RECOMMENDATION 4: PROMOTE FAMILY-FRIENDLY POLICIES.

Discussion of the problem: Employers who fail to acknowledge the economic importance and social burden of work for family and community discriminate against women. Single or married women whose family members require care often experience demands and stresses which are typically much greater than those experienced by their male peers. Far fewer women than men can choose to have children without interrupting or retarding their career development by several years. Women are also often called on to provide care for elderly parents. Because of such differentials, opportunities for advancement which require full-time devotion to the job are open to most otherwise qualified men, but to few otherwise qualified women.

Society has chosen to reward those who postpone or interrupt a career to serve in the armed forces by making it easier for them to resume a career after their period of service. Veteran's education benefits and preferential hiring are a form of compensation for contributions to society. Work for family and community deserves similar consideration.

Our universities can choose to value as job-related assets the experience gained by working women with families. We can promote opportunities for women to participate and to advance in the workforce by enhancing childcare services, liberalizing family leave provisions, facilitating flexible work arrangements, and instituting provisions for slowing or temporarily stopping the tenure process. Such investments make our universities fit workplaces for people with families.

Vision for the Year 2000:

1. University childcare includes drop-in, evening, after-school, and school-vacation programs. Fees for services are charged on a sliding scale.

2. Student health insurance includes year-round benefits for dependents.

3. University supervisors make extraordinary efforts to accommodate employee requests for flextime, job sharing, reduced work schedules, work from home, or family leave. When such accommodation is impossible within the limitations of the employing unit, the central office of human resources stands ready to assist in meeting the employee's need to reconcile demands of work and family.

4. Tenure policies make available to all probationary faculty both family leave, during which the tenure clock stops, and reduction from full-time to part-time status, during which the clock slows proportionately. Faculty who exercise such options are not penalized by their peers for having extended the probationary period.

5. University employees are encouraged to take time during the day to attend their children's school functions or to volunteer in their children's schools.

6. The university has established an effective program of relocation assistance for domestic partners of new employees.

7. University benefits formerly restricted to legally married spouses of employees extend to all established domestic partners.

8. The university supports families and personal life with training for supervisors on work-family issues, periodic work-family surveys, workshops and support groups on work-family issues, and designated work- family staff.