In summer/fall 2025 chair woman Karen Kastenhofer made a survey within the Elise Richter Network on the compatibility of care duty and academic careers.
Central questions were:
- How are academic careers (not) compatible with family / care duties?
- What are the major shortcomings of the current situation? What drives these shortcomings?
- What are the major upsides? What allows for these?
- What could improve the current situation?
- What are meaningful measures you experienced at Austrian institutions or elsewhere?
The maybe not surprising result was that even today academics are struggling to consolidate care work and career requirements and that the individual institutional and local framework conditions are highly divers. Precarious working conditions, short-term contracts and high geographical mobility as well as institutional and socio-cultural stigmata are domineering negative factors. Care work other than child care remains a blind spot.
The findings of the survey are summarized here and were presented in a stakeholder meeting organized by the Bundesministerium für Frauen, Wissenschaft und Forschung on the Topic “Vereinbarkeit und Karrieren in der Wissenschaft und Forschung”.