Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 1978
Abstract
The Modern Language Association convention in December 1977 included a panel on the subject of "Women and Part-Time Work." Joanne Spencer Kantrowitz, moderator, explained that, in forming the panel at the request of the Commission on the Status of Women, her "one objective was to create a group where men and women could discuss, together (and dispassionately, if possible), an area where women are consistently "used."
"In recent years," Kantrowitz noted, "the part-time category has become a male professional problem, too, as some institutions have seized on it as a convenient cost-cutting device which uses the surplus of Ph.D.'s as cheaply as possible. However, as a permanent position in professional life, this job category has traditionally been the lot of married women who have continued for years to be department housewives teaching at the lowest levels of the academic hierarchy for pin money."