Academic Mothers Building Online Communities - It Takes a Village

This volume focuses on the diverse ways in which mothers working within academia seek to find others with similar experiences to build virtual communities. Although the faculty and student populations of universities have diversified, mothers in academia are disproportionately overrepresented in precarious faculty and staff positions and continue to experience myriad institutional and interpersonal barriers, such as gender wage gaps that are exacerbated by stop-the-clock tenure policies, inadequate parental leave policies, expensive or scarce local childcare options, and social biases. The book gives space to the many ways women create and challenge their own versions of motherhood through a digital 'village,' examining how academic mothers use virtual communities to seek and enact different kinds of support.

Sarah Trocchio is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Rider University, USA. Trocchio's research focuses on the mechanisms through which structural inequity is reflected, reinforced, or mitigated in varied workplace contexts. She is a nationally board certified coach in the USA, and owns her own career coaching and strategy practice called the Square Peg Club (SPC). 

Lisa K. Hanasono is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication and an affiliated faculty of the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Bowling Green State University, USA. She researches how people communicate social biases, shatter stigmas, and respond to discrimination.

Jessica Jorgenson Borchert is Associate Professor of English, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and Director of Professional Writing at Pittsburg State University, USA. She has previously published on breastfeeding rhetoric and postpartum dress practices in academia.

Rachael Dwyer is Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy in the School of Education and Tertiary Access, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Her scholarly work is underpinned by a social change agenda, engaging in arts-based research that allows for collaborative, applied work drawing on rich and longitudinal relationships with participants, students and the broader community.

 

Jeanette Yih Harvie is a Research Associate with the D'Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University, USA.  She has published extensively on how public policy and political institutions impact the citizenship development and political behavior of military veterans and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.