Chapter 11: Creating Work–Life Balance in Academia: Family, Community, and Self-Care

For women faculty of color, maintaining work–life balance means making everyday decisions through a mestiza consciousness that moves us in and out of opposing cultures to create new ways of being and knowing in academia (Anzaldúa, 2010). As first-generation Chicana/Latina scholars, we navigate multiple cultural terrains—the meritocratic, competitive, patriarchal, and Eurocentric culture of academia, which places research, teaching, and service demands and an institutional pressure to publish above all—and the worlds we inhabit outside of academia, namely our families and the various community spaces that provide us with spiritual and emotional nourishment. These worlds often conflict with the stress to obtain tenure and our commitment to remain fully human and whole. The boundaries between these worlds are porous as we “catch up” with our work in our homes, often to the point of exhaustion, or rigidly structure our workday with the intention of being fully present as mothers, daughters, spouses/partners, and scholar activists.