Anonymous Guest-Post: One Small Step

Anonymous guest-post by a mid-career scientist at a large public university. 

As a mid-career scientist at a large public university, I find myself increasingly frustrated with policies and procedures with which I disagree but feel powerless to do anything about. However, recently, I found myself in a position to strike a (teeny, tiny) blow for change -- and I took it.

My academic department has had a very traditional approach to hiring in my 17 years here. We hire in very specific sub-fields, the argument being that we need to reach 'critical mass' in each research group. (I should add I'm in a physics department of about 25, with a few astronomers, of which I am one). The hiring committee is thus invariably chaired by someone in the sub-field in which we are hiring, with two or three others on the committee who are preferably in the same subfield or hopefully a related one. The committee looks over applicant files and presents a ranked list to the department, which rubber-stamps it.  We have had no formal evaluation criteria, but the most important factor is the candidate's research record. Almost nothing else matters. As far as I can tell, the chair's opinion is therefore the one that matters to the committee, and to the department, as the chair is thought to be most knowledgeable about the research area. This means that essentially one person (the committee chair) is choosing the candidate -- again, as far as I can tell.

If one looks at any of the recent research on how to increase faculty excellence and diversity in academia (for example, see http://www.aas.org/cswa/jan12.html), this is described as the worst possible way to hire. I know this, but have had no say in the process in the past.  Because I was the last astronomer hired (17 years ago), I have never been on a hiring committee. Until now. We have a job opening for a physicist in a specific subfield. Because the university wants at least one minority on hiring committees, and since the other female faculty member in our department (who generally has filled that role on other hiring committees because she works in physics rather than astronomy) was unable to be on the committee, I was appointed.

In the past few weeks, as the job ad went out, I have been wondering how to spark a change in our usual deparmental hiring practices. I have the advantage of knowing that our Dean's office has become aware of best practices and is slowly trying to implement them across the College: we have an NSF ADVANCE grant to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty in STEM. So I feel that I have administrative back-up if necessary, which is comforting.

This week, we were notified that the applicant files were ready. The chair of the hiring committee, Dr. X, sent an email to the committee saying that the applicants' files were in the main office and we should read them, then meet to form our short list. I took a deep breath, and sent a reply saying that I was uncomfortable with this process, and that we should meet BEFORE looking over the files to come up with evaluation criteria that we would all use. Then all files that meet the criteria are put on a 'long short list' -- these people get a short phone interview, from which we then compile a final short list. I stated I would not participate unless we followed this procedure. I attached a copy of the UMich candidate evaluation form (that I have sent to the department in previous years but to no avail), with the note that this was what the Dean's office is suggesting that departments use (which is true).

This felt like a very brave move to me. I was sure Dr. X wouldn't understand why I wanted to do this, and would think I was creating extra work and slowing down the process (moving too slowly has cost us positions in the past). I did figure they couldn't throw me off the committee because I was the only minority though! ;) I fully expected some kind of confrontation (Dr. X can be impatient...) and push-back.

Instead, Dr. X replied to the committee that I had a good point and we should meet as soon as possible to set criteria before looking at the files! My jaw dropped. And I was immensely heartened. Maybe change IS possible! Maybe things CAN get better! Maybe I CAN make a difference!

In some ways this seems like a small thing -- one hiring committee for one position in one department -- but it feels like a turning point. It's been one for me, anyway.

I feel empowered.

Different Opinions on Women Underrepresentation in Physics

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I saw an interesting article in BuzzFeed ** about a published study on gender differences in physics and biology.  The paper is titled "Gender Segregation in Elite Academic Science" and is by sociologists E. Ecklund, A. Lincoln and C. Tansey.  The article took a new approach in this field, not just quoting employment or student statistics but surveying 2500 physicists at elite institutions for their opinions.

The survey asked scientists why they felt there is so much more underrepresentation of women in physics than in biology.  The survey was followed up by interviews with 150 respondents.

There were significant differences in the views expressed by men and women, but not between physicists and biologist.  Men tended to not notice inequalities as much.  They also, on average, viewed shortfalls in the advancement of women as due to shortcomings in their background and not discrimination.  Women, on average, viewed discrimination as the primary reason for few women in physics.  They viewed the physics culture as being more inherently discriminatory than that in biology.

It is instructive to see some quotes from the study:

“morphological differences and biological differences [make men better at] hardcore math and physics.” — male assistant professor, genetics

“Physics is more difficult for girls and you need a lot of thinking, and the calculation, and the logic. So that’s maybe hard for girls.” — male grad student, physics

"Women have to make a choice [because] the woman ends up being the primary caregiver if they have children.” — male postdoctoral fellow, biology

Women

“I think women ... want to have more of a sense that what they are doing is helping somebody. ... Maybe there are more women in ... biology [because] you can be like ‘Oh, I am going to go cure cancer.’” — postdoctoral fellow, biology

“Male-dominated departments are really unpleasant for women. [...] Men can be huge jerks in those situations.” — female associate professor, biology

“It’s not going to be solved until we figure out how to help mothers figure out how to do the career and the kid thing.” — female associate professor, physics

One of the conclusions in the studies is that "few men in either discipline emphasized the present discrimination that women in science may face (and that men in physics hold a much larger share of senior faculty positions) suggests that discrimination is not being adequately addressed in physics departments at top research universities."

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**  http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/what-male-and-female-scientists-say-about-women-in

AASWomen for October 26, 2012

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of October 26, 2012
eds. Caroline Simpson, Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, and Nick Murphy

This week's issues:

1. What Male And Female Scientists Say About Women In Science

2. The Part-Time Scientist

3. Support for a Working Mom with Facebook

4. Yet Another Invitation to Speak at a Career-Family Panel...

5. ScienceGrrl Calendar launched

6. Scholarly Publishing's Gender Gap

7. NRC Report on Women in Science

8. Opportunities for Undergrad and Grad Women in Physics

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

The Part-Time Scientist

Today's guest bloggers are Catherine Neish and David Choi.

As funding rates decrease, and the number of PhDs increase, establishing a fully funded career in planetary science and astronomy is going to be increasingly difficult to achieve.  This trend is already obvious in the grant statistics for NASA, the primary funding source for planetary scientists, and a major funding source for astronomers (Figure 1).  So the question becomes: are scientists willing to work part-time, or will this decrease in selection rates force scientists to leave the field?

Figure 1: Selection rates for NASA ROSES programs (solid line) in the Planetary Science Division (PSD) and Astrophysics Division (APD) have been decreasing with time, as the number of proposals increases (dashed line).  Charts from http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-stats/.

Guest Post: Eliza Kempton on Support for a Working Mom with Facebook

Eliza Kempton has recently started a job as an assistant professor of physics at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.  Her research is on the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, focusing on low-mass planets known as super-Earths.  Eliza is also a new mother of a 6-month-old baby.

A couple of weeks ago, the reality of being a working mom finally hit home.  I started in a tenure track position this fall at a fabulous liberal arts school.  My students are amazing.  My colleagues are friendly and supportive.  The institution provides a million avenues for mentoring, teaching support, and research support.  I’ve never been so busy in my entire life, but I love my new job.  I am also a new mom.  I am lucky to have a rather laid-back daughter... but she is still so little.  She is growing very fast, and if you blink, you miss her taking on a new milestone or doing something funny that we’ve never seen her do before.  I swear, each week she seems like she’s an entirely new person.

Like any working parent, I struggle with balancing work and parenting, but the pressure on women can be so much more severe because of the pressure that society puts on us and the pressure that we put on ourselves to “do it all”.  This really hit home recently, when I faced my first day of not being at home to put my daughter to bed.  We had a dinner at work and a weekend retreat to kick off a grant that we just received to support our intermediate-level science students as they make the bridge from freshman-level courses into the more vigorous upper levels of their majors.  It is something that I am deeply interested in, and I knew I wanted to attend the weekend events.  But on Friday night, as I mulled over the realization walking home that I had not seen my daughter at all that day, and I was going to spend half of Saturday (usually my only real non-work day to hang out with my family) at the retreat, I started feeling sad and guilty.  I knew I wanted to attend the rest of the retreat on Saturday, but I also felt that I should be... no, I *wanted* to be... at home with my daughter!  Ah, the conundrum of trying to have it all.

I did what any social-networking saavy woman in the 21st century would do.  I reached out to my friends on facebook.  My post, and the many supportive responses I received from friends and colleagues, are below:

Yet Another Invitation to Speak at a Career-Family Panel...

For much of the past 6 weeks since the September start of the academic year, my wife has been traveling to Switzerland, Kosovo, New York, and Washington DC for her research on the relationship between the military and health care systems. And I have had trips to Pasadena and Chicago, and tomorrow I'm off to Baltimore. This has certainly made for some challenging logistics on the home front, as we have three young daughters and the timing of these trips coincided not just with the start of the semester, but also of course with the start of public school. It's all going went well (both the research expeditions, and on the home front), but I was recently reminded of a conversation we had at the end of August (and on the eve of that very hectic September).

On that particular evening, after the kids had finally agreed to go to sleep, my wife and I were each checking in on the emails that had poured in during the 5-8pm window. "Another invitation for us to speak about work and family" she said. But then she furrowed her brow and didn't look enthused. "What's up?" I asked.

Over the past couple years, we have participated in many of these opportunities to speak with younger researchers who are on the academic path but wondering about how to navigate it with family. I guess we are a natural fit for such panels: My wife is a double-board-certified MD with a full-time research career, and I am professor of astronomy, and we have young children.

So, what was my wife's worry about the invitation? Our concern is that these invitations are (almost) always from women-in-science groups and the audience is (usually) overwhelmingly women.

(Let me first be clear on a couple issues: First, we love doing this, and are delighted to speak to exactly these audiences, and so please invite us for more! Second, what I'm about to say pertains to hetero couples, but I certainly don't want to imply that this is the only family model!)

OK, so what we would REALLY love is to receive such invitations from groups with a heavy participation from men, particularly given that men are still the significant majority in our field even at the graduate student and postdoc levels. Postdoctoral associations, graduate student associations, a Friday 4pm chat... I don't have an easy answer, but surely there is a way to have these sorts of discussions with our students and postdocs as part of their professional development, just as we hold journal clubs and workshops on grant-writing and speaking, and not leave this to be arranged by women-in-science groups. I would love to be approached by a group of men-in-science who are excited about the future but worried about their ability to balance family and work!

Our feeling (and what we try to convey at such panels) is that in the present climate you really can have both a family and a stimulating research career. The key is that your partner must be exactly that! If you are going to have a partner and the partner is a man, then it is essential that he views this as his issue every bit as much as yours. There are many men out there who have lots of advice, both about the practical issues as well as the broader challenges.  However, until we create a mechanism for these discussions to include most of the junior men in our field (and ultimately instill a sense of co-ownership among men of this issue), we will likely continue to stumble on the same problems that have plagued us in the past.

I would love to read in the comments examples for work-family events that could engage (or have engaged) a larger number of the junior men in our field.

The PhD Comic Perspective on...