How men get away with dodging ‘academic housework’

This has not been my experience. A very limited questionnaire based study of social science departments in three Danish Universities with no indication of how many men and women responded and what roles they had is not sufficient to make a definitive statement that disparages men. It should be noted that the researchers were both women- was this potential of underlying bias addressed?

The bias not the competency was questioned. I have worked in a number of Institutions and disciplines and have never observed what this article describes. This is not coming from my individual experiences but from years of observation. Incidentally I am a female; your subtle accusation of sexism is unfounded.

The bias not the competency was questioned. I have worked in a number of Institutions and disciplines and have never observed what this article describes. This is not coming from my individual experiences but from years of observation. Incidentally I am a female; your subtle accusation of sexism is unfounded.

This article does raise a pertinent issue. If we use an intersectionality lens, you will find those women who are disproportionately affected by the service work without reward and are complaint. The issue is managing the workload allocation so that service work with reward applies to all. In our university, there is a lot of work going into this, and we wait to how fairly tasks will be spread out for the next academic year.

If the research findings are valid for the institutions studied, and are broadly applicable to others, the situation for female academics is much different from what I observed a few years ago in my former university. An affirmative action program (known as the magic carpet ride) for the promotion of often under-qualified women was in full swing. Where women did not have a strong research and publication record, they were placed on numerous committees where they could be seen, allocated departmental administrative roles such as 'associate head', and had their teaching load reduced so they could cope with the 'service work' that would fast-track them to senior positions. That is, service work might not be valued now as a criterion for promotion but it certainly used to be.