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Академическая женская карьера: балансы и дисбалансы жизни и труда
The article aims to analyze the potential of the concept of the balance of life and labor and the possibility of its application to the study of academic and university career. The roots of this concept are related to gender research and gender ideology, the needs of women in a number of specific institutional actions to remove barriers in the labor market, and to symbolic and economic recognition of household work and care. The formula indicates the transfer of the center of gravity in the construction of the life path to an individual choice in the variant of synchrony or diachrony of events, the shift of external control over the life project to self-determination. The constituent elements of this concept are: a wide range of family forms, increased subjectivization, the search for compatibility of various significant areas of life under flexible working conditions, a way to temporarily coordinate the requests of various areas of life that need streamlining through the budget of time; request for quality of life in its subjective and objective dimension. At the same time, the concept of balance suggests the opposite: instability and imbalances, which are considered in the article with examples of established patterns of academic career in Europe and Russia. The working conditions under which the scientific middle class works are still unstable, if not precarious, and at the same time not very friendly to the family. The balance of life and work confronts with the factors of timing and contractual insecurity. The risk in anticipation of career growth to lose the opportunity to form a partnership and family, many women in universities regard as significantly high, reacting with interruptions in their careers from halfway through and not breaking through the glass ceiling of professors, or moving away / giving up fertile plans. The term “balance” itself refers to the normative idea of its necessity, discursively voicing modes of harmonization in the sphere of life and labor. In this sense, the balance of life and work potentially covers both the level of institutional support and the level of individual strategies. Conservation of life and labor imbalances in the academic sphere is related to the fact that structural obstacles and difficulties in achieving a balance of life and labor caused by the institutional context are reviewed by researchers and teachers in problem situations that need to be addressed individually. This individual strategy to overcome structural problem situations, although unintentionally, largely stabilizes the status quo