Abstract:
In the studies that investigate the factors that contribute to the under-representation of female academics at higher career levels it is becoming evident that geographic mobility plays a significant part. Mobility, in the form of international travel and institutional movement, has long been considered an aspect of academic life, but the increasing attention to global relevance in scholarly work and the rise of employment insecurity has heightened its centrality. Some claim that the ability to travel and to relocate (‘be readily mobile') is perhaps the contemporary academic's most valuable asset. This paper sets out to explore the lived experience of becoming a parent for female academics through the prism of im/mobility. How is im/mobility experienced and negotiated during early parenting, and with what effects on subjectivities and work practices? Utilising poststructuralist autoethnographic methods, the paper presents and analyses data created by the authors, one a Dane living and working in Australia and one an American living and working in Canada, over a period of 6 months where they communicated via social networking technologies such as video chat and a private blog. The blog served as a repository for stories, reflections, emotions and photos of their everyday lives on parental leave and as they return to the academic workplace. In this virtual, networked, and collaborative space the authors documented their individual experiences but also co-created a dynamic, dialogic exchange that provided an opportunity for personal and inter-personal reflexivity. The paper gives insight into the both pleasurable and gruelling experience of being ‘grounded', in more ways than one, and ties back to the literature on gender and academic career progression.