Recently, I posted a fair about work-life balance.
My basic premise has been to be mindful of your context, assess your resources, & then set your priorities.
Balance is hard to find - bc in a world where administrators demand more service, journals demand more relevance/rigor, & students demand attention - it is easy to forget that work is just one part of life.
Balance is harder to find for some than others - women & men face different social expectations, caregivers & non-caregivers face different demands on their time, & more.
Despite these differences, I receive comments from scholars in the global north & global south, & from within countries even, that they are struggling to find work-life balance.
So why? What is the problem? & do issues differ across countries?
This question was essentially posed to me by a commenter.
So why?
We are working in a world of increased transparency, quantification, & comparison.
We are also working in a world with universities in many countries are being asked to "do more, with less".
Either due to constrained budgets (less money) or digitization (more digital resources), administrators are pressured to show that faculty perform at high levels.
So what is the problem?
While available resources change, faculty culture, time, & ability to deliver services are unchanged.
Further, how people value scholarship is unchanged - with many external actors not grasping the value of research for research's sake.
So we are stuck.
Sometimes, we are asked to do more bc admin can't replace retiring faculty.
Sometimes, we are asked to do more bc technology makes new ways of doing things possible.
The list could go on - feel free to offer more reasons in the comments.
So do we have different issues across countries?
Absolutely.
While dealing with similar work-life issues, faculty in diff locations work with different forces that make it hard to juggle competing demands.
We all need to acknowledge that the issues of balance in Country A may not map well to Country B.
What is important though, is not focusing on differences in why, what is important is understanding that we all feel similar pressure, similar levels of stress, & experience similar feelings of overload - which eventually lead to lower efficacy, lower job performance, & for some, exit from scholarly life.
So what to do?
Being mindful and setting priorities, only works, if we all chip in.
Senior people must speak up, advocate for what is reasonable in our given institutional contexts, & serve as role models for balance.
Communities need to support each other - across national boundaries - in making it clear we ar asking faculty for too much.
Most of all, we need to protect early career scholars - esp. women.
Who are often placed under the most pressure.
If we do, we can build a better academy.
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