Access and Definition: Exploring how STEM Faculty, Department Heads, and University Policy Administrators Navigate the Implementation of a Parental Leave Policy

Abstract

Policies such as paid parental leave can be leveraged by universities to address ongoing challenges with women under-representation in STEM academic positions. We have undertaken a deep, comprehensive and systematic study of one such policy at one Midwestern institution, exploring the recently instituted parental leave policy that allows women and men faculty and staff to take a paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child. The study uses Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography as a method to examine how people’s everyday real world experiences are mediated by textual documents (here the parental leave policy). By locating disconnects between the policy and faculty's everyday experience with the policy we can offer recommendations on how to better align the policy with STEM faculty's day to day lives, thus increasing is effectiveness for addressing under-representation challenges. Building on past and ongoing research efforts that look this parental leave policy, we explore two new emerging themes: 1) how do faculty come to access and understand the parental leave policy and 2) who contributes to the actual affordances of leave a faculty member receives, and how are those affordances negotiated? To answer these questions we analyze on 8 interviews (with 9 interviewees total) from STEM faculty members, department chairs and policy administrators. We also draw on the concepts of organizational roles and networks within organizations to understand the dynamics of access and definition of the policy at the university. We find that, given the limitations of formal modes of accessing the policy, informal access networks can supplement access to the policy. We also find that there are a network of actors who contribute to the actual affordances of leave, including the leave taker, the department chair, the business office and the policy administrators. The terms of leave are negotiated between these different stakeholders who sometimes hold competing views on what form leave should take. From these results we recommend encouraging and promoting the development of informal information pathways to compliment formal information dissemination about the policy. Further we recommend that departments come up with localized solutions for guiding how negotiations about parental leave proceed. These recommendations are not limited to the university studied however. We recommend that other universities that have a parental leave policy or might consider one make that policy flexible like the university studied here. Allowing input from various stakeholders, particularly the leave taker themselves allows for better alignment between the policy and STEM faculty member’s everyday lives. If the policy is flexible, it will also be important to encourage and promote informal information channels as the flexibility of the policy will allow for many ways to apply the policy, which informal information networks can capture and be drawn upon by faculty members considering or preparing to take leave. P ge 25124.2