Educational and Employment Survey of University Faculty Wives: A Case Study

Abstract

There is growing interest in the availability of educational and employment opportunities for women in this country. Much concern is understandably focussed on the poor and underprivileged. At the other end of the spectrumn we have talented women with high educational and job aspirations. They too are getting a goodly share of attention, and not only because they are vocal. They are important as image-setters for other women, and their underutilization constitutes a significant waste. There is likely to be an unusually high concentration of well educated, career oriented women in communities dominated by large universities because of the great number of faculty and student wives. At the same time such communities often have few alternative opportunities to offer for either employment or continued training, thus creating special problems. Hence university towns may constitute a particularly unfavorable environment for the professional development of women who have to live there by virtue of their husband's connection with the university. A case study of faculty wives in one such community makes it possible to test these hypotheses by exploring several questions: 1. What is the level of educational attainment of such a group? 2. To what extent are these women able to fulfill their educational goals? 3. To what extent are such women able to find employment, and to what extent is their training utilized when they do work? These were the main questions to which a survey conducted in Urbana-Champaign in the Spring of 1971 addressed itself. The survey also provides information on other characteristics of this group such as age, number of children and attitude of husbands toward the employment of wives. The interaction between these factors and especially their relation to the subjects' employment status is also analyzed.