This is the kind of shit I hate passionately and profoundly:
Eliminating grant deadlines is a feminist issue. Why? Because when Life Happens, as it often does outside of work, women are left picking up the pieces. And this affects whether women can meet those deadlines – or at least whether they can meet those deadlines while maintaining their sleep and health.
Feminism, for this idiot, is not doing something to share piece- picking more equally to ensure that both women and men don’t live stunted lives. No, her version of feminism is to make sure that women continue to do as much piece – picking as possible.
Of course, moaning uselessly about evil grant deadlines is easier than asking what she can do to stop being an eager little piece – picker.
I don’t write grants and have no opinion on grant deadlines. It’s this ridiculous mentality I object to. As my professor of gender studies used to say, “It falls to women to clean toilets so let’s make the work of cleaning toilets more valued.” When I asked which part of the female body turned toilet cleaning into women’s work, he got pouty.
Clarissa's Blog 
Why is it that the subtext of so many things written by feminists now seems to be: women cannot cope in the workplace?
If I didn’t know better I’d assume capital no longer especially needs women to work (since fewer and fewer jobs will be available anyway) and so a long campaign to get women out of the workforce has started….
That this is happening under the guise of feminism is …. astonishing.
nb. I do think the idea of a single yearly deadline for graning agencies is really stupid for lots of reasons but why make the reason that women can’t cope?
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It’s not like they are coping all that well at home either. If she can’t figure out a distribution of housework that will make her happy with her own husband, the person she’s supposed to be the closest to in the world, then that’s just strange. I don’t understand the point of complaining and citing statistics when you can simply resolve the issue with your partner in life.
The feminism of helplessness strikes again.
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Rolling deadlines are better for the granting agency, as this reduces the number of submitted proposals (and hence the number of proposals that need to be evaluated and for which external reviewers and panel members need to be found). This is simply because many people won’t finish a proposal unless there is a hard deadline. It has nothing to do with gender, but much more with internal ambition and motivation: if you have that, you will finish and submit a proposal regardless if there is an externally imposed DL or not.
FWIW, many European grant agencies have both rolling deadlines for open calls (you can write a proposal on any topic) and firm deadlines for responsive calls (you can only submit proposals on a specific topic).
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I agree with you completely. I find this type of rhetoric so exasperating. For one thing, I, like you, resent the idea that taking care of people or the household is somehow “women’s work.” Presumably men have children, parents, homes etc. etc. Why is this just “what women do?”
Additionally, I think that many times these children, elderly people, households, don’t need nearly the attention that some beleaguered women claim they do. Children need time away from their mothers; elderly people–even ones who have shaky health–often have active social lives; homes don’t need to be scrubbed from top to bottom every day. It’s generally only obsessive, procrastinating women who are trying to avoid actual work that pour unnecessary time into household duties.
And finally, this is a ridiculous request to ask of granting agencies. If a rolling deadline works better for the granting agency, fine. But generally I think deadlines are necessary for agencies and grantors to do their work effectively–work which is generally non profit I might add. I have never worked for a granting agency but I have headed up a couple of largish-scale projects which relied on deadlines. And the deadlines were absolutely necessary! I could never had gone through all the steps that I needed to do if I couldn’t put some hard deadlines on things.
And this type of rhetoric makes it easier to justify institutional misogyny. Why hire women if they are going to whine about deadlines? Or more problematically, why hire women if they are going to miss deadlines? I could go on and on about this. But suffice it to say, I agree with you most heartily.
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“And this type of rhetoric makes it easier to justify institutional misogyny. Why hire women if they are going to whine about deadlines? Or more problematically, why hire women if they are going to miss deadlines?”
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It’s not so much physical labor but being the “Grand Marshal of the House” which is the main problem. Women who outsource some of this labor still spend more time doing/supervising it. Also there’s this embedded assumption that women are going to arrange their lives so they can drop balls at will to take care of childcare/elder care/work that this woman isn’t challenging or saying people should challenge.
Just having a bunch of LadyDeadlines ™ won’t solve this problem. What’ll happen is people who don’t have these issues will apply first and get fresher eyes on their grants than those who apply later, except now it’s gendered.
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These assumptions only exist in the lives of people who actively choose them. There is nothing that prevents her from living differently.
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Well, I think the idea behind some of these “coddling of women” feminist stances is that, while we’d all prefer everyone be strong and equal, these half-steps will at least keep more women in the workforce. And keeping more women in the workforce now means that more girls will grow up expecting to be equally valued at work and home, and then these trends will grow to the point that such coddling is no longer necessary. I think this method of “supporting women now so it’s not necessary in the future” tends to be poorly expressed. Now do these sorts of extra support methods actually help women? I think that varies widely from policy-to-poicy and is hard to predict (like I think there’s some evidence that stopping the tenure clock for pregnancy actually harms women’s promotion chances).
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I think there’s some evidence that stopping the tenure clock for pregnancy actually harms women’s promotion chances
I have seen it at my university. In order to not discriminate against men, men and women can both get tenure clock extensions on account of childbirth and adoption. What happens in practice is that dudes with stay at home wives have no problem getting the extra year or two and just doing extra research and coming up for tenure with stronger dossiers. In contrast, women (who actually have to recover from pregnancy and birth) are afraid (and not without a good reason, because colleagues communicate this loud and clear) of being viewed as a weak link if they ask for the extension, so they don’t use it at all even though they might really benefit from it. (The term “weak link” was used by my former senior male colleague in communicating how he would view the tenure case of a woman who did get the tenure clock extension.)
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