Beyond Bias and Barriers Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (2007) / Chapter Skim
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5 Institutional Constraints
5 Institutional Constraints
Pages 160-213
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The traditional career model is clearly difficult for women scientists and engineers to fulfill, especially if they have children. Because the burden of family, household, and community care generally falls more heavily on women than on men -- and because women seldom have substantial spousal support -- women scientists and engineers often experience intense conflict between their family and professional roles.
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Furthermore, the perseverance of women scientists and engineers is seldom perceived as evidence of the very high level of devotion to their profession that it represents. Anti-discrimination law requires universities to remedy condi tions that differentially affect women's entry into and promotion in academic scientific and engineering careers.
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5-2. University leaders should incorporate into campus strategic plans goals of counteracting bias against women in hiring, promotion, and treatment.
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They should provide central policies and funding for faculty and staff on leave and should visibly and vigor ously support campus programs that help faculty with children or other caregiving responsibilities to maintain productive careers. These pro grams should, at a minimum, include provisions for paid parental leave for faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students; facili ties and subsidies for on-site and community-based child care; disserta tion defense and tenure clock extensions; and family-friendly schedul ing of critical meetings.
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; the Department of Justice, the De partment of Labor, and the Department of Education; and individual federal granting agencies' Offices of Civil Rights should encourage and provide technical assistance on how to achieve diversity in university programs and employment. Possible activities include providing techni cal assistance to educational institutions to help them to comply with anti-discrimination laws, creating a clearinghouse for dissemination of
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Simple one-shot efforts will not remedy the effects of long-standing and pervasively male-biased expectations and norms. Careful analysis of particular situations and thoughtfully designed, multipronged approaches are needed to bring real change and foster the advancement of women scientists and engineers.
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Deviation or delay in following that course, any substantial hiatus or serious attention to responsibilities outside the academic realm, have traditionally harmed the scientist's or engineer's ability to compete successfully because it has been taken to indicate a lack of seriousness about one's career. In that model, scientists and engineers may marry, become parents, and participate in family life while pursuing their demanding careers because they have full-time spousal support to assume the major household responsibilities, including rearing children and running the home.
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examined department-level data on hiring and recruitment practices and noted which practices correlated with hiring women above, at, or below their percentage in the applicant pool.3 Departments that were successful in recruiting women did not assume that women feel sufficiently confident or included to send in an application. Merely taking such steps as designating an affirmative action officer to serve on the search committee or stating in the job announcement that women and minoritygroup members are encouraged to apply correlated with hiring below the level of the applicant pool.
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. Marriage and baby blues: Redefining gender equity in the academy.
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Such choices are not necessarily voluntary. Rather, career choices reflect the broad social structure and therefore tend to reinforce the current sex segregation of occupations.9 Examples include the greater propensity of women scientists to enter biological science rather than physical science fields and the lower propensity of men than women in general to respond to career setbacks by withdrawing from the workforce and devoting themselves to family responsibilities.
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. Marriage and baby blues: Redefining gender equity in the academy.
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171 INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS With Children Married 100.0 90.0 80.0 Percent Women 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 0.0 Mathematical Physics and Health and Engineering Psychology Computer Chemistry astronomy sciences sciences sciences sciences science Social related Life With Children Married 100.0 90.0 80.0 70.0 Percent Men 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 0.0 Mathematical Physics and Health and Engineering Psychology Computer Chemistry astronomy sciences sciences sciences sciences science Social related Life FIGURE 5-1 Percent of women and men doctoral scientists and engineers in tenured or tenure-track positions, by sex, marital status, and presence of children, 2003. SOURCE: National Science Foundation (2003)
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172 BEYOND BIAS AND BARRIERS Yes, Full-Time Yes, Part-Time No Physical Sciences 89 56 Mathematics 88 75 Engineering 91 46 Biological Sciences 90 47 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent of Women's Spouses Yes, Full-Time Yes, Part-Time No Physical Sciences 45 20 35 Mathematics 48 19 34 Engineering 41 16 43 Biological Sciences 49 20 31 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent of Men's Spouses FIGURE 5-2 Spousal employment of science and engineering PhDs, 30-44 years old in 1999: Married PhDs. SOURCE: National Science Foundation (1999)
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173 INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS Yes No Physical Sciences 81 19 Mathematics 78 22 Engineering 79 21 64 36 Biological Sciences 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent of Women's Spouses Yes No 47 53 Physical Sciences 41 59 Mathematics 50 50 Engineering 49 51 Biological Sciences 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent of Men's Spouses FIGURE 5-3 Employment expertise of spouses of science and engineering PhDs, 30-44 years old in 1999: Married PhDs with employed spouses. NOTES: Yes = married to another scientist or engineer; No = not married to another scientist or engineer.
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All those considerations indicate that differences in career trajectories for men and women are generated and reinforced by the social structures in which people are situated and by the networks of interactions in which they participate. Increasing women's representation in science and engineering requires many social, cultural, and economic changes that are large in scale and interdependent.14 Family Responsibilities and the Bias Against Caregivers Underlying the disproportionate disadvantage for the careers of women academic scientists and engineers of parenthood or other significant care responsibilities is a strong cultural devaluation of femininity and a consequent bias against caregivers that is deeply embedded in a number of practices and attitudes in academe.15 American culture generally stereotypes caregiving as feminine work; many more women than men carry the main or exclusive responsibility for caregiving -- whether of children or of elderly 12Shauman and Xie (1996)
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. Family leave policies and women's retention after childbirth: Evidence from the United States, Britain, and Japan.
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Similarly, fathers who take parental leave or even a short leave to deal with family matters often receive fewer rewards and lower performance ratings and are viewed as less committed. I have been under a lot of stress dealing with expectations after having a child.
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. Marriage and baby blues: Redefining gender equity in the academy.
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They may be as apparently innocuous as providing funding to cover travel expenses but not additional child care expenses for scientists attending out-of-town conferences to present papers. The widely used 7year tenure clock and the pressure on tenure candidates to show early promise, although apparently gender-neutral, often force women to choose between taking time out for pregnancy, childbirth, and child care, or pursuing a fast-track career.
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For faculty -- men and women -- who engage in bias avoidance behaviors, time to tenure was reduced and age at tenure was reduced by over a year.38 Thus, the mere existence of apparently family-friendly policies at universities will not reduce the pressure on women faculty or their fear that family life will damage or even destroy their careers. Rather, to reduce the conflict between work and family that faculty members experience, university leaders, including top administrators and department chairs, must adopt policies that recognize and mitigate the disadvantages imposed by caregiving and, through word and deed, demonstrate their belief that faculty members can combine a high level of professional achievement with family life (Box 5-1)
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While considerable progress has been made since 2001, we acknowl edge that there are still significant steps to be taken toward making academic careers compatible with family caregiving responsibilities. Our goal as research universities is to create conditions in which all faculty are capable of the highest level of academic achievement.
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In Biological, Social, and Organizational Components of Success for Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
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49 The problems are more pronounced for pioneering women who belong to underrepresented racial or ethnic minorities.50 Thus, even when women scientists and engineers achieve high academic rank in research I universities, full equality with their male colleagues often eludes them. A survey of women science faculty members at MIT, for example, found that those in junior positions felt that their departments supported them and that gender bias would not threaten their future careers.
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Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; LH Pelled (1996)
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JM Darley and J Cooper. Washington, DC: Amer ican Psychological Association.
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In Biological, Social, and Organizational Components of Success for Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
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MIT Faculty Newsletter 11(4) , http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.htm.
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. Formalized HRM structures: Coordi nating Equal Employment Opportunity or concealing organizational practices?
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. Crowd Out or Opt Out: The Changing Landscape of Doctorate Production in American Universities (Working Paper 63)
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Effective use of both Title IX and Title VI is critical for women -- and especially women of color -- in science and engineering fields. In addition, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 196460 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any organization with more than 15 employees.
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. Maternity and childrearing leave policies for faculty: The legal and practical challenges of complying with Title VII.
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Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation and Legal Advocacy Fund.
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bTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.
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fThe Pregnancy Discrimination Act amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. It was approved October 31, 1978, http: //www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/35th/thelaw/pregnancy_discrimination-1978.html.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Pub.
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Under Executive Order 11246, federal contractors must maintain affirmative action plans to increase opportunities for female and minority-group employees. avoid problems of their own.69 That suggests that the pressure of EEOC enforcement is indirect -- that firms are more sensitive to the enforcement mechanisms they experience in their institutional environments than to the direct coercive pressure that discrimination charges bring.
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ior, not because sanctions deter noncompliance, but rather because the law cultivates a normative environment, a "new normal," that legitimates and motivates compliance.70 BRINGING INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE Transforming academic institutions so that they will foster the career advancement of women scientists and engineers is a complex task. The NSF's ADVANCE program is geared specifically to promote such institutional transformation (Box 5-5)
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In Biological, Social, and Organizational Components of Success for Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
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Sloan Foundation, in partnership with the American Council on Education and the Families and Work Institute, has created the Alfred P Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility to promote institutional efforts in research universities toward broader implementation of flexible career policies, critical for recruiting and retaining talented women scientists and engineers.
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. Beyond Work-Family Balance: Advancing Gender Equity and Workplace Performance.
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Gender Faculty Studies at Research I Institutions, http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cwse/gender_ faculty_links.html. 76American Psychological Association (2000)
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An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers, http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm? Section=Home&Template=/CM/HTML Display.cfm&ContentID=10401.
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For example, the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) created a Web-based interactive toolkit of surveys, literature, Web links, and guidelines to help universities to evaluate the climate for women on their campuses.78 At the request of department chairs, confidential surveys are used to query faculty and students on department demographics, gendered practices and policies, and the climate for women.
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. Diversity Management and Managerial Diversity, Addendum to "Best Practices or Best Guesses." Special Report to the National Academies Committee on Women in Academic Science and Engineering.
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. Duke expands child care options.
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ESTABLISHING AN INCLUSIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT Reports suggest that both women and minority-group members perceive the climate of university science and engineering departments as "uninviting, unappealing, and unaccommodating,"84 and they cite isolation as a reason for leaving.85 Women tend to be less satisfied than men with their fit in their departments, the racial and ethnic diversity of their department faculty, and the quality of mentoring that they receive from senior faculty.86 Good mentoring is important for postdoctoral scholars as they develop greater independence and for junior faculty as they navigate the professional and personal changes at the start of their faculty careers.87 Mentoring is also a critical component in creating and maintaining a diverse workforce (Box 4-7)
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The percentage of women faculty is therefore also an indicator of academic success for women undergraduates.96 The lifestyle of role models may be as important as their sex, however. If students or junior faculty see only single women or highly aggressive and "man-like" women, they may not see anyone who is an appropriate role model.
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Employers for Work-Life Balance, a UK-based public interest organization that works to implement and improve sustainable work-personal life strategies, defines the goal as "having a measure of control over when, where and how you work, leading to being able to enjoy an optimal quality of life."100 A 2003 survey found that, when considering employers, graduates preferred flexibility to pay.101 Although flexibility is an important component of such control, it is not sufficient, as the Deloitte and Touche example shows. Without more fundamental institutional transformation, such practices as flexible work arrangements, family leave policies, and education and training opportunities, however important, will not be sufficient for gender equity.
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Harvard Law School's parental leave policy allows either parent who is the sole provider of care for 20 or more hours per week to take paid leave; this policy allows benefits to be extended to men and women without requiring that they be the primary caregivers, thereby "protecting mothers while encouraging fathers to engage in equal parenting."106 Enabling faculty to take time off for the birth or adoption of a child does not, however, solve a problem facing many faculty committed to both careers and children, namely, that the timeline for achieving tenure corresponds with many women's timelines for having children. One approach to easing that dilemma is to "stop the tenure clock" or delay tenure decisions for some period for women having children.107 That would allow women to stop or reduce work while engaged in child care without suffering a 104University of Washington ADVANCE, http://www.engr.washington.edu/advance/workshops/index.html.
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Recommendations include providing affordable child care, facilities for sick children, safe environments for children within the workplace, after-school care, child-care cooperatives, and lactation rooms.109 Universities could also establish part-time tracks for parents during early child-rearing years that would allow parents to reenter full-time work.110 In addition, many institutions have adopted "active service-modified duties" policies so that workers can reduce their workload during busy times but still receive full pay.111 These and other suggestions are summarized in the ACE report An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers (see Box 5-8 above)
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northwestern.edu/provost/committees/diversity/reports.html. 120American Psychological Association (2000)
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The goal of the NSF ADVANCE program (Box 5-5) is to create institutional changes that will help all faculty and diminish distinctions by gender and race or ethnicity.
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recommended "senior postdoctoral fellowships" and similar kinds of funding at key transition points to enable women to reach leadership levels; such grants have also been available to facilitate career re-entry through the NIH Mentored Research Scientist Development Award K01 grant mechanism.129 The American Physical Society recently implemented the Hildred Blewitt Scholarship to support the career re-entry of a researcher who has had a career interruption due to family responsibilities.130 CONCLUSION Considerable attention has been directed at understanding how to create work environments that provide women and minority-group members fair compensation and resources, networking opportunities, and appropriate integration of work and home responsibilities. Resistance to change is 128The Clare Boothe Luce Program.
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Academic institutions must be joined by scientific and professional societies and federal agencies for lasting change to occur. All three sectors must provide leadership on issues of diversity, hold their constituents accountable for change, and provide clear measures and methods for compliance.
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