STEM

Universities Must Do More to Stop Harassment: New Report

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The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, highly respected independent agencies, issued their first-ever report on sexual harassment and found that universities have failed to prevent sexual harassment. Pam Belluck of the New York Times writes that the conclusions of the 311-page report are the result of a two-year study started before the #MeToo movement began. Belluck notes that “academic workplaces are second only to the military in the rate of sexual harassment.” One study cited in the report found that 58 percent of academic employees report experiencing sexual harassment. The report also cited a 2017 survey by the University of Texas system of students in scientific fields that found the following rates of sexual harassment:

  • 20 percent of female science students.
  • More than 25 percent of female engineering students.
  • More than 40 percent of female medical students experience sexual harassment from faculty or staff members. In addition, female medical students experience sexual harassment from patients.
Belluck notes that the report identified three types of sexual harassment in universities:
  • Sexual coercion
  • Unwanted sexual attention
  • Gender harassment, described as “verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion or second-class status.”
Gender harassment was by far the most common type women experienced. The National Academies report notes that the cost of any form of sexual harassment for women is high and can “undermine work and well-being in a whole host of ways.” For example, the experience can trigger depression, sleep disruption, cardiac stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Lilia Cortina, a member of the study team. Cortina, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, notes that sexual harassment experiences can be even worse for women of color and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. The cost to the scientific fields themselves is also high because women leave and the fields are not able to retain a full range of talent. The National Academies report states that universities must stop focusing on “symbolic compliance with current law” and on avoiding liability for their institutions and instead focus on preventing sexual harassment. Belluck notes that the report offers fifteen detailed recommendations, including
  • Overhauling academic advising systems so that students and junior researchers are not at the mercy of one senior researcher for advancement and access to grants.
  • Establishing informal ways for students and staff to report sexual harassment.
  • Urging legislators to pass laws so people can file harassment lawsuits directly against faculty and not just the university.
  • Abolishing nondisclosure agreements where settlements are made. These agreements currently allow a perpetrator to move on to other academic institutions without disclosure of their inappropriate behavior.
  • Adopting training programs that focus on changing behavior, not beliefs.
Ultimately, the cultures of academic institutions have to change if sexual harassment is to be prevented. Power structures, policies, and procedures that protect powerful faculty and prioritize protecting the institution from liability will never be able to create safe and respectful work environments for students and staff.   Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash]]>

Women in Physics and Medicine: Closing the Gender Pay Gap, Increasing Respect, and Decreasing Burnout

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New studies on women in physics and medicine find continuing disparities in pay and promotions. Audrey Williams June, writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports the results of a new study by the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics showing a gender pay gap of 6 percent for female faculty members in physics. The study also found that men are overrepresented in senior faculty roles and that women receive fewer grants for research and lab space. For women in medicine, the issues can be severe. Dhruv Khullar of the New York Times reports that female physicians

  • are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as the general population;
  • earn significantly less than male colleagues
  • are less likely to advance to professorships; and
  • account for only one-sixth of medical school deans.
Khullar notes that gender bias begins to impact women physicians during medical residency training and continues throughout their careers. He points out that the structure of medical training and practice has not changed much since the 1960s, when almost all medical residents were men and only 7 percent of medical school graduates were women. Today women account for more than one-third of practicing physicians and one-half of physicians in residency training. Unchanged training structures that assume a stay-at-home spouse to support a trainee’s eighty-hour-work week create work-family conflicts for women. The combination of work-family conflicts and embedded gender discrimination in the profession takes a toll on women’s lives and careers in some of the following ways:
  • In households where both spouses are doctors, women with children work eleven hours less per week, while there is no difference in the hours worked by men with children. This statistic reflects the greater responsibility that women doctors carry for family care that their spouses do not share equitably.
  • Female physicians are more likely to divorce than male physicians.
  • For female physicians, getting patients and other doctors to show them respect by calling them “doctor” is a battle. Women physicians are assumed to be either physician assistants or nurses by both patients and other doctors and are often introduced by their first names in professional settings instead of by their professional title of “doctor.”
  • The gender pay gap for female physicians is significant and was detailed in an earlier article.
  • A recent study at Harvard found that gender bias affects referrals to female surgeons from other physicians.
What can be done to close the gender pay gap, increase respect, and decrease burnout for women in physics and medicine? Both June and Khullar suggest that having more women in leadership and mentorship roles could make a big difference. Khullar also notes that “disparities don’t close on their own. They close because we close them.” Let’s continue to put pressure on our institutions to be more equitable and inclusive. Do these disparities exist in your own profession? Please share with us what efforts your organization is making to close these gaps. Photo by Walt Stoneburner, CC BY 2.0.]]>

3 Reasons Why There are Fewer Women in STEM Professions: New Research Brings Hidden Barriers to Light

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The fact that there are so few women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) professions has been a mystery for a long time. A. Hope Jahren of the New York Times writes that according to the most recent statistics released by UNESCO, “women’s enrollment in graduate education in the United States has been greater than men’s for each of the last 30 years.” But every year, female students drop out of STEM graduate programs in large numbers and are denied tenure at high rates when they do complete their studies and move into faculty positions. Women are also poorly represented as senior STEM leaders. Jahren notes that women do not drop out of graduate programs because of performance—there is no difference in GPAs between women who drop out and those who stay in. And women are not denied tenure because of a failure to publish. So what is going on? Several new important studies reveal reasons why women struggle to be successful in the sciences and point the way to changes that will make it possible for them to succeed in the STEM professions.

Reason 1: Research Funding Is Significantly Lower for Female Scientists

Priyanka Dayal McCluskey of the Boston Globe reports that at big biomedical research institutions, including hospitals, universities, and other research institutions in New England, male scientists beginning their careers receive more than twice as much funding to support their work as female colleagues. A study conducted by a Boston nonprofit group, Health Resources in Action, found that male scientists beginning their careers as faculty researchers receive median start-up funding of $889,000 to establish their research labs compared to $350,000 for women. These funding packages are negotiated confidentially between researchers and department heads, and with no transparency, this pattern of gender bias had not previously been visible. Smaller start-up budgets make it harder for women to publish research and attract new grants, which impacts tenure and promotions for them.

Reason 2: Women Do Not Receive Tenure Credit for Their Publications

Justin Wolfers of the New York Times reports on research by Heather Sarsons at Harvard that compiled data on the publication records of young economists recruited by top universities over the past 40 years. Wolfers notes that the career path for economists is largely organized around tenure, which is based on “publish or perish” criteria. The study indicates that while women in the field publish as much as men, they are twice as likely to perish or be denied tenure. Sarsons’s research found that the only women who enjoyed the same rate of tenure success as men were those who published as solo authors. And here is where the study findings get interesting. Consider that most scholarly papers are coauthored and that economics is a male-dominated field, and note these findings:
  • When a woman and a man coauthor a paper, the man receives full credit toward tenure and his female coauthor receives no credit. It is assumed that only he deserves the credit.
  • Only when a woman publishes a paper alone or coauthors with another woman is she given full credit toward tenure.
The study found strong statistical differences and suggests this bias may account for female economists being twice as likely to be denied tenure.

Reason 3: Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is pervasive and underreported, creating an intimidating environment for young female scientists. Jahren, a female professor of geobiology, suggests that sexual harassment accounts for much of the huge dropout rate for young females in the sciences—along with a sense of isolation. Only recently has the lack of attention and responsiveness to claims of sexual harassment in several large academic institutions become public. Jahren notes: “From grad-school admission on up through tenure, every promotion can hinge on a recommendation letter’s one key passage of praise, offered—or withheld—by the most recent academic adviser. Given the gender breakdown of senior scientists, most often that adviser is a man.” Jahren suggests that often, in the face of harassment from a powerful male mentor, the only choice a student feels she has is to leave the profession to get away from him. Women feel that if they reject their mentor’s advances, they will not get a good recommendation and their career in science is over. What are the lessons learned from these new studies? We need transparency and accountability to interrupt and change these systemic patterns of bias. As long as they are hidden, and there are no consequences for unfair treatment, nothing will change.     Photo credit: Laboratory Science – biomedical by Bill Dickinson, on Flickr]]>

Good News for Gender Equity: It Can Happen! Two Success Stories and Lessons Learned

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Two recent stories about efforts to achieve gender equity provide encouragement about what’s possible and some useful lessons about how to get there. Here are the two cases, one from science and the other from technology. The Microbiologists Women have been underrepresented as speakers and presenters at scholarly meetings for many years, but one group, the American Society for Microbiology, found a way to achieve gender parity in three short years. Between 2012 and 2015, the percentage of presentations by female scholars went from 25.9 percent to 48.5 percent—almost parity. Why is it important that women scientists have equal visibility at professional meetings?

  • Women now constitute a majority of the students and postdocs in microbiology and represent the future of the field. A message of “no glass ceiling” is important to keep them engaged and to ensure their talents are fully recognized and utilized.
  • Being a speaker or presenter at a professional meeting impacts career advancement. Invitations to speak at major professional meetings are used by faculty promotion and tenure committees as evidence of external recognition and are critical to advancement decisions.
How did they do it? Several valuable lessons for other organizations can be learned from the steps taken by the American Society of Microbiologists to achieve gender equity. To begin with, the women scientists who were members of the Society rejected the conventional wisdom that there were not enough qualified women to be speakers and that it would take a generation for parity to be achieved. They insisted that steps be taken to correct the imbalance. Specifically, three steps were taken that led to parity in three years:
  • The program committee studied historical data to learn about the gender gap among speakers.
  • More women were recruited as conveners, or organizers, of presentation panels. These panels usually include several presenters who take turns giving talks on related topics. The female conveners invited more women to present research papers than had occurred in the past.
  • Conveners were urged to avoid creating all-male panels. This was not an absolute requirement, but the intention to include more women resulted in a drop to 4.1 percent of the panels being all-male in 2015, down from 35.7 percent in 2011.
The Technology Company The next case comes from Salesforce.com, a Silicon Valley technology company. The story begins when, one day, the CEO noticed that his meetings with managers only included men. He was aware of all the talk about a lack of gender diversity in Silicon Valley and realized that his company had that problem, too. He was concerned and took the following steps:
  • He set goals to achieve 100 percent gender equality for pay and promotion in his company.
  • He started what he called Women’s Surge in 2013 where he asked managers across the company to identify their top executives for advanced leadership training. If they sent him lists that were mostly men, he sent the lists back and asked for more diverse lists. Promotions of women started to climb.
  • Two of the women promoted during the “surge” decided to leverage their new positions to help other women. They went together to the CEO and told him they felt certain that women were being paid less than men for the same work in the company. He was shocked but commissioned a salary review that proved them right. Salary adjustments have begun.
This company still has a long way to go to reach gender equality. Only 29 percent of the employees are female, including only five of twenty-one executive team members and two of eleven board members—but they are on the right track. What are the lessons from these two cases that other organizations can learn from?
  • Women need to join forces and push for change.
  • The gender pay gap is usually invisible, which helps perpetuate the gap. Organizations need to regularly conduct salary reviews and make adjustments. Scrutiny and transparency about salaries are critical to closing the gaps.
  • Efforts to promote equality must be intentional and consistent:
    1. Set goals (not quotas).
    2. Hold managers and conveners accountable for promoting and including women in visible roles.
All of these lessons learned also apply to achieving equity for all dimensions of diversity, including race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. What other suggestions do you have?   Image courtesy imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women in Science: Myths and Facts

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Why are there still so few women in the top levels of academic science despite equal numbers of women and men at the undergraduate and graduate levels? Let’s examine some myths and biases about women in the sciences and consider some facts that help explain the current situation. Then I’ll close with some good news!

Myths and Biases about Women in Science

In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Joan C. Williams and Jessi L. Smith note that there are distinct patterns of gender bias that affect female scientists:
  1. The first pattern, which is also a myth, is the belief that women are less competent at science. The impact of this bias is that two-thirds of female scientists in a recent study reported a double standard when going for promotions. They had to provide more evidence of their skills than their male colleagues did to be seen as equally competent.
  2. Another pattern is a familiar double bind for women leaders in many sectors—walking the “tightrope” of being seen as too feminine to be competent or too masculine to be likable with very little room to maneuver between the two extremes. The authors quoted one of the women scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as explaining, “To get ahead here, you have to be so aggressive. But if women are too aggressive, they’re ostracized, and if they’re not aggressive enough, they have to do twice the work [to prove themselves].” Three-fourths of the women in one study reported experiencing this double bind.
  3. A third pattern and myth is that if you are a mother, you cannot also be a high-achieving scientist. Williams and Smith explain that the operating bias is that to be a high-achieving scientist, you must be “tirelessly and single-mindedly focused on research” without the distractions of a family. In a recent survey, two-thirds of the female scientists reported experiencing this bias, and female scientists are more than twice as likely to be childless than American women in general. Can it be that talented women are opting out of academic leadership positions in the sciences and choosing other careers because the price to stay in science is too high?

Training as a Scientist—Structural Barriers for Women

Molecular biologist Sara Clatterbuck Soper offers some insights into the ways that gender bias impacts training opportunities for women scientists. In an article in the New York Times, she explains that training in the sciences resembles the medieval apprentice system—scientists must spend a lengthy period of time training in the lab of an established principle investigator who has near-absolute authority in hiring. This apprenticeship is the pathway to a senior position, and eventually to having your own lab. The problem is the leader’s near-absolute hiring authority. Clatterbuck Soper cites a 2014 study that found that male scientists more often hire other men for coveted training positions. This study reported that the more prominent the men, such as Nobel Prize winners, the larger the gender gap in hiring. The elite male professors in the study employed 24 percent female postdoctoral researchers compared with 46 percent in labs run by women, and 36 percent female graduate students compared to 53 percent in labs run by women. Because training in the sciences requires high-quality apprenticeship and mentoring and so few women are lab leaders, there is a shortage of training opportunities for aspiring women scientists. Clatterbuck Soper explains that women represent half of the graduate students in biosciences but only 21 percent of full professors.

Good News

What is the good news in all of this? Did you notice that half of all undergraduate and graduate students in science are women? That is good news, and it debunks the myth that women are not interested in the sciences. What is needed now is a change in the biases, attitudes, and practices that limit opportunities for talented women in the sciences.   Photo credit: Image courtesy of Photokanok at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women in Technology: Outsiders Within

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I often hear two commonly held myths from my audiences when I make presentations on gender in the workplace: Myth #1: Things must be different for the younger generation of women and men in the workplace—gender dynamics, in general, must have changed for them. Myth #2: Technology firms like Google, as young companies that reflect youth culture, must have postsexist cultures. My audiences reason that surely young women do not have the same challenges that older women face in more mature organizations. Sorry, but wrong on all counts. In a recent article in the Boston Globe, author Callum Borchers notes that even though high-tech companies create “hip” workspaces to promote creativity and attract young workers, they still have “shades of man cave everywhere.” Borchers explains that the combination of beer kegs, ping-pong tables, Xboxes, and networking events after hours during family time can leave female workers feeling like outsiders. In addition, some women describe hypercompetitive, clubby, and aggressive work styles in these companies that reflect an adult frat-house culture where they receive subtle messages that they do not belong. And the messages are not always subtle. Two different women in the gaming industry in Boston recently received, at different times, online rape and death threats telling them to get out of the gaming world. Not all women in technology feel this way, of course, or have these negative experiences, but the low numbers of women in technology probably reflect a number of factors, which include subtle messages, pervasive stereotypes about women not being capable in math and science, few role models, and pervasive unconscious discrimination. Here are some statistics:

  • 15–17 percent of technology employees in most Silicon Valley companies, which includes Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, are women.
  • 26 percent of computer science professionals nationwide are female, while 8 percent are black and 6 percent are Hispanic.
  • 3 percent of venture-backed technology start-ups nationwide have a female chief executive.
Technology organizations can attract and retain women if they make an effort. Here are some suggestions:
  1. Invite women to pitch ideas inside the company to overcome a tendency for women to hesitate until they feel their idea is perfectly developed.
  2. Form gender-balanced panels to interview applicants for open positions or to consider promotions to overcome unconscious bias that results in women not being hired or promoted at the same rate as men.
  3. Establish a private room for breast pumping to help attract the best young female talent, and develop family-friendly policies. Women pay attention to these details when deciding where they want to work.
  4. Establish mentoring, sponsorship, and support programs for women within the company.
  5. Fund scholarships for women to study math and science, and sponsor competitions that include lots of women.
  6. Create networking events during work hours or that families can attend (instead of golf outings or after-hours drinking and cigar parties—yes, these still occur).
  7. Encourage men to be allies and redirect attention to women’s ideas when women are ignored in meetings.
  8. Raise awareness of the double binds that women face in the workplace and how women and men can work together to overcome them.
These are just some ideas for how technology companies can increase the diversity of their workforces. Kudos to a number of the big companies, such as Intel, Google, and Facebook, that now admit they have a problem and are starting many of the efforts described above to correct the imbalances they have created. It’s not too late! Women are good at math and science and will pursue those interests if they get the message that they belong in technology professions.]]>

Where Are the Women in Technology?

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number of women in computer science has dropped off steeply in the last twenty years, while the technology industry has grown dramatically, and technology companies are complaining that they cannot find enough workers. Here are some interesting facts:

  • In 1985, women made up 37 percent of undergraduates majoring in computer sciences. In 2012, less than 18 percent were women, according to the National Science Foundation.
  • In 1990, 34 percent of those employed in computer occupations were women. By 2011, 27 percent were women, according to the US Census Bureau.
  • An editorial in the New York Times on October 25, 2014, shared that a 2008 report published by the Harvard Business Review found that women quit high-tech jobs at twice the rate of men.
  • At Microsoft, only 17 percent of the technological positions are occupied by women, which is average in the industry.
No one factor can explain the poor representation of women in technology, but the unwelcoming cultures and biases in many technology companies have to play a big part. Consider these challenges women face in technology environments:
  • Being the only woman on a team or in a meeting can get lonely.
  • Masculine workplace cultures often value or condone very combative and competitive behavior that is uncomfortable for many women.
  • Women often feel talked down to or are given subtle messages that they don’t belong in technology.
  • Some women feel their male bosses give credit to male peers for work they have done. They feel invisible.
There is a general cluelessness among many male leaders. The chief executive at Microsoft recently told a room full of professional women that they don’t need to ask for raises. They should just trust the system to be equitable, and they will get raises if their karma is good. Really? Where has he been? My niece recently graduated from engineering school where she was one of very few women. She now has her first job with a large aeronautics company, and she loves her job. She was crying when she called me one day recently. One of her male peers had said to her, “Forget about advancing here. Just look around. You’ll see that women don’t make it as engineers, and you won’t make it either.” She asked me, “Is it true?” This conversation with her broke my heart. A spate of recent articles have put a spotlight on the gender gap in technology companies. This attention is causing some of these companies to admit they need to change and become more welcoming to women. This is hopeful. Women are just as talented in math and science as men, and we want jobs that pay well like those in technology. What we need is the chance to work in environments where we can thrive. Let’s keep up the pressure for change.  ]]>