In a letter to Mama PhD, a young graduate student asks about how to identify family-friendly institutions at which to work post-PhD. The career advice follows:
The first is to keep tabs on universities that are working to make life manageable for parents. You seem to have already begun that process; I would urge you to keep up with this blog and Inside Higher Ed generally, and to sign up for newsfeeds and/or Google alerts on topics related to motherhood and academia. Talk to other women at conferences and on chat rooms about their personal experiences, and attend as many workshops and seminars on motherhood, the work-life balance, and the glass ceiling as you can. Over time, you will develop an information and support network that will eventually help inform the application process.
The second is to become active, now, in organizations and movements that advocate for parents of young children, both in your current institution and nationally. You have much more time and energy now than you will once you have a baby, and more than your peers and professors with young children. Find out how to help the women who are mothers now to advance in their careers. By doing this, you can help create improvements that will benefit you later, learn the politics and subtleties of advocacy, and create good karma for yourself.
It’s important to note that the process of finding a family-friendly employer might actually take years. Sadly. But that an informed job search will arise out of this research.
Bob Sutton offers some analysis of a study on handshakes and interviewing:
Despite all these other factors, the researchers found a significant (if modest) independent effect of handshake quality on whether the interviewer would be inclined to hire the student. To me, the most interesting finding pertains to women. The researchers found that, on average, women had weaker handshakes than men. Probably because their are different expectations for men and women, women’s weaker handshakes did not lead to weaker hiring recommendations (In fact, overall, the interviewers were more positively disposed to hire women than men). BUT those women who had firmer and stronger handshakes, and used more complete grips, benefited more than men who had firm handshakes and complete grips — the researchers suggest that this effect may have been seen because men are expected to have firm shakes, and because it is more unusual among women, those women with firm handshakes were more memorable. In other words, having a weaker handshake didn’t seem to hurt women, but having a stronger handshake seemed to help them.
So women, remember that a firm handshake seems to improve your chances. Of course, the study didn’t go into my problem (cold hands), but it’s worth remembering to shake firmly if you’re female.
You’ll find more of Bob’s analysis here.