Biological, Social, and Organizational Components of Success for Women in Academic Science and Engineering Report of a Workshop (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Section 1--Summaries of Convocation Sessions
Section 1--Summaries of Convocation Sessions
Pages 7-96
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Section 1 Summaries of Convocation Sessions PANEL 1: Cognitive and Biological Contributions PANEL 2: Social Contributions PANEL 3: Organizational Structures PANEL 4: Implementing Policies Each session summary consists of an abstract of the panel and edited third-person transcripts of the speaker comments. The summaries present the views and opinions of the panelists and might not reflect the views of the committee or the National Academies.
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SECTION 1: SUMMARIES OF CONVOCATION SESSIONS 9 PANEL 1 COGNITIVE AND BIOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS Panel Summary Gender Differences and Similarities in Abilities Janet Hyde, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin at Madison Sexual Dimorphism in the Developing Brain Jay Giedd, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health Environment-Genetic Interactions in the Adult Brain: Effects of Stress on Learning Bruce McEwen, The Rockefeller University Biopsychosocial Contributions to Cognitive Performance Diane F Halpern, Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children, Claremont McKenna College Selections from the Question and Answer Session Moderated by committee member Ana Marie Cauce
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Meta-analyses of 100 studies of math ability involving 3 million persons, including nine state assessments, show that the highly touted and widely reported gender differences in mathematical ability are in fact small or insignificant. Diane Halpern, of Claremont McKenna College, observed that men and women are in fact both similar and different and "what you see depends on where you look." The differences or similarities found depend on which tests and measures are used.
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and discussed a particularly large study of gender differences in mathematics performance that pooled the results of 100 studies that tested more than 3 million people and included a wide variety of data sources, such as assessments from nine states. Averaged over all samples of the general population, the d was equal to minus 0.05, "a tiny gender difference." Another team of investigators obtained very similar results using somewhat different meta-analytic techniques.2 Might there be an increasing gender gap in performance with age?
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Concerning gender differences in verbal ability, meta-analysis of 165 studies representing the testing of 1.4 million persons showed superior performance by females but the difference is very small (d = 0.11) .3 The question of gender differences in spatial ability, a relevant skill in many fields of science and engineering, is complicated because there are many types of spatial ability and many tests to measure them.
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. Gender differences in beliefs and achievement: A crosscultural study.
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Large gender differences are found in a few cases, but the big picture is one of gender similarities. 10 DP Baker and DP Jones (1993)
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The white matter is myelin, the insulation material wrapped around the axon that speeds communication between the brain cells. Giedd and his colleagues performed longitudinal MRI scans of 2,000 subjects.
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Often, the litera ture will combine data from people across seven or eight decades, and report that average as the difference between male and female brains. -- Jay Giedd The most robust sex difference is total brain size.
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By adulthood, once you correct for the total brain-size differences, the sex differences are quite subtle. But if you look at the path the brains took to get there, the differences are far more robust.
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The sex hormones testosterone and estradiol have effects throughout adult life and widespread influences throughout the brain.15 Receptors for both sex hormones are found in most brain areas, meaning that hardly any area of the brain is not influenced by circulating sex hormones. There is also evidence of a direct effect of the X and Y chromosomes on certain aspects of brain development and differentiation.
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In the response to stress, there are sex differences in brain remodeling. Female rats do not show the increased dendritic branching seen in the hippocampus of male rats.
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. The disappearance of cognitive gender differences: What you see depends on where you look.
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Women have fewer leadership positions overall, not just in science, not just in academia, but in corporations. College students tell us gender differences are a thing of the past, but men in college spend several more hours a week playing video games than women, among many other differences.
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Some cognitive tasks show sex differences. Some of these differences are lost in aggregated data.
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International data also show sex differences. The PERLS reading study shows statistically significant effects on reading literacy at age 15, favoring girls.
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We did a two hour workshop and developed strategies that improved the performance of both men and women and got rid of all the gender differences in performance on these tests. My question is, before we start creating courses, do they really matter in terms of success, and their authenticity for success in practice?
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I can give you more kinds of experiments not involving that swimming task, where again, you can establish that there are not only sex differences, but also giving estrogen to ovariectomized female rats actually improves their choice of a place strategy over a response strategy, perhaps by enhancing the function of the hippocampus over the function of other brain areas.
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I think that we need to look a little bit more at social determinants of engineering and science careers than spatio-visualization skills.
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SECTION 1: SUMMARIES OF CONVOCATION SESSIONS 27 for women and minorities, as well as for males and whites. That's very exciting.
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28 COMPONENTS OF SUCCESS FOR WOMEN IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE & ENGINEERING PANEL 2 SOCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS Panel Summary Implicit and Explicit Gender Discrimination Mahzarin Rustum Banaji, Department of Psychology, Harvard University and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Contextual Influences on Performance Toni Schmader, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona Interactions Between Power and Gender Susan Fiske, Department of Psychology, Princeton University Social Influences on Science and Engineering Career Decisions Yu Xie, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan Selections from the Question and Answer Session Moderated by committee member Alice Agogino
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Context, such as framing a test as a measure of ability or reminding test-takers of gender, can trigger stereotype threat that lowers performance and self-confidence and can discourage women and minority-group members from seeking mathematics and science careers or leadership roles important to career success. Reducing stereotype threat can release cognitive resources needed for peak performance.
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The discrepancy between men and women in science has deep social, cultural, and economic roots. IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT GENDER DISCRIMINATION Mahzarin Rustum Banaji Department of Psychology, Harvard University and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Mahzarin Banaji focused her presentation on an invisible form of bias-implicit bias -- and her work using the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31(10)
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Stereotype threat applies as well to women performing on a difficult mathematics test. In one of Schmader's recent studies,26 men and women in one condition were told that their task would yield a diagnostic measure of mathematics ability that would be used to compare men's and women's scores; in this condition, there was a gender gap similar to that seen in SAT scores shown by Diane Halpern.
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. Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans.
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Psychological Science 16:175-179. these processes.27 In some experiments, simply having a woman answer a questionnaire about gender issues before taking a mathematics test leads to a significant reduction in performance.28 It is true that a lot of these experiments have been done with college-aged populations, but the effects have been replicated in younger age groups as early as elementary school.29 Replications are also seen in more natural settings such as classroom environments.30 These data tell us that context can shape performance on test scores.
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. The costs of accepting gender differences: The role of stereotype endorsement in women's experience in the math domain.
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Another way to inoculate students through education is by unveiling the effects that implicit biases and stereotype threat can have on a woman's performance and anxiety. When women are facing difficulty in a specific performance 33DM Marx and JS Roman (2002)
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Students were told that the test they were taking was a diagnostic measure of mathematics ability, and that their performance would be used to compare men's and women's scores -- the same conditions that led to performance decrements in the first group. However, they were also informed about stereotype threat and reminded that if they were feeling anxious while taking the test, it might be a result of external stereotypes and not a reflection of their ability to do well.
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Psychological Science 16:175-179. INTERACTIONS BETWEEN POWER AND GENDER Susan Fiske Department of Psychology, Princeton University Susan Fiske discussed the relationship between gender stereotyping and various manifestations of power in the context of women moving into science careers, particularly the effects of ambiguous and ambivalent biases.
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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28:66-76. 39M Heilman (2001)
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-- Susan Fiske Fiske and Peter Glick have developed a theory of ambivalent sexism, which is built upon the concepts of hostile and benevolent sexism. Male dominance leads to the possibility of hostile sexism, which is what people commonly associate with the term "sexism." Hostile sexism is targeted particularly at nontraditional women, that is, women who are perceived to challenge men and male dominance.
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Paternalistic and envious gender stereotypes: Testing predictions from the stereotype content model. Sex Roles 47(3-4)
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SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING CAREER DECISIONS Yu Xie Department of Sociology, University of Michigan Yu Xie based his presentation on a book he researched and wrote with Kimberlee Shauman, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.46 He highlighted major findings from the book.47 Earlier studies on sex differences in career trajectories examined only subsets of scientists and engineers, such as high school students, college students, graduate students, and practicing scientists. Xie and Shauman analyzed 17 large, nationally representative datasets that spanned the career.
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The representation of girls is lower than the representation of boys in the top 5% of achievement. However, gender differences in average mathematics achievement and in high level mathematics achievement do not explain gender differences in majoring or degree attainment in science.
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· Found that being married and having children put women at a disadvantage. · Found that sex differences in research productivity decline and can be attributed to differences in personal characteristics and structural features of employment.
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And you need to reinforce people's values so that they are fair and unbiased. These three kinds of things about the relationship and the accountability and the values do help to overcome some of the implicit biases.
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So, as was mentioned, white men can show lower performance on a math test if they are told that the purpose of the test is to compare how whites do relative to Asians. Stereotype threat is a contextual effect, it is just that for women and minorities the context is more often chronically present.
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But that conflicts with what other data I know that at the in the life sciences, women are more than 50% of the undergraduate students at many schools.
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48 COMPONENTS OF SUCCESS FOR WOMEN IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE & ENGINEERING PANEL 3 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES Panel Summary Moving Beyond the "Chilly Climate" to a New Model for Spurring Organizational Change Joan Williams, Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law Economics of Gendered Distribution of Resources in Academe Donna Ginther, Department of Economics, University of Kansas Bias Avoidance in the Academy: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Value of Policies Robert Drago, Departments of Labor and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University Gendered Organizations: Scientists and Engineers in Universities and Corporations Joanne Martin, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Selections from the Question and Answer Session Moderated by committee member Lotte Bailyn
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She argued for the need to create a new model for spurring institutional change that specifically names and identifies unexamined bias and considers the risk of family responsibilities discrimination lawsuits. Donna Ginther examined the economic aspects of female academic careers, noting that a salary gap exists between male and female senior science professors
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This gap may result from gender differences in hiring, in obtaining tenure, or both. In the social and life sciences, being female significantly and negatively influences women's chances of being in tenure-track jobs within 5 years of earning the PhD.
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MOVING BEYOND THE "CHILLY CLIMATE" TO A NEW MODEL FOR SPURRING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE48 Joan Williams Center for Work-Life Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law Joan Williams discussed a new model for spurring organizational change that moves beyond the concept of a "chilly climate" for women in academe to identify unexamined bias and consider a new trend in federal employment discrimination lawsuits. 48For more detail, figures, and references, see the paper by Joan Williams in Section 2.
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This model aims: first, to describe in readily understandable terms the patterns of stereotyping that create the chilly climate; second, to teach people to spot bias as it is happening; and third, to highlight the importance of a new trend in federal employment law of which institutions should be mindful. In addition to glass ceiling discrimination and sexual harassment, is a trend called the "maternal wall" or "family responsibilities discrimination" (FRD)
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-- Joan Williams WorkLife Law uses the law proactively to spur institutional change and organizational change by influencing intermediaries. In this case, human resource professionals are extremely important.
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" Thus, the maternal wall very often pits women against women. It is important to recognize that this phenomenon is actually a result of gender discrimination, not proof that discrimination against mothers "is not a gender problem." There is also family responsibilities discrimination against fathers.
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Maternal wall cases have been brought under a number of legal theories in federal employment law, including the following: · Disparate treatment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- for example, a female professor who was treated worse and subject to greater scrutiny by colleagues after she had a baby · Retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- for example, when a woman faces negative career consequences for protesting a denial of maternity leave or asking to stop the tenure clock while she is on maternity leave · Interference with rights under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) - for example, a female professor who was pressured to reduce the amount of time she took on maternity leave (In certain circumstances, the FMLA provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave and guaranteed reinstatement; one study showed that 40% of academic women surveyed returned to work from leaves earlier than they wanted to.58)
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ECONOMICS OF GENDERED DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES IN ACADEME Donna Ginther Department of Economics, University of Kansas Donna Ginther focused her comments on the economics of gender differences in employment outcomes in academia. She observes gender and race differences in employment outcomes.
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~Economists assume that equally productive workers will be paid the same. Thus, we should not observe gender differences provided that men and women are equally productive.
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Ginther examined gender differences in tenure-track jobs within 5 years of earning a PhD and measured the effect of being female on getting a tenure-track job. She found that single women are significantly more likely than single men -- by 11 to 21% -- to have tenure-track jobs.
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Women may choose to have children instead of pursuing an academic career because of the coincident timing of the tenure and biological clocks. The dual career problem may also play a role.
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Previous research has shown that if academic rank is factored in, the gender differences in salary go away, except for full professors. What is an 18% difference favoring men in science as a whole falls to just over 5% in science for assistant professors, even less for associate professors.
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In unproductive bias avoidance, you ignore your family commitments, which is both inefficient and inequitable. Unproductive bias avoidance has no general rationale and is a game that has unknown rules.
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BOX 1-4 Bias Avoidance Behaviorsa Productive Bias Avoidance Men Women Stayed single to achieve academic success. 10 % 17 % Limited the number of children -- that is had fewer children 13 % 30 % than desired -- to achieve academic success.
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You should get tenure earlier and move through more quickly. The real surprise is that unproductive bias avoidance behaviors -- which do not free up any time and may even be increasing the burden of trying to handle work and family- for men reduced the time to tenure by over a year and for women reduced the age at tenure by over a year.
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However, instead of negative correlations they found positive correlations between policies and bias avoidance for not taking parental leave, indicating that the more policies that existed, the less they were used. I got to thinking, well, which universities have gotten on the Working Mother Top-100 list?
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. New solutions to the same old glass ceiling.
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29:86-89.
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We know that the tenure clock and the fast-track schemes are harmful to women because they conflict with the biological clock, that is, the number of years that women have to have children before the danger of birth defects gets large. Young women are telling us that they do not want to be like the pioneer generation, the super women who have gotten very tired trying to balance work and family.
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. Homophily and differential returns: Sex differences in network structure and access in an advertising firm.
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If you had part-time child care slots through a co-op system, that might actually be far better for graduate students than an extremely expensive subsidy per child care slot, which is the classic model.
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Coherent parental leave policies are really hard to come by even in academia. Joan Williams mentioned Saranna Thornton's work where one-third of universities had illegal family leave policies.81 I think the first thing is to get universities to be law abiding institutions.
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The time from PhD measure is particularly of concern with more scientists doing postdocs. It is exacerbating the conflict between the biological and tenure clocks.
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72 COMPONENTS OF SUCCESS FOR WOMEN IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE & ENGINEERING PANEL 4 IMPLEMENTING POLICIES Panel Summary Recruitment Practices Angelica Stacy, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley Reaching into Minority Populations Joan Reede, Harvard Medical School Creating an Inclusive Work Environment Sue Rosser, Ivan Allen College, Georgia Institute of Technology Successful Practices in Industry Kellee Noonan, Technical Career Path, Hewlett Packard Selections from the Question and Answer Session Moderated by committee member Nan Keohane
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Their underrepresentation results from a variety of pipeline issues and barriers, despite the fact that interest in studying science is higher among African American and Asian girls than among white girls. Of African Americans who receive science degrees, 64% are women.
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The National Science Foundation's ADVANCE program is focused on institutional transformation to facilitate the advancement of women scientists into senior faculty and leadership positions in universities. The 19 universities that have received ADVANCE grants are developing an array of models for transformation.
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Women are hired as assistant professors in a proportion similar to their representation in the applicant pool. In the biological and health sciences, there are many more women in the PhD pool (Figure 1-11)
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6) Pool Pool Women PhD Professor Professor ( |
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6) Pool Pool Women Biological Berkeley PhD Professor Professor ( |
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Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden have found that married women who have children pay a 50% penalty in terms of entering faculty positions, as compared with single women or married men who have children.86 At Berkeley, of female assistant professors, 16% have one child and 75% have no children; 27% of male assistant professors have one child, and only 58% have no children (Figure 1-13)
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79 based Total ifferenced (n=59)
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Let me assure you that if you get out there and start to say, "This is what we want, this is the way we do things, and this is an entitlement," which is where a number of our institutions are moving, I think we're going to see things change. -- Angelica Stacy Narrow position specifications also affect the applicant pool and numbers of women hired.
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As described by Toni Schmader earlier, data show that African American, Hispanic and American Indian students fare less well on high school, college and professional school standardized tests. In an analysis of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, Hanson found that there was variability in attitudes toward science for women across racial and ethnic groups.88 For example, African American female students 88SL Hanson (2004)
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There is also an association between poverty and graduation: the vast majority of students who graduated from college by the age of 26 years come from high-income families. Of those students who enter college, the National Science Foundation reports that the percentage of Asian, African American, and Latino freshmen who intended to pursue a science or engineering major is higher than that of white freshmen.
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Much of the increase among minorities was fueled by an increase in science and engineering degrees awarded to women. For example, in 2001, 64% or roughly 21,000 of science and engineering bachelor's degrees earned by African Americans, and 55% or 15,000 of the science and engineering bachelor's degrees earned by Hispanics were awarded to women.
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That variability was also seen in the percentage of women among the various racial and ethnic applicant pools. Among medical school faculty, three striking patterns are noted: men and women of color are underrepresented; African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and Alaskan Native women represent a very small percentage of all
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medical school faculty; and the proportion of women faculty in all racial and ethnic categories declines in advancing up the academic ladder from instructor to full professor (Figure 1-16)
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. Of the students in this program 60% are women, 47% are African American, and 19% are Hispanic.
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Fou universities in Science weighted Native American Professor 50 Professor Indian/Alaskan Faculty Applicable National than occupations Professor Associate Assistant Other Not VA: fewer Hispanic are Men engineering Arlington, there Black and (2004)
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This fellowship program for junior faculty was established in 2002; the first cohort began in 2003. To date, nine faculty fellows have participated.
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In contrast, ADVANCE focuses on institutional changes, especially for women on the academic tenure track to senior and leadership positions. The first round of ADVANCE awardees occurred in 2001 and the second in 2003, and the third round will be announced in early 2006.92 From these grants will come several models of what has worked and what has not worked for different institutions.
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There is nothing wrong with that, unless you're not white and male; if you are not then it does not work very well for you, particularly the competition between the biological clock and the tenure clock. -- Sue Rosser Another way of presenting the data is by dividing the responses into four groups: 1.
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Junior faculty take their CVs to a meeting with senior faculty who have served on tenure and promotion committees, but who are not currently on tenure and promotion committees. The junior faculty meet with four or five senior faculty in an hour to get a quick take on their CVs and what they might need to do to get ready for promotion to the next level.
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, the goals were to make the promotion process fair and transparent and to eliminate the cumulative bias in selection and promoting. The TCP appears to be helping in terms of moving women and, in the United States, members of underrepresented groups up the career ladder.
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In an hour, junior faculty meet with four or five senior faculty -- who have served on tenure and promotion committees, but who are not on tenure and promotion committees at the time of the meeting -- and get a quick take on their CV and the senior faculty member's concept of what they might need to do to get ready for promotion to the next level, from another publication or two in a refereed journal, to teaching, or service on national committees. It's been very popular.
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I have also encouraged department chairs to encourage their women faculty to join women's studies, which most science chairs think, huh? Why would they do that?
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I know that this is true for many men as well as women. Since our particular focus here is for women, I think that the suggestion that was implicit in your question is that you prepare in advance for a job interview in the same way you did as a graduate student when you were going for your first assistant professorship, and you learn from these experiences.
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