An investigation into the invisible work of women academics: The case of Munzur University

Invisible work is the work that women do in the family for their family and relatives. Although this work has a utility value, it has no financial equivalent. This work that she does for her family and relatives contains love and compassion. This work is naturalised because it is thought to come from the instinctive nature of women. This has made the work 'invisible'. The profession of academics is performed by people who teach in universities and similar institutions of higher learning, conduct research and contribute to their field with their original research. Academics are seen by society as intellectual, elite, cultured, knowledge-producing, specialised, with relatively high personal income and self-discipline. These people have to work intensively in an exhausting, stressful and competitive environment. The academic profession is not only a profession that is carried out during working hours, but also a profession that requires working outside working hours, at weekends and even during annual holidays, in order to improve and update one's knowledge. While women academics experience these difficulties in business life, they also have to fulfil the domestic responsibilities expected of them by society and their families. Domestic work is still seen by society as a woman's responsibility, ignoring women's qualifications. Working hours have no clear limits. Work and private life are intertwined. One of the reasons why women academics are disadvantaged in their careers is that domestic production is seen by society as the natural duty of women. At a time when Society 5.0 is being discussed, the 'invisible work' of women at home should be made 'visible' and women should be valued in this sense. In this respect, it is very important to reveal the situation of women's invisible domestic work among educated, well-equipped and high-income women, who are the most open to social change. The main purpose of this research is to profile women academics, to identify the problems they face in relation to invisible labour in their professional lives, to examine the impact of gender assumptions on their professions, and to determine the variety, dimensions and weight of their domestic activities at home. This study will help to determine how many hours, if any, female academics spend on average on domestic work, how much time they devote to caring for their children, and the extent of the invisibility of the work they do at home. To this end, a questionnaire was administered to 119 people selected by convenience sampling from among 198 female academics working at Munzur University as of January 2024. In the analysis of the data; frequency and percentage distributions of the descriptive characteristics of the participants, the chi-square test was used to determine whether there was a relationship between the demographic characteristics of female academics and their academic duties and activities outside of work, and between their marital status and activities outside of work. The results of the research show that the domestic work of women academics is not 'visible' enough. Although all the academics who took part in the research felt that women were disadvantaged in academic working life, it was concluded that the more senior the participants, the less likely they were to see academic working life as disadvantageous for women. A statistically significant difference was found between the academic titles of the participants and their opinions on who did the cleaning work, and it was observed that academics with the titles of Associate Professor and Professor generally had cleaning services provided by a foreigner for a fee. However, as a result of the research, it was found that the majority of academics with the titles of Lecturer, Doctoral Lecturer and Associate Professor had their childcare work done by a foreigner for a fee. It was concluded that only academics with the title of Professor allocate time for academic work at home, while academics with the titles of Research Assistant, Lecturer, Doctoral Lecturer and Associate Professor cannot allocate time for academic work at home. Finally, suggestions were made on how to make the domestic production of women academics visible.