Getting back on the job market after being on maternity leave is hard enough. But when you are looking for a job with flexible hours that will let you drop and/or pick-up your child from child care, or, participate in your child’s classroom occasionally, the availability of these jobs tend to disappear. When I originally left for maternity leave from my job as a program coordinator at an all women’s college, it was assumed that I would return to work on a reduced hour basis to accommodate childcare. Many departments at the college were accustomed to this practice as long the work was completed and meetings were scheduled during a time that worked for all. It was considered a standard practice. I left for maternity leave with that understanding. My immediate boss, however, had different plans.
I returned to the college at the end of my maternity leave for a formal meeting to discuss my new schedule and begin notifying people of my return to aid in my catching up with the newest campus policies and gossip. What happened next still shocks my former colleagues when we talk about. My immediate boss thought the best compromise was to have a crib in my office so the baby can stay with me while I did my work starting from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. and evenings to facilitate workshops. I was shocked to hear these words. It is completely unprofessional to have a crib in your office or expect to have a baby in a college environment for a full day. I mentioned the inappropriateness of this idea and instead proposed a scheduled where I work from home one day a week and leave the office at 4 p.m. four days out of the week. Or, work three full days and two half days with the understanding I would still facilitate the evening workshops on the full days I worked. I also mentioned other program coordinators have done this in their own departments at the college without hindering the needs of students. Many coworkers expected me to have a schedule like this for a semester or two until my child was older and they were fine with it. My boss did not like my idea.
He made it clear that he did not want to spend more than a few hours a week at our department doing administrative work. It was my job description to be there full-time and holding evening workshops. He felt by having a crib that he would pay for was generous on his part. I quickly realized that my boss felt inconvenienced by my becoming pregnant and did not want to compromise. I respectfully told him that I would not be returning to my job if this was his expectation. He dismissed me and asked me to go to HR. I later learned from a friend in HR that he was reprimanded for his comments, but that was it. There was nothing in my contract that said the college had to put me on reduced hour work shift since I had no current medical condition or immediate emergency that required my boss to agree to a reduced hour schedule. Many former colleagues all said they were shocked that he didn’t follow the standard practice at the school and was willing to let me go since many felt I was a valuable part of the team.
Luckily, my husband worked as a software engineer for a big company in San Francisco to help pay our bills and I had contacts whom helped me find a part-time teaching gig to help me keep a foot in the working world. We had to change our budget and rely on my in-laws for babysitting help, but we made it work. Unfortunately, there are many women and families who are not as fortunate as us, especially now that COVID-19 has become a part of life.
Prior to COVID-19, work culture in academia was not as flexible or easy as it liked to portray itself to be. There were no long-term contracts or benefits for teaching adjuncts or part-time staff. Everything is still a semester-by-semester basis and classes can be canceled up to the first day of school leaving instructors in a lurch with no income. The number of classes available to teach are based on the enrollment number of students at the start of each semester. To this day, adjuncts and part-time staff are often not warned ahead of time to prepare for the possibility of suddenly not having a job. However, as the economy began to take a hit, I could see the writing on the wall.
Slowly, adjunct and part-time positions began to disappear. Some contracted instructors and part-time employees for summer and fall semesters were sent emails informing them there were no available classes or students to teach like they originally thought there would be. I was starting a transition from teaching in higher ed to start teaching high school students in a tutoring capacity. Once shelter-in-place began, those with jobs in education began a complicated dance where some were thrust into online teaching with little to no training. Some were told there was employment for them as the school thought there would be. As a result, offers of employment had to be rescended. Others lost their jobs because students could not be held in the physical location of the school. I was not able to begin working with high school students. The school that hired me to tutor high school students has kept me on as a paper hire and wait listed to teach as soon as their numbers rise again. Priority had to be given to full-time employees to ensure their contracts were met. This was a common message heard by many.
The original objective of this blog was to post research and stories about women, especially women of color, who work are part-time in academia or trying to return to full-time work in education after taking maternity leave living in California’s Bay Area and explore what the future lies for us. However, in the course of me updating my blog and observing what is happening around us, I think it is important to chronicle, explore, and encourage discussion because the results of COVID-19 and Shelter-in-Place policies are changing the landscape. I hope my blog can help further discussion and maybe add a bit of information to fill the cracks that are not always at first noticed but can lead the road to a more fruitful perspective down the road.
flyingbluepig 