Experience, empathy, and emotions: What our academic systems need to support (not just) women professors

Abstract

The arguments in the focal article go like this: “ Women professors during pregnancy, postpartum, and caregiving phases face real struggles in their academic career and we have a moral obligation to help them succeed; otherwise, it could be very costly to our institutions. Department heads and other faculty members, take actions to support female caregivers. We will give you some sugges-tions. ” While I resonate with this message both on a personal and a professional level, I could not help but notice a fundamental assumption underlying this argument: that faculty members actively want to be good moral agents and want to help their colleagues and institutions. Supporting colleagues is not explicitly spelled out in faculty job descriptions, thus it would not be surprising if faculty members are indifferent to this ask, or even worse, push back when asked to do so. This is especially true if they do not sympathize with their colleagues ’ experience or if they are simply struggling with their own issues and needing help themselves. The authors essen-tially asked those that received their message to perform positive duties ( “ do good ” ) in addition to their negative duties ( “ do no harm ” ). Given how the former is much more controversial than the latter (Lichtenberg, 2010), I found myself questioning how likely it is that the authors ’ excellent recommendations would be turned into actions. To be honest, I was not optimistic. In this commentary, I present an experiential learning case to supplement the recommendations laid out by the authors and argue that academia needs more empathy and emotions to support (not just) women professors.