Gender, Parenthood, and Academic Performance: Work-life and Work-work Balance in Russian Academia

Abstract

This article explores the gender aspects of careers in Russian academia regarding work-life and work-work balance. We drew on data from a survey of 2,076 academic economists conducted in January 2021. Under the concept of work-work balance (Griffin, 2022), we discuss the gender imbalances that arise within the profession. We relate work-life balance (Lester, 2015) primarily to parenthood. We combined survey data with bibliometric data from the national citation base to see how different “work-life” and “work-work” factors are associated with publication productivity. The results did not show a statistically significant correlation between having children and the number of publications for men and women at this research stage. We also discuss possible reasons for this result.