"Careers, Leadership, and Speculations on why Academia Loses Women

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"Careers, Leadership, and Speculations on why
Academia Loses WomenMargaret Galland Kivelson
- UCLA
with thanks to Fran Bagenal of University of
Colorado for input

• I started in academia in the 1960s, became active
  in issues of academic women in the early 1970s
• . . .and still am. . .
• so my presentation provides a long range view.

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Aside my favorite publication on the subject of
women in academia

• The introduction documents the opposition in the
  1860s 70s to having a state institution of
  higher education open its doors to women.
  Experts asserted that
• women were intellectually inferior and could
  never master academic subjects,
• they were physically too frail to withstand the
  rigors of university training,
• educating them would make them unfit for their
  primary roles as wives and mothers.
• The issues of 2003 seem much less overwhelming
  when viewed in the context of this historical
  review.

A Dangerous Experiment, 100 Years of Women at the
University of Michigan Dorothy Gies McGuigan,
Center for Continuing Education of Women, U.
Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1970.
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But problems remain.I will focus on women in
science. Why?

• My own background is in science.
• Some issues generic to a broad range of academic
  disciplines are more extreme in the
  science/technology area.

Start by asking Does academia lose women in
science? and, with yes as an answer, then
when and why?
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The Leaky Pipeline
Starting with 4 million 16-year-oldsin 1977
1 in 1000 women obtained Ph.D.s in NSE
5 in 1000 men obtained Ph.D.s in NSE
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Women who are interested in science are a scarce
commodity, although that is changing slowly

• Critical to changing this situation is to
  increase girls interest in science well before
  the beginning of High School.
• But career differences persist both before and
  after the Ph.D. The drop-out rate varies by
  field.

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In most scientific fields (not Computer Science),
degrees are increasingly awarded to women.
Significant attrition between BA PhD.
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But the attrition of the percent of women
recipients of BA or PhD degrees varies greatly
with the field of study!
15?13
For Physics and Engineering the problem of small
numbers of women is possibly more significant
than their differential departure from continued
study.
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The small number problem is critical on
faculties, especially in Physical Sciences and
Engineering.

• We find that many physical science undergraduate
  students complete their majors without ever
  having taken a course from a female professor.
• http//www.clipartconnection.com/ gives free
  downloads of clipart.
• Search for Professor
• One image is returned.
• Surprised?

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Women on regular faculty in physical sciences/
engineering. . . here UCLA in 2000
23.5 of the Academic Senate faculty were women
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Most physics departments now have at least one
woman. Progress! But often in temporary jobs.
Women more likely to have part time jobs.
(AIP 2002 Academic Workforce Survey)
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Women are increasingly present in (most)
nonacademic employment too.
1980, 1990, 2000
19931999
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Women are ill represented on Physics faculties.
Also they are concentrated in less prestigious
institutions From Blake, 1993-94 Academic
Workforce Report and Ivie and Stowe, 1997-1998
Academic Workforce Report
of Faculty Positions in Physics held by Women of Faculty Positions in Physics held by Women 1994 () 1998 ()
Academic rank Full Professor 3 3
Associate Professor 8 10
Assistant Professor 12 17
Other ranks 8 13
Type of Department PhD-Granting 5 6
Masters-Granting 7 9
Bachelors-granting 7 11
Total 6 8
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Caveat

• The higher representation of women at the lower
  academic ranks seems encouraging.
• Will not time cure our problems?
• Not as quickly as one might expect. Studies show
  that
• Women are more likely to resign positions even
  when they seem to be doing well.
• Men move up faster, leaving a disproportionate
  representation of women at the lower ranks.
• for the Assistant Professor rank, the percentages
  are skewed by the fact that women are, on
  average, older than men.

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And salary differentials continue

• For UCLA Academic Senate faculty, we found an 11
  salary difference across the board (not Medical
  School).
• Drops to 9 if we correct for age/years of
  experience.
• Correcting for the fact that women are
  concentrated in the low paid areas of academia
  the difference drops to 2. NOT MUCH.
• BUT 2 over a career ADDS UP (82 over 30 years
  if compounded monthly.)

Female, Male
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Why should we care about gender equity in
academia? in science?

• In a 21st Century society it is essential to have
  a highly educated work force. . .
• yet the fraction of college students (men and
  women) selecting careers in the sciences is
  decreasing with time.

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First year graduate students in Physics and
Astronomy are now mostly foreign (although
numbers were affected by visa problems in
2002-2003)
Active efforts to retain women would increase the
skilled workforce.
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Hart-Rudman Report - 2001
Education as a National Security Imperative
The harsh fact is that the US need for the
highest quality human capital in science,
mathematics, and engineering is not being met.
Recommendation
fund a comprehensive program to produce the
needed numbers of science and engineering
professionals as well as qualified teachers in
science and math.
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Getting more women into science will go far to
address workforce issues.

• But also the rewards of science are
  great.Science is fun, respected, reasonably well
  compensated.
• For their own sake as well as that of society,
  women should be encouraged to participate.

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Puzzle

• Why does it require an effort to bring more women
  into scientific careers?
• There is no single right answer, but lets
  consider some pieces of the puzzle.
• Some are generic and expertshave written at
  length.

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From Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women
Virginia Valian (Hunter College)

• The representation of women decreases at
  increasingly higher levels in many organizations.
  Valian proposes that the accumulation of small
  disadvantages accounts substantially for the
  attrition.
• Examples of small include
• not being invited to give a talk at a conference,
  
• not being allowed to teach the introductory class
  that all new graduate students must take).

• Small disadvantages acting over long time periods
  produce significant disparities. Can be modeled
  mathematically!
• Valian proposes that gender schema applied by
  men and women alike affect our perceptions, for
  example, of the value of the ideas proposed by
  students and colleagues and our evaluation of
  their leadership qualities.

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Valian on Gender schema
Schema are hypotheses that we use to interpret
social events. p. 103 gender schemas refer to
the implicit hypotheses that almost all of us
share about the nature of men and women. Gender
schema are beliefs about the sexes that we hold
whether we want to or not. p. 333

• For instance, there is a temptation to think of
  men as logical and women as intuitive.
• That plays a role in our decisions when hiring
  for a position in science.
• We (both women and men) are likely to think of
  men as leaders. . . Valian gives data to
  support that statement.
• As a result, men are often overrated and women
  underrated by coworkers, students, bosses.
• What is more, they underrate themselves (again
  she gives evidence).
• The resulting advantages and disadvantages may be
  small and all but undetectable, but over time
  they lead to substantial gaps in advancement.

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Women disproportionately leave science. The
reasons vary.

• From the web page of Anne Preston, Haverford
  College
• http//www.haverford.edu/econ/faculty/preston_rese
  arch.html
• Leaving Science An Analysis of Occupational Exit
  of Men and Women from Science and Engineering
• She used both a written survey and interviews to
  track careers of alumni of a public university
  founded in the 1960s. Her focus was on men and
  women trained in or working in the sciences
  during the period from the mid-1960's to the mid
  1990's.
• Her conclusionIn a field where occupational
  exit is already disproportionately high, women
  are twice as likely to leave scientific
  employment as men.

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Why do they leave?

• Preston found
• With a couple of exceptions, female stayers did
  not convey the excitement and passion for science
  that was evident in comments of a relatively
  large subset of the males.
• She explains this finding in part by showing that
  personal issues, for example childcare and other
  family responsibilities, preoccupy women more
  consistently than men.
• no great surprise there.
• Others note that women experience less social
  pressure than do men if they just decide to stop
  out either temporarily or permanently.
• Many are tempted to do so when they have young
  children.
• The job market is ill-structured to reabsorb
  those who have been on the fringes for more than
  a year or so.

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Examples of family considerations

• Every married women with a Ph.D. in Prestons
  interview sample narrowed the geographical scope
  of her job search to accommodate her husband.
• The results are consistent and strong time
  spent with children has a negative effect on
  ones career and this effect can be observed
  through lower salary and salary growth.
• These results hold for men as well as women.
• . . .conflicts between family and work are found
  to be on average more common for women than for
  men.
• Aside family responsibilities involves not only
  children and elderly or sick family members but
  also household chores.

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Special feature of scientific fields is the
rapid rate of change of knowledge

• One of the defining characteristics of science
  and the fields it encompasses is the high speed
  at which knowledge is growing and changing.
• the rate at which literature within physics is
  decaying and making way for new findings is 6
  times the rate at which literature is decaying in
  English.
• . . .a proxy for the rate of growth in
  knowledge. . . is related to the age of citations
  in the leading journals in different scientific
  fields. Age of citations is negatively related to
  growth of knowledge. Specifically, a field with
  newer citations (i.e. lower age) in any given
  year is a field in which knowledge is changing
  more rapidly, as new research is building on more
  recent research.

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The rapid evolution of scientific knowledge is
particularly challenging for women.It makes it
hard to interrupt and then resume a career, or
even to keep up in the face of external demands.

• Science is a continually evolving field of
  study, and often individuals working in science
  need to work on updating their skills outside of
  the work day. Married women with children are
  immediately at a disadvantage if they are taking
  on more of the family responsibilities than their
  male counterparts.

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Mentoring is more critical for women than for men

• Preston attributes this to the isolation of women
  in predominantly male environments.
• For those men and women who never develop a
  mentoring relationship, the probability of career
  continuation and success is much lower for women
  in science than for men in science.

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The two career family problem. Of greater
concern for women than men

• Women scientists are highly likely to be married
  to other scientists, creating inflexible
  situations.

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Conditions may allow women to make it

• Studies show that for women, success is highly
  correlated with a perfect trajectory, absent
  significant roadblocks relating to health, major
  illness or death in family, or making a move for
  2 career family.

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Specifics. . . start with UCLA

• Prior to mid 90s - Institutional FTE enabled
  appointments of some senior women/minorities
  thereby establishing a leadership nucleus that
  could make a start on changing the climate.
• Some attention to getting women and minorities
  onto short lists for faculty appointments.
• Maternity leave policies established and partly
  implemented.
• Much talk and little action on child care.
• Establishment of Ombudsman office and clearly
  stated sexual harassment policies helped students
  and faculty.

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A study of UCLA Academic Senate Faculty shows
effects of changing laws Hire dates of those
active in 2000
Positive and negative trends.The effects of the
broader political climate should not be
overlooked.
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Change is not unidirectional.

• Post 1997 following the passage of an
  anti-affirmative action initiative in California
  (proposition 209), UCLAs attention to diversity
  in faculty hiring, in my view the most critical
  component of change, evaporated far beyond what
  can be understood from limitations of the laws.

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Pattern of hiring is of concern.The trend over
the years from 1957 on shows an initial increase
in the proportion of women among new hires, but
peaks in 84-94 with a downward plunge at the
end of the millennium!
Confirming my rough extrapolation, in 2001-2002
the ratio of women to men among new hires
dropped even lower to 20.
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Hiring is only the first step

• Numbers do not tell the whole story. The
  present-day experiences of women academics are
  vastly different from those of most men.
• Women feel more dissatisfaction with their work
  environments, are less likely to feel they fit
  in, and experience poorer communication with
  their leadership, all of which leads to
  frustration and feelings of inadequacy.

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Some efforts to recruit/retain women in PSE are
effective

• Denise Denton at University of Washington, School
  of Engineering has succeeded in hiring a record
  number of outstanding women faculty at a time
  when few women are joining engineering faculties.
• The WISE Program (Women in Science and
  Engineering led by earth scientist Jean Morrison
  and chemist Hanna Reisler) at USC is reporting
  similar success in engineering and physical
  sciences.

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Some elements in common in these successful
programs

• Focus on hiring and retention of outstanding
  women in PSE
• Cooperation and support from high level
  administrators.

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Denice Denton, Dean of EngineeringU. Washington

• . . . introduced a search and evaluation paradigm
  that led to successful recruitment of women and
  minorities. Steps include
• aggressive recruitment,
• educating search committees in how to make a
  positive impression on a candidate (and how to
  avoid illegal, offensive questions),
• spousal hiring programs, and attention from the
  top (www.washington.edu/admin/eoo/forms/ftk_01.htm
  l)
• Dramatic outcome UW hired 7 women and 2
  minority engineers in five years compared to the
  few or none hired by competitive schools. Several
  won Career Investigator awards.

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At USC with strong leadership from Hanna Reisler
they are finding

• Both recruitment and retention need attention.
• Mentoring works but they do it differently.
• All the women faculty meet for lunch once a
  month.
• Isolation of women science faculty is reduced
• Women turn to familiar faces when they have
  problems, and some big problems have been solved.
• A footnote their program is supported by a 20
  million endowment from an alumna who wanted to
  make a difference to women in science. The
  program supports both students and faculty.

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So what have we learned?

• Many women succeed and contribute as effective
  professionals in scientific and other areas of
  knowledge, but obstacles exist. They may be hard
  to eliminate but they can be minimized.
• A society that puts generous resources into
  educating women should make a major effort to
  benefit from the investment, a thought that has
  been largely ignored.
• Institutions can contribute to retaining women by
  becoming more family friendly. This would help
  men as well as women.
• It is essential to remind colleagues and
  administrators that diversity issues require
  continual attention, at least until we have a
  gender/minority distribution that approaches that
  of the society at large.

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The most important lesson