The Corporate University

When looking back in history at women’s place in society, the vast majority of her work was done in three main areas; the kitchen, household chores, as well as being the caretaker for children. Though, times have changed and women have been given much more opportunities for growth in areas such as education and flexibility within the home life, why it is that woman are still getting the short end of the stick in regards to fields of work in areas of academia.

Jane Juffer

Author and Professor Jane Juffer of Cornell University wrote a chapter called “The Corporate University” in her book Single Mothers that goes into depth about the hardships for single mothers specifically as well as women in general to have a balanced home-life while also having a competitive and successful work-life. She begins the chapter by differentiating the corporate work life to the University lifestyle and says “No longer, it would seem, does the University stand in opposition to the market; its just another place where, as Henry Girout puts it, “market values replace social values, and people appear more and more willing to retreat into the safe, privatized enclaves of family, religion, and consumption”. She then goes on to talk about how 67 of the top 100 corporations in the United States offered some form of “child care” for single mothers in there on-site facilities enabling women to work while also knowing that there children were safe; however, on the contrary, only few University’s offered child care for any of there faculty, students, and staff, and if they did offer it, the chance of it fitting there needs would be very unlikely.

Later in the chapter she goes on to talk about how single mothers are not able to engage in many social or public gatherings because that requires there time and for a single mother, time is something that does not come often. Single mothers who are in the field of academia have to try and balance work, building up there tenure, children/family, as well as a social life outside of family and work. There have been many scholars who have said things such as “academics with children should stop complaining about a personal decision and take responsibility for there personal affairs”. Though, I agree that every individual has the opportunity to make decisions upon there personal affairs, I disagree with the idea that women complain about this issue. In reality, women are the only gender than can produce an offspring therefore in my opinion they deserve and should be given the opportunity to have children without suffering in there area of focus in the academic realm.



Single Mother Book



Professor Cary Nelson, who has written many books and a great deal of material in regards to academic labor issues was quoted saying that it has “an odd echo of republican family values”. I agree with this quote because in reality the University is pretty much saying that women who have children are making a choice to sacrifice there careers, that having children will make it so that a women can not reach tenure, as well as the idea that there should be a man there that shares the load. This to me sounds very republican and is not fair to the single mothers who are in fact seeking profession in academia.

Jane Juffer shows this idea numerous times in the chapter by presenting ideas such as “domestic issues reside only in the home, which is cut off from work and assumes no public value”. What is mean by this is that single mothers having children has the consequence of being in a work climate in which to seek help a parent renders one vulnerable to charges of failure to recognize the middle-class privileges or of not making the grade as a serious scholar. She then shows example of this by saying “the colleague who brings a child to a meeting or a dinner runs the risk of appearing needy, unable to keep her private affairs sufficiently private” or the “scholar who turns town separate engagements or fellowships because extended child care is too hard to find or because moving your child for a year would be too unsettling for the family may not be able to meet the professional criteria for tenure”; the professor who does not pursue competitive job offers because she cant imagine moving her child will not get the raise that her colleagues who play the game of offer and counter-offer will receive.

Though the discrimination as well as glass ceiling effect presented by Juffer is something that is startling to see, the paradox and ironic twist that she later presents is even more startling. “Despite the fact that much of academic scholarship in the humanities, especially in feminism and gay studies, critiques the nuclear family norm and reveals it’s nationalist, racist, homophobic, and sexist effects, academic work practices rely on the nuclear family as the most visible form of both raising children and achieving tenure and promotion”.  Juffer in the quote presents the irony of the academic system and how in fact scholars bash down the idea of sexist and discriminatory actions and then turn around and embody the exact way of living that they just bashed down.

Not only is this issue not fair for single women due to the implications that having children and being single is somewhat of a hindrance, the even more astonishing factor of this issue is that fact that women are being somewhat punished for doing something that only women have the power to do; produce a child. Although the University has come around over time, the time consuming, absent from family, work-filled lifestyle that a professor has to deal with is something that will always be a disadvantage for a women in the academic area of profession.