Posted on 02/08/2011 10:14:42 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
It's an incendiary topic in academia -- the pervasive belief that women are underrepresented in science, math and engineering fields because they face sex discrimination in the interviewing, hiring, and grant and manuscript review processes.
In a study published Feb. 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell social scientists say it's just not true.
It's not discrimination in these areas, but rather, differences in resources attributable to career and family-related choices that set women back in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, say Stephen J. Ceci, the H.L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology, and Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, both in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.
The "substantial resources" universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, Ceci and Williams say, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing "biological and social realities" of the sexes.
The researchers analyzed the scientific literature in which women and men competed for publications, grants or jobs in these fields. They found no systematic evidence of sex discrimination in interviewing, hiring, reviewing or funding when men and women with similar resources -- such as teaching loads and research support -- were compared.
"We hear often that men have a better chance of getting their work accepted or funded, or of getting jobs, because they're men," Williams said. "Universities expend money and time trying to combat this rampant alleged discrimination against women in the hope that by doing so universities will see the numbers of women STEM scientists increase dramatically over coming years."
The data show that women scientists are confronted with choices, beginning at or before adolescence, that influence their career trajectories and success. Women who prioritize families and have children sometimes make "lifestyle choices" that lead them to take positions, such as adjunct or part-time appointments or jobs at two-year colleges, offering fewer resources and chances to move up in the ranks. These women, however, are not held back by sex discrimination in hiring or in how their scholarly work is evaluated. Men with comparably low levels of research resources fare equivalently to their female peers. Although women disproportionately hold such low-resource positions, this is not because they had their grants and manuscripts rejected or were denied positions at research-intensive universities due to their gender.
Also, females beginning before adolescence often prefer careers focusing on people, rather than things, aspiring to be physicians, biologists and veterinarians rather than physicists, engineers and computer scientists. Efforts to interest young girls in these math-heavy fields are intended to ensure girls do not opt out of inorganic fields because of misinformation or stereotypes.
Also, fertility decisions are key because the tenure system has strong disincentives for women to have children -- a factor in why more women in academia are childless than men. Implementation of "flexible options" to enhance work-family balance may help to increase the numbers of women in STEM fields, the researchers say.
As long as women make the choice and "are satisfied with the outcomes, then we have no problem," they write in the paper. "However, to the extent that these choices are constrained by biology and/or society, and women are dissatisfied with the outcomes, or women's talent is not actualized, then we most emphatically have a problem." The solution will only be possible if society focuses on changing the women's non-optimal choices and addressing unique challenges faced by female STEM scientists with children, the researchers say.
Ceci and Williams, a married couple with three daughters, co-authored "The Mathematics of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls" (Oxford University Press) in 2010.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Oh, please. If anything, the reverse is true. If a male and female candidate are interviewing for a job in the hard sciences and the male is a little more qualified, dollar-to-a-donut the female gets hired. Universities are scrambling to hire females. The problem is: So is private industry and they usually pay more.
They should put that at the front of these articles so I won't have to waste time reading them.
Isn't this true of both sexes and everybody? Aren't we all constrained by biology and society?
Good study and good conclusions clouded by the need to PCify the thing.
My company employs hundreds of engineers. Many are women, but the women are mostly asian (born outside the USA). One could argue that asians are smarter, but that doesn't explain the large number of white, male, American born engineers we also employ.
When I went to college there were few women in math, physics, and chemistry classes, and very few women in engineering classes.
Normal people knew that.
I’d have to agree. I encountered a little bit of prejudice as a woman scientist in training when I was in graduate school many years ago, but it was nothing serious, nothing problematic. I made the choice not to put in the 16-hour days and 7-day weeks my male colleagues put in. Could not see any way to raise kids, keep a husband, and still do the work a serious career in science required. It would also have demanded a gypsy lifestyle for some years after getting a doctorate as I would have had to do some post-doc fellowships in different places, and that wasn’t practical for family living either. Finally just accepted that there were a lot of other fascinating things I could do that didn’t involve locking myself in a lab a hundred hours a week.
But it was my choice, and I was not forced out of science by male chauvinists! Some men were extremely supportive. As long as a woman actually does good science and doesn’t try to use her sex, she will find her male colleagues helpful.
They probably already have tenure, or they wouldn’t have touched this topic. If not, they can get a long-term gig at The Heritage Foundation or another right-of-center think-tank.
Steci at least certainly has tenure in a named chair, what’s more. If the author is using strict academic usage, so does Wiliams (who is called a professor, not an associate professor or assistant professor), what’s more if that’s the case, neither is in a position where they have to worry about promotion either.
“Well, Steci and Williams just lost tenure.”
Yea, if I were them, I’d check every chance to see if some cocaine didn’t just show up...followed by police.
Writing stuff like this is like criticizing the Imam in Iran - you don’t get to live a normal life hence (if any at all).
The way Affirmative Action is defined these days, in a number of places if the woman/minority candidate is able to do the job to at least the minimum standard, they get the job regardless of whether there are better white male candidates.
In my early-20's, I got the opportunity to do some cutting-edge development. We pretty-much lived at work, going home to sleep. Then later there was lots of travel, dealing with customers. It's easier to find a guy, especially an unmarried young guy, willing to accept that lifestyle.
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Choices--not discrimination--determine women scientists' success, researchers say
Absolutely. Especially today.
As proof all one has to do is watch the Science Channel. There's a lot of women 'Scientists' (dumb term) in those series. And one very cute (kinda hot actually) Young woman Physicist from Harvard(1) whose working on String Theory - Gravity is her specialty.
(1) unfortunately she also sets off my gaydar, I have a hunch she likes girls :-(
"The Mathematics of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls"
Or this paragraph:
The "substantial resources" universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, Ceci and Williams say, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing "biological and social realities" of the sexes.
No, but from now on they get to worry about:
1) Cocktail party invitations
2) Invitations to present at seminars
3) Publishers who will publish their works
4) Other professors who won't let them play professor games
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