A career in academia means choosing to be flexible. I have already written about the drawbacks and benefits of short-term research contracts and moving around a lot in terms of having a social life and maintaining friendships, but when it comes to maintaining your relationship, things can become a lot more complicated. Especially when both partners have a career, and are driven and ambitious about it.
Of course, it is fairly common for couples to move abroad for one partner’s career, if that partner has a high-earning job in business or industry. In general, it will be the husband that has the career, and the wife that follows, whether or not with children. If you think this is not the case anymore, you’d be surprised how many people responded with ‘normally, it’s the other way around’ when my partner and I announced that we were moving to England for my job (for the record: I am a woman).
However, maybe things are different in academia, and maybe the choice between the man’s or the woman’s career is more balanced. You might expect this to be true, because I like to believe that academics are rational, thoughtful, and generally quite liberal when it comes to equality issues. On the other side, there are fewer women in professorial positions than men, and this is largely because when women have children, they choose to work fewer hours whereas men generally don’t (note that I am not in any way judging this decision, but the facts are the facts – if you want to read more about this, have a look at the most recent special issue in Nature). At a younger age, men are more likely to be more advanced in their career because in couples, generally the man tends to be older than the woman. Because it makes sense to give priority to the most advanced, or well-earning, career, it is therefore likely that partners that both have a job in academia move for the man’s career. Continue reading →