Mind the Gender Gap

A recent Nature article discusses problems with the hiring and retention of women in science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation finds that while female scientists have made steady gains in recent decades they face persistent career challenges. US universities and colleges employ far more male scientists than female ones and men earn significantly more in science occupations.

Nature, 495 2–24

AASWomen for March 22, 2013

AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
Issue of March 22, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy

This week's issues:

1. Obstacles to Institutional Change

2. Up Against the Boards

3. Is There Life After Work?

4. 6 Tips for Surviving a Postdoc

5. Good Beach Reading: The Feminine Mystique

6. More Options, Not Inability, Explains Why Fewer Women Have Science Jobs

7. Call for Submissions for new project: Grandma got STEM

8. IUPAP Working Group on Women in Physics: Supporting Women in Physics in Developing Countries

9. 2014 OUSTA Award of the Society for College Science Teachers

10. Female Visitor Programme seeks applicants

11. Job Opportunities

12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Obstacles to Institutional Change

A thoughtful reader made this observation about my article in the 2013 January/February AAS Newsletter:

[T]here is one sentence in your piece that grabbed my attention, and I would argue brings up a point far more substantive than grammar and political correctness: "One grumpy, misogynistic tenured faculty member can cause many difficulties, but he cannot prevent change."

This reader's reaction to my provocative sentence was thoughtful and important.  The writer continued,

In my service as an academic administrator at multiple institutions over the years, I have, not frequently, but still on multiple occasions, encountered situations where the single largest impediment to a proposed action to improve the status of women in an astronomy department has been the views of a female faculty member who was vocally against the proposal.  I don't pretend to understand why, other than the facile "people are only human, and half of those are female."  Perhaps some women are so (often justifiably) bitter from past experiences that they subconsciously are feeling "I suffered to get here and so must all others." (Ouch! -- I hope this is wrong.)

Women who are overtly against proposals to improve the status of women swing a disproportionate and often unrecognized amount of power:  the dissent of only one women is quite enough to sway the votes of otherwise well-intended men, who correctly reason that on this subject, a woman has more experience.  Of course, we must not discount the possibility that the woman's reasoning and view, even if in the extreme minority,  is entirely correct in some or many cases, and the males just don't see this!  But no one of either gender has infallible judgement plus a crystal ball, and  in the admittedly limited number of situations I've personally experienced, hindsight of years later showed that the proposed action to improve the status of women, opposed by a woman, turned out to be correct.

So your quoted sentence can be taken by many as a none-too-subtle claim that only males are a problem in advancing the status of women in academia, and at some level I offer friendly disagreement.

My  colleague is right to challenge any implication that men are the only problem (although this was not the intent of my statement).  Women can retard departmental efforts toward gender equity equally or moreso to men not only because their personal experience carries weight, but also because to oppose them could be viewed as an attack on women, which those seeking to advance the status of women are trying to avoid.

I have rarely seen this happen.  When it does, how should one - a senior colleague, a departmental leader, or a junior colleague - respond?

One might try to shift the focus away from gender and towards inclusion and respect for all.  How best to do so in such cases is a good question, for which I seek advice from readers of this column.

Up Against the Boards

This blog is close to home for me, from University of Maryland.  It is about a study by UMd faculty member Waverly Ding showing the lack of women on corporate boards.   Along with co-authors Fiona Murray of MIT and Toby E. Stuart of University of California Berkley, she analyzed survey data of 6,000 U.S. scientists in the biotech industry over a career span of 30 years.  In a paper in the Academy of Management Journal, they find that women at the professorial rank are almost 50% less likely to serve on corporate boards and start new companies than equivalent men.

The study included controls for professional accomplishments and other academic factors to make the best possible apples-to-apples comparison.   About 30% of PhD earners in this field are women, but only 7% of those women serve on corporate boards.  This percentage on boards is about half that of that for male scientists.  Board membership is particularly important in this area of science because research is often tied to corporate needs and funding.  "Beliefs that women lack leadership and business savvy, and are not capable of helping new ventures attract investment, block their advancement in these areas", according to Dr. Ding.

Good Beach Reading: The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan has been called the book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Originally published in 1963, this trailblazing book that changed women’s lives is still just as relevant 50 years later.

For the first time in my academic career, I spent Spring Break at the beach. I took not only The Feminine Mystique, but also A Room of One’s Own and The Mercury 13. I came away with a healthy dose of 20th century feminism as well as inspiration. Betty Friedan not only informed me of things I knew little about (the shift backwards in the Women’s Magazines from stories about “Career Women” in the 1930s and 40s to stories about the “Happy Housewife” in the 1950s and 60s; the Madison Avenue campaign to make women fall in love with household appliances), but also put into perspective the issues I was familiar with (the Seneca Fall Women’s Rights convention; the college “Mrs. Degree”). The book is also very well written. If you are headed to the beach this spring, or even if you’re not, The Feminine Mystique is worth a read.

AASWomen for March 15, 2013

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 15, 2013
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy

This week's issues:

1. Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor to Graduate Students

2. Academia [and the "endogamous" marriage habits of physicists]

3. Think About Expectations for Women in Undergraduate Science

4. National Women's History Month

5. NSF Report: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science

6. Women in Science: Women's Work

7. NSF: ‪Innovation in Graduate Education Challenge‬

8. Women in Math and Science Quiz

9. Job Opportunities

10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

ADVICE: Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor for Graduate Students

A graduate student recently asked me for advice on how to deal with problems she was having with her research advisor. It occurred to me that I had already written extensively on this very subject. It was one of the first tasks I took on when I became a CSWA member and an editor of the AASWOMEN Newsletter. In fact, the Top 10 Ways to be a BetterAdvisor for Graduate Students was the issue that inspired the CSWA Adviceweb page, but that was back in 2006! A whole generation of grad students had come and gone, but the advice we came up with back then still appears to be relevant. The graduate student mentioned above thought it was helpful for her case.

CSWA members discussed ways to make sure this advice remained available to the current generation of grad students and advisors. We decided to try a once-per-month blog post, i.e., an advice column. We’re starting with the Top 10 Ways to be a Better Advisor for Graduate Students. If you have points to add to our Top 10 list or other topics that we should cover in future posts, please leave a comment or contact any CSWA member.

How do we learn to be a good advisor? Our grad students don't come with an instruction manual, but perhaps they should! Sometime we learn to be a bad advisor because we had a bad advisor. Sometime we expect our students to know everything we do. Sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again.