"Publish or procreate" is not a well-known adage yet it is familiar to many an academic. Despite the problem's prevalence, many 2015 Barometer respondents requested anonymity for fear of upsetting bosses, compromising promotions or seeming ungrateful. For lab researchers, even moving to a new city can mean inspiring the wrath of your boss or stealing a promotion from a new colleague. The dearth of positions does not help.
"Research is time-consuming. People do it because they love it," explains Isabelle Longin, Associate Director of Human Resources at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). According to the Barometer, half of French academics feel that their job makes work-life balance impossible. 63% of PhD students and 62% of teaching faculty agree. Not everyone wants to spend "another Sunday at the lab," like Uri Alon says in his song.
One IT researcher said, "We often work in the evening during U.S. business hours. You have to publish several times a year, produce data, write articles and attend international conferences." Add to that classroom hours for teaching faculty, funding applications and administrative tasks and you have an equation that made one person say, "Having kids means foregoing 'scientific excellence.' Otherwise you'd have to give up evenings, weekends and vacation."
A taboo topic
What if life gets in the way? One respondent said, "When my wife got cancer, I had to cut ties with my research." Women are particularly impacted. One reported, "I started working part-time after my maternity leave. My colleagues made it clear that if I wasn't 100% invested in my work, then I wasn't cut out for the job and I'd never achieve greatness."
The fact that the topic is taboo makes balance even more illusive. Most respondents said they couldn't discuss it with their bosses. For François Sarfati, Sociologist and Scientific Advisor at EducPros, "The 2015 Barometer shows that work-life balance is especially important because universities often pretend it's not an issue."
