Legislating for Equality? Working Hours and Progression in Science Careers

• Author: Louise Ackers
• Date: 01 March 2007
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2007.00362.x
• Published date: 01 March 2007

Legislating for Equality? Working Hours

and Progression in Science Careers

Louise Ackers*

Abstract: This article presents some recent research on the progression of women in

science careers in five EU Member States—the UK, Italy, Austria, Portugal, and Greece,

examining the growing gender pay gap in science careers. It focused on the recruitment

and participation of women, but also on their retention and progression. The interviews

with scientists highlighted the importance of various dimensions of ‘time-use’ to an under-

standing of the progression of women and men in science careers. This article focuses on

three dimensions of time: (1) time over the working day; (2) time over the working week;

and (3) time over the working year. It describes the typical working schedules of the

respondents, the functional use of that time and the particular challenges this presents for

scientists with caring responsibilities. The results confirm previous findings1underlining

the importance of working hours in science both to the attractiveness of science careers—

and the ability to recruit and retain men and women—and to career progression. Within

this context, the article considers the potential of recent European legislation designed to

regulate working time (Council Directive 93/104) to create a more level playing field and

improve the progression of women in science.

I Introduction

The pressing concern over skills shortages in science has been responded to not only

through measures to promote mobility but also through policies designed to improve

the progression and retention of women. The European Commission’s review of the

position of women in science concludes that ‘the under-representation of women

threatens the goals of science in achieving excellence, as well as being wasteful and

unjust’.2In the UK, the Greenfield Report concluded that ‘the gender imbalance in

* Louise Ackers is Director of the Centre for the Study of Law and Policy in Europe (CSLPE) and Professor

of European Law at the University of Leeds, UK. Her work is concerned with the social dimension of EU

law and especially the social and legal issues around mobility within the EU. Her research focuses on the

gender dynamics of these forms of movement and, more recently, on the specific issue of highly skilled,

scientific mobility. She is co-author with Pete Dwyer of Senior Citizenship? Retirement, Migration and

Welfare (Policy Press, 2002) and with Helen Stalford, A Community for Children? Children, Citizenship and

Internal Migration in the EU (Ashgate, 2004). The author would like to thank members of the MOBISC

research team for their contribution to the project and in particular to Dr Keleigh Groves and Dr Jenny

Tomlinson for comments on the final draft.

1H. L. Ackers, The Participation of Women Researchers in the TMR Marie Curie Fellowships (European

Communities, 2003).

2ETAN, Science Policies in the European Union: Promoting Excellence through Mainstreaming Gender

Inequality—A Report from the ETAN Expert Working Group on Women and Science. (European Com-

munities, 2000), p. viii.

European Law Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2, March 2007, pp. 169–185.

© 2007 The Author

Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

science, engineering and technology threatens to weaken the country’s competitive

economic position...wemust ensure that every women scientist or engineer has the

same career opportunities and rewards as her male counterparts’.3Against this back-

drop, the MOBISC study4sought to improve our understanding of the factors shaping

the recruitment and progression of women in science careers and to identify ways of

improving the situation. The findings underline the complex and multi-faceted nature

of the ‘problem’.5This article focuses on one dimension of this—working hours in

scientific research and the potential for legislative intervention to improve the progres-

sion of women within it.

Writing in the Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES) in April 2004, Nancy

Rothwell—a Medical Research Council Professor in Biological Sciences—talked of

how the higher education establishment was ‘taken by surprise’ by recent European

legislation on employment conditions. Academics, she continued, ‘often accept the law

unquestioningly...but when it has an impact on research we need to be better

informed and prepared’.6Although not specifically targeted at the promotion of gender

equality, the EU has taken steps to legislate in the area of working hours with the

objective of promoting the health and safety of workers and improving living and

working conditions. Recent years have seen the introduction of a raft of measures

designed to regulate working hours and conditions (namely the Directives on Working

Time, Part-Time Work and Fixed Term Contracts).7According to Barnard,8the ratio-

nale underlying these interventions can be found in a commitment to the ‘humanisation

of work’. Interestingly, the preamble to all three of these Directives repeats the follow-

ing statement, linking together a range of issues around working time:

The completion of the internal market must lead to an improvement in the living and working conditions

of workers in the European Community. This process must result from an approximation of these

conditions while the improvement is being maintained, as regards in particular the duration and

organisation of working time and forms of employment other than open-ended contracts, such as

fixed-term contracts, part-time working, temporary work and seasonal work.

The Working Time Directive specifically seeks to protect workers from the pressure to

work long and anti-social hours and lays down various standards in terms of rest

periods and annual leave. Article 6 provides that the average working time for each

seven-day period, including overtime, must not exceed 48 hours over a reference period

of four months, and contains special protective measures for those engaged in ‘night

3S. Greenfield, SET Fair: A Report on Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (DTI, 2002), p. 27.

4Mobility and Progression in Science Careers (MOBISC).

5For a summary see H. L. Ackers, Gender, Mobility and Career Progression in the European Union: Final

Report (European Commission, 2005), for the full analysis, see H. L. Ackers, ‘The Impact of Dual Career

or ‘Same Career Partnering’ on Retention and Progression in Science’, CSLPE Research Findings 1, 2005,

pp. 1–3. Available at: <http:www.law.leeds.ac.uk/cslpe>.

6N. Rothwell, ‘UK Scholars Must Look to Partnerships to Tackle European Legislation that Might Have

a Detrimental Effect on Science’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 April 2004, p. 15.

7Council Directive 93/104 (Working Time) as amended by Directive 2000/34; Council Directive 97/81

(part-time workers) and Council Directive 1999/70 (fixed-term work) respectively. For further discussion

of the issue of fixed-term contracts in the context of science careers see H. L. Ackers and L. Oliver, ‘From

Flex-Security to Flex-Equality? The Impact of the Fixed-Term Contract Provisions on Employment in

Science Research’, (2007) 37:1 International Studies of Management and Organisation and

L. Oliver and H. L. Ackers, ‘Fixed Term Positions in the Academic Career Trajectory’, CSLPE Working

Paper 2005-3 (University of Leeds, 2005).

8C. Barnard, EC Employment Law (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 407.

European Law Journal Volume 13

© 2007 The Author

170 Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.