Every year, American universities publish glowing reports stating their commitment to diversity, often showing statistics of female hires as proof of success. Yet, academic life remains overwhelmingly a man's world and the presence of women, specifically those with children, in the ranks of tenured faculty has not increased in a generation. This anthology explores the continued inequality of the sexes in higher education and suggests changes that could make universities more family-friendly workplaces. Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, the essays speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family.

The conversation / Jamie Warner --
In medias res / Sonya Huber --
Scholar, negated / Jessica Smartt Gullion --
Student/body / Sheila Squillante --
On being Phyllis's daughter : thoughts on academic intimacy / Laura Levitt --
Engineering motherhood / Jennifer Eyre White --
The wire mother / Susan O'Doherty --
Fitting in / Elrena Evans --
Motherhood after tenure : confessions of a late bloomer / Aeron Haynie --
First day of school / Amy Hudock --
Boards and a passion : on theatre, academia, and the art of failure / Anjalee Deshpande Nadkarni --
Living (!) a life I never planned / Rosemarie Emanuele --
Coming to terms at full term / Natalie Kertes Weaver --
One mamá's dispensable myths and indispensable machines / Angelica Duran --
That mommy thing / Alissa McElreath --
Failure to progress : what having a baby taught me about Aristotle, advanced degrees, developmental delays, and other natural disasters / Irena Auerbuch Smith --
Infinite calculations / Della Fenster --
I stand here teaching : Tillie Olsen and maternity in the classroom / Julia Lisella --
The facts, the stories / Leah Bradshaw --
I am not a head on a stick : on being a teacher and a doctor and a mommy / Elisabeth Rose Gruner --
Lip service / Jennifer Cognard-Black --
Body double / Leslie Leyland Fields --
The long and winding road / Jean Kazez --
The bags I carried / Caroline Grant --
Of the boys / Martha Ellis Crone --
Free to be --
mom and me : finding my complicated truth as an academic daughter / Megan Pincus Kajitani --
Nontraditional academics : at home with children and a PhD / Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell --
A great place to have a baby / Rebecca Steinitz --
Recovering academic / Jennifer Margulis --
The orange kangaroo / Nicole Cooley and Julia Spicher Kasdorf --
Ideal mama, ideal worker : negotiating guilt and shame in academe / Jean-Anne Sutherland --
In theory/in practice : on choosing children and the academy / Lisa Harper --
Motherhood is easy; graduate school is hard / Tedra Osell --
Momifesto : affirmations for the academic mother / Cynthia Kuhn ... [et al.] --
In dreams begin possibilities --
or, anybody have time for a change? / Judith Sanders