A Temporal Gaze on Work-Life Balance in Academia: Time, Gender, and Transitional Episodes
- Naseeb K. Bhangal, Michigan State University
- Tasnim A. Ema, University of Dhaka
- Riyad A. Shahjahan, Michigan State University
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This webinar reports insights from published research which seeks to decenter the Global North knowledge production about ‘work–life balance’ (WLB) in academia by applying a temporal gaze to illuminate WLB possibilities in Bangladeshi academia where institutional WLB policies are absent. Drawing on Adam’s (2008) timescapes and Flaherty’s (2002) time work concepts, we focus on Bangladeshi women faculty’s experiences as an example of how a temporal gaze can help illuminate the interrelationships between time, gender, and life transitions underlying women faculty accounts of WLB in a Global South context. Drawing on the narratives of three Bangladeshi women faculty in different career stages and family statuses, we probe how women faculty manipulate, control, or customize their temporal experience (i.e. temporal agency) in response to local gendered norms and life transitional episodes (e.g. separation, academic mobility, illness, and/or retirement). We demonstrate how WLB is not a static outcome, but a work-in-progress, and that a temporal lens helps illuminate multiple time work strategies that emerge during life transitional episodes. We argue that a temporal lens troubles the outcome (quantitative, clock-oriented) and spatial orientation of WLB practices, as our participants constantly blurred work/home boundaries refracted across social positionality, gendered norms, and relationships. By examining the temporal dimensions underlying WLB, we contribute a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships between academic/personal life, various roles, and temporality in a South Asian context.
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Naseeb K. Bhangal is a doctoral student in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program at Michigan State University. Her research interests include issues of diversity, political solidarity, and transitions within faculty and student affairs careers and Women of Color coalitions in higher education.
Tasnim A. Ema is currently enrolled in the Master’s program of the Department of Anthropology at University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She completed her graduation from the same department. Her interests primarily include medical anthropology, the political economy of health and illness, political ecology, and globalization.
Riyad A. Shahjahan is an Associate Professor of Higher, Adult and Life Long Education (HALE) at Michigan State University. He is also a core faculty member of Muslim Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Asian Studies Center, and Center for Advanced Study of International Development. His areas of research interests are in globalization of higher education, decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy, temporality and embodiment in higher education, cultural studies, and de/anti/postcolonial theory.
