave sufficient 8me for research development or for publica8on, which is necessary for career advancement and the demands of the ins8tu8on: being newly tenured means dedica8ng yourself to mul8plies tasks, although FNRS posi8ons s8ll do not imply as much investment for example in teaching or ins8tu8onal tasks. However, in prac8ce, even FNRS newly tenured researchers are engaged on a high level in ins8tu8onal service and in some cases also in teaching and supervision; in a way, FNRS permanent researchers have to meet with double demands: first from the FNRS commissions for advancement of their research careers, but also secondly to engage ins8tu8onally in the ins8tu8on they are based in, inorder to jusQfy of some sorts their FNRS appointment and insQtuQonal (UCL) affiliaQon.
Thedifferent pillars of academic/research newly tenured posiQon are not easy to build up and to maintainonce you are nominated, the nature of work changes dras8cally. Crea8ng a research project requires from the beginning to build a research team, construct the project, responding to calls, gevng and organising the finances. All these competences, for which interviewees did not feel formed during their PhDs. Today, interviewees es8mate, the administra8ve procedures represent 60% of their work, which they sincerely regret. There is a nostalgia of the 8me when research was a primary and simple concern.
As for the male newly tenured, the female interviewees also regret having tospend a lot of Qme to bid for funding, which are rarely granted (by FNRS). There is oVen a “financial frustra8on” voiced by both male and female newly tenured of having to get research project financing, which otherwise is not foreseen in FNRS or on university level sufficiently: collabora8on seems very important, also in terms of sharing funds within research centres and distribu8ng them according to needs. This “fits” with the professional bureaucra8c model (adapted from Mintzberg), proposed for UCL in D 5.2: there is a lot of freedom in terms of units and governance, but also less funding and more need to “fend for yourself, or fend for themselves within the centre”: hence centres and individual researchers and academics also a need to show that you merit or can bid, whereby criteria of “excellence” in terms of publica8ons come into play. We can
ask ourselves if the frustra8on expressed by newly tenured researchers/academics about lack of 8me for publica8on also perhaps partly due to this pressure to “show excellence”. Within this kind of schema of bureaucra8c model, the outcome of this is the increasingly the individuals have to cater for themselves in this complex bureaucra8c system, as much opera8ng in an informal and nego8a8ng way, in order to A) manage and administer to their work and B) in order to advance in their careers. An important aspect for both A) and B) for individuals is therefore to cope with addi8onal work apart from the high demands of research produc8on/publica8on/collabora8on, of teaching, and of also managing technically and administra8vely their own work. They need to know how things are done, but more importantly they need to know persons who are capable of helping them either in terms of career advancement, or of supplying logis8cs for your work. There is therefore a significance of the crea8on of networks and of groups of persons in your environment available to you, to which you can apply to. As discussed before, collabora8on and mentorship is therefore essen8al in order to have access to gatekeepers who can help you situate yourself in this complex loosely couple system of academia (Weick, 1976).
As their male peers, female interviewees considered research and academic work as quite flexible in terms of 8mes and allowing to work from home; but this flexibility is double edged as it is also considered“elasQc”, which means you work from home, but you are always working in some sense, and “have the impression of never stopping”. The working hours are es8mated at 45h despite a contract of 38h; but not considered as nega8ve, but “part of the type of profession of research”, for which a passion exists with the major part of the interviewees. However, working weekends and at home also mean that the lines between work and leisure are blurry.” The boundary between the two is nebulous and this leads to situa8ons where professional and private life interfere.” This kind of sense that researchers make of their spa8o-temporal work interference can be a proof of an illusio (Bourdieu, 1987) that adheres to constant and totally commimed engagement, but also a feature of intellectual or brain work that is “hard to switch off”, especially while related to non-immediate and non-tangible objec8ves in sight.
4.4.2. The Paradox of S:cky Floor
Another significant point we would make is that on the whole, female interviewees feel more fragile about overwork and juggling different kinds of tasks, and its infringement upon personal life. In fact, they describe more mulQple and varied tasks than their male peers, who have mul8plicity ratherwithin the research acQvity (seminars, conferences, publica8on collabora8ons, dissemina8on events). Arguably female researchers are being ac8ve in “academically” orientated tasks, such as teaching, and male researchers are inves8ng in research-based development, networking and publica8on: poten8ally, this could also contribute to a more focussed CV-body-building by male researchers during the postdoctoral period, with more publica8ons and interna8onal connec8ons to show for in what can be an ini8al highly compe88on-based selec8on round in research and academic recruitment for permanent posts (see Dubois-Shaik, Fusulier, 2015). Female researchers, who could be building valuable skills and competences for academic work by assuming the less valued teaching tasks, could therefore be losing out on chances of selec8on by not “boos8ng” their CVs with quan8fiable compe88on-based criteria,
although they paradoxically could be suited for the mul8ple-task and –pillar based academic mandates. Therefore, although we are looking at a s8cky floor phenomenon, which we iden8fied in the quan8ta8ve report for the leaky pipeline, whereby there are more female teaching assistants without permanent posi8ons. We would argue that there is a paradox about the nature of the “s8cky floor” itself that is the teaching task. Teaching has become undervalued and devalued in scien8fic/academic field, whereby compe88on-based recruitment criteria put all the emphasis on research development and produc8on (publica8ons, mobility, bidding for funds) and early researchers account for trying to meet with these criteria for career progression and obtaining permanent posts. However, arguably, as discussed in D 5.2, teaching is one of the pillars of academic posi8ons and mandates, which is one of the tenets of the university mission. Once again, we are looking at a shiV toward research as a means of career progression and the undervaluing of work as an objec8ve in itself. Namely also transmission of research and knowledge through teaching and supervision. Female interviewees from ELI, as well as IACCHOS females and males are engaging in teaching tasks, which however take second place, oVen regremably, as they don’t “count” for career progression. On the contrary, they end up becoming a “s8cky floor” for females, as interac8ons of teaching are not also advantageous for the career, as much as collabora8ons with senior and more powerful colleagues, supervisors and promotors.