2014 PSA Presidential Address (Un)Changing Institutions: Work, Family, and Gender in the New Economy

Change is never linear, all-encompassing, or necessarily forward moving. In this essay, I explore the pace, prospects, and pathways for change in work, family, and gender at the societal and organizational levels. After a lengthy period of sustained progress, movement toward greater gender equality has slowed. This slowing has been accompanied by new cultural narratives about gender and gender inequality. These narratives have also penetrated organizations, which have their own change dynamics. Gender issues in the academy have received renewed attention in recent years as part of the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE initiative. Drawing from my own and others' research, I explore how academic leaders' narratives about work, family, and gender can slow or undermine change efforts. By deflecting responsibility for change to individual faculty, leaders' willingness, capacity, and resolve to act are weakened. Gender narratives are a central ingredient in the broader system of societal and organizational practices that reproduce inequality.