Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY Series Editor: Karen C. Cohen, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Are Schools Really Like This?: Factors Affecting Teacher Attitude toward School Improvement J. Gary Lilyquist
Education for a Sustainable Future: A Paradigm of Hope for the 21st Century Edited by Keith A. Wheeler and Anne Perraca Bijur
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Lilli S. Hornig
Evaluation of Science and Technology Education at the Dawn of a New Millennium Edited by James W. Altschuld and David D. Kumar
A Love of Discovery: Science Education: The Second Career of Robert Karplus Robert G. Fuller
Place of Science in a World of Values and Facts Loucas G. Christophorou
Portable Technologies: Science Learning in Context Edited by Robert F. Tinker and Joseph S. Krajcik
Science, Technology, and Society: A Sourcebook on Research and Practice Edited by David D. Kumar and Daryl E. Chubin
Technology, Science Teaching, and Literacy: A Century of Growth Kenneth P. King
Time for Science Education Michael R. Matthews
Tutorial Distance Learning: Rebuilding Our Educational System Alfred Bork and Sigrun Gunnarsdottir
Web-Teaching: A Guide to Designing Interactive Teaching for the World Wide Web, Second Edition David W. Brooks, Diane E. Nolan, and Susan M. Gallagher
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Women in American Research Universities
Edited by
Lilli S. Hornig The Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard
Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Equal rites, unequal outcomes: women in American research universities/edited by Lilli S. Hornig (the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard). p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-306-47351-8 1. Women in higher education-United States. 2. Universities and colleges-United States-Graduate work-Administration. 3. Research institutes-United States-Administration. I. Hornig, Lilli S. II. Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard. LC1567 .E79 2003 378.1/9822-dc21 2002040598
ISBN: 0-306-47351-8 ©2003 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013 http://www.wkap.nl/
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A c.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work
Preface
Thirteen years ago, in June 1988, the Radcliffe Class of 1953 celebrated its 35th Reunion. Amidst the festivities, we who participated repeatedly asked ourselves the same two questions: Is Harvard as sexist as it was when we were undergraduates? If not, what is the status of women at Harvard today? To find the answers we formed an ad hoc committee and charged the members to report back to the class in five years. The committee interviewed selected senior and junior Harvard faculty, Harvard and Radcliffe administrators, students, and alumni/ae. We identified and studied Harvard and Radcliffe reports on their institutions and on their student organizations. We contributed to and participated in a 1990 Radcliffe Focus Group, "A Survey ofAlumnae and Undergraduate Perceptions." We found that the University was not as sexist in 1988 as it had been in 1953. Yet the status of women, though improved, remained quite unequal to that of men. (Radcliffe College was organizationally separate from Harvard University until 1977, when a "non-merger merger" was implemented. However, Radcliffe had no faculty of its own and employed Harvard faculty to teach its students, in strictly separate classes until World War II. The merger effort was completed in 1999 with the complete integration of the two institutions and the formation of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a "tub on its own bottom" like other Harvard graduate and professional schools.) In 1993 the Class of '53 voted unanimously to form the Committee for the Equality ofWomen at Harvard (CEWH). Our mandate was to promote gender equity within Harvard's faculty, student body, curriculum, and environment. Our initial focus was to urge a significant increase in the number of tenured women faculty. Gender equity within the faculty is not only a galvanizing issue, but is also both the model for and the source of most of the other steps toward equality for women v
vi
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
undergraduate and graduate students. It is to these students that the work of CEWH is dedicated. A word about CEWH's committed leadership. To begin with, at the 35th Reunion we were on the cusp ofa new life-stage where for most of us, work and/or family responsibilities were diminishing, bringing us time. In addition, we were enjoying a new level of caring about the generations following our own. We wanted the very best for the young and we longed to help them, particularly if we saw an opportunity to eliminate an injustice that we had experienced. Finally, it had taken many ofus much of our adult lives to become aware of gender discrimination. As college students in the 50s, almost to a woman, we did not see sexism, blatant as it was in that era: so, we were not allowed to eat in the Freshman Union; so, we were forbidden to enter the stacks of Widener Library, having to request books which were brought out to us while our male counterparts browsed among the Library's treasures. It seemed odd, perhaps, but totally acceptable. As our lives unfolded, however, the veil began to drop. Betty Friedan, William Chafe, Marilyn French loosened some of the threads. Comparisons of our salaries with those of our male peers yanked the cloth lower, particularly in the professions. Workshops and conferences tore holes in the fabric. Other great universities had the same shortfalls in gender equity as Harvard. At one such conference held at Radcliffe, the chair ofthe English department at Rutgers, Catherine R. Stimpson, led a brilliant panel on Women's Studies. Imagine: Women's Studies. The veil dropped lower. Professor Stimpson was the first presenter in this Conference on Women in Research Universities. Our gratitude to Lilli S. Hornig (Harvard M.A. '43, Ph.D. '50) for joining our Committee and leading this Conference is unbounded. Her scholarship, experience, and wisdom brought a new level of expertise to our work and culminated in the publication ofthis book. Our Committee had been able to shine a spotlight on the gender problems that continue to make Harvard, and all the major universities like it, an unequal opportunity for women. And now, through this volume, along with illustrations of the problems, best practices and concrete solutions are put forward. May they lead to constructive change. -Margaretta Schmertzler Founder and Chair, CEWH, 1988-1998
Acknowledgments
A great many people deserve my gratitude for their advice and help on this project. Perhaps I should begin with those who first alerted me to the realities of academic life in the 1940s-the distinguished members of the Harvard Chemistry Department who, however unwillingly, were my mentors in the wartime absence of the male disciples they clearly would have preferred. To them lowe my keen awareness of the struggles of women in research universities. The conference and this book, which resulted from it, owe a huge debt of thanks to two sets of people: members of the Committee for the Equality ofWomen at Harvard, and the people who helped generously to fund the enterprise. Among the latter I particularly thank Alison Bernstein and Janice Petrovich of the Ford Foundation, Ted Greenwood of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Albert F. Gordon, Harvard '59, for their support and encouragement. Peggy Schmertzler was the founder and long-time chair of CEWH; without her remarkable spirit and energy neither this project nor the Committee's several other important and innovative projects would have happened, and we thank her most particularly. Many members also devoted much time and effort to organizing the conference and making it run smoothly. I especially thank Acey Welch and Ann Shapiro, currently co-chairs, as well as Joan Baer, Penelope Beye, Cornelia Dimmitt, Elisabeth Hatfield, Millie MarDin, Jane O'Reilly, Eleanor Williams, and Regina Yando. Along with many other contributions of advice and wisdom, Nancy Tobin has shepherded the book through its lengthier-than-usual gestation period resulting from my long illness; without her dedicated effort, this book could not have been completed. Similarly, Acey Welch took over many of the production details. All of them have my profound gratitude. vii
viii
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Special thanks are also due to the CEWH members who served as workshop conveners and rapporteurs during the conference. Sandra Demson, Joanna Hopkins, Millie Marnin, Gabriella Schlesinger, Maria Tymoczko, and the late Bessye W. Bennett led the very lively discussions and reported on them with exemplary clarity. We are also indebted to Elizabeth Doherty, Assistant Dean for Academic Planning at Harvard College, and to Tamar March, Dean for Academic Programs at (former) Radcliffe College, for their help and cooperation. I also thank the contributors to this volume for their patience and forbearance with the delays in completion. However, I assume full responsibility for the errors that inevitably seem to creep into every manuscript. Last but by no means least, I thank my husband, Donald Hornig, for his support and his patience. -Lilli S. Hornig
Contents Introduction
1
Lilli S. Hornig PART I Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University ....... 19
Catharine R. Stimpson 2
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
31
Lilli S. Hornig 3
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
53
Helen S. Astin Christine M. Cress PART II 4
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
91
Mary Frank Fox 5
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists and Engineers in Research Universities
111
Charlotte V. Kuh 6
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science and Engineering: 1973-1995
145
]. Scott Long 7
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity among Postsecondary Faculty
175
Kimberlee A. Shauman YuXie ix
x
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
PART III 8
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality ...... 211
Carol Hollenshead 9
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women: A Model and Its Lessons
227
Linda P. Fried Emma Stokes Susan MacDonald Cynthia Rand ]oanBathon
PART IV 10 Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins: Feminist Interventions
247
Landa Schiebinger 11 Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
257
Piya Chatterjee PART V 12 Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
281
Marianne A. Ferber 13 Work/Family/Life Issues and Programs in Higher Education-What's New
311
Kathleen Sullivan Old Issues, New Solutions: Family and Work Response to Kathleen Sullivan
318
Rae Simpson CONCLUSIONS 14 Conclusions
325
Lilli S. Hornig Barbara Lazarus Bibliography
337
Index
361
Contributors
377
Introduction Lilli S. Hornig
The last thirty years have seen enormous changes in the status of women in research universities. Barely tolerated in many such institutions even as students at the beginning of the period, women were essentially absent from the ranks of full professors, and were only small fractions of all faculty ranks. In 1977 in chemistry departments, for example, women made up just 1.9 percent of all faculty ranks in the top 25 universities (ordered by research and development expenditures) and in mathematics that proportion was 2.7 percent (National Academy of Sciences 1979:68). The Women's Caucus of the American Physical Society published what came to be known as the Zeros Table, listing the great majority of research departments that had no women faculty at all. A chemistry department chairman in a flagship state university declared that "over my dead body" would there ever be a tenured woman in his department. Just over twenty years later there are women on the permanent as well as the probationary faculties of every university, in the arts, sciences, and humanities, in medical, law, and engineering schools. But there are still not very many women in the professorial ranks of any ofthese institutions, although they fill a disproportionately high number of the off-ladder, temporary, part-time, and adjunct positions. It was the scarcity of women faculty, especially tenured professors, at Harvard University that prompted the conference on Women in Research Universities: The Next QJt-arter Century, held at Harvard and Radcliffe in November 1998 under the auspices of the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard (CEWH). This book is based on the updated papers Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
2
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
presented at the conference, with some later additions. CEWH is composed of Harvard and Radcliffe alumnae/i who have ongoing concerns with the education of women at these institutions, now merged into one. The salient issue for the Committee has long been the dearth of women senior faculty at Harvard. Basic information-gathering made it clear that Harvard was not alone: the other major private universities as well as the many public research universities were almost equally low in proportions ofwomen tenured faculty, although Harvard's unique practice of not granting tenure at the associate professor level tended to depress its numbers slightly. The purpose of the Conference, then, was to examine the current status of the female professoriate in research institutions from several perspectives, to seek an understanding of the factors that still seem to hinder women's progress in these universities, and to identifY policies and practices that contribute to greater equality in the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women faculty. Since the Committee has always had great interest in the situation of women students in formerly all-male or predominantly male institutions, we also hoped to examine the impact on these students ofbeing educated in a climate that, in the absence ofwomen faculty and high level administrators, may not always be equitable. A few weeks after our Conference, women faculty issues in research universities gained national attention by MIT's public admission that women tenured faculty in its School of Science were underpaid, given less space and fewer leadership opportunities than their male colleagues, and hampered in their research by various forms ofmarginalization (MIT 1999; Science 1999:1992). In January 2001, as an outgrowth of this report by a committee chaired by Prof. Nancy Hopkins, MIT hosted a landmark meeting of presidents and provosts of nine research universities to discuss the widespread complaints ofwomen faculty and seek solutions to their problems. (Lawler 2001:806; Long 2001:8; Nadis 2001:653). To our knowledge this is the first acknowledgement ever by any such institution that these problems actually exist and that something needs to be done about them. It is also a timely affirmation of the concerns that form the substance of this book. In the nine universities in this group (Berkeley, CalTech, Harvard, MIT, Michigan, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale) women faculty in chemistry, for example, make up a total of 7 percent of full professors, 16 percent of associate professors, and 14 percent of assistant professors-compared to 31 percent of recent Ph.D.s. (Lawler 2001:806).
Introduction
3
There are compelling reasons for believing that full equality for women in the academic world, and hence in a variety of professions, cannot be attained without achieving such status in the research universities. These institutions are at the forefront of research and scholarship in all disciplines; they educate the majority of undergraduate and graduate students of high ability; they produce far more research, knowledge, and innovation and they are larger, wealthier, and much more influential in our national life than other academic institutions. The benefits they offer their faculties are not matched elsewhere: their libraries, laboratories, and other facilities are superior, the colleagues and collaborators the most productive, and most importantly, their students are excellent. In most academic fields the rewards for distinguished work-Nobel and other prizes, election to honorary societies, prominent advisory positions, board memberships, and widespread recognition-eome predominantly to faculty in these universities. In recent decades members of these faculties have occupied many positions of power and prominence in national affairs. They tend to accumulate more wealth than other academics. And they train the great majority of all Ph.D.s, a fact which broadens their influence and reputation beyond the borders of their own institutions. Specifically, in 1998 a total of 118 universities awarded 79.8 percent of all doctorates earned in the previous year (Sanderson, Dugoni, Hoffer, and Selfa 1999:5). Attaining equality in these universities and gaining their considerable benefits is enormously important for women scholars and scientists. To understand the reasons for the difficulty of that quest and for its slow progress, as well as the prospects for change, we must look briefly at the history of higher education over the last several decades. Before doing that, we must also define "research university" more specifically. The category as a whole is described by the Carnegie Classification of Postsecondary Institutions (Evangelauf 1994: A17) and further subdivided into Research Universities I (RU I) and Research Universities II (RU II). The classification is prepared by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and is updated from time to time, the last two assessments having been published in 1987 and 1994. It is based on the overall function of each type of institution, i.e., Ph.D.-granting, master's, baccalaureate, or two-year degree, further divided by certain other criteria, and includes a total of over 3600 accredited institutions. The RU category is subdivided on the basis of number of Ph.D.s and federal research funding; RU Is award 50 or more doctoral degrees annually and receive $40 million or more in federal support, and RU lIs award similar
4
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
numbers ofPh.D.s but receive between $15.5 million and $40 million in federal funds (Evangelauf 1994:A18). Although the Carnegie Foundation stresses that the classification is not a quality rating, it is widely treated as a proxy for academic quality. The RU I group includes 88 universities, constitutes 2.4 percent of the total, and is the fastest-growing category; the RU II group makes up another 1 percent. Together these two groups educate well over three quarters of all U.S. doctorates. To date, women, either as students or faculty, have never gained an equal share of the advantages conferred by membership in these universities. Although the exclusion of women from higher education and from most professions had ancient roots in the monastic and ecclesiastical traditions that shaped much of our higher education system, women had achieved near-equality among college graduates by the beginning of World War II, earning some 44 percent of baccalaureate degrees. But the GI Bill, technically known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, changed all that. Ever since, it has been hailed as the pivotal event that opened higher education to all classes, and that was certainly its signal accomplishment, despite early and quite vigorous opposition by most selective universities and colleges (Olson 1974:33). Assumed by most people to be a reward and a tribute to our defenders from a grateful nation, it was in fact designed to avoid massive unemployment and social unrest when "the boys" returned (Olson 1974:24). Memories of the Depression and its Veteran's March on Washington were fresh in the minds of legislators. More than 2.2 million veterans took advantage of the educational benefits provided in the immediate postwar era, over 97 percent of them men (Hornig 1984:32; Olson 1974:43-44). Very few women were entitled to benefits, not even, for example, the intrepid pilots who ferried bombers across the North Atlantic. By 1950 women's share of baccalaureate degrees had shrunk to just under 24 percent, although their actual numbers continued to grow (Babco 2000:67). The GJ. Bill had unintended, unforeseen, and disastrous consequences for women. The influx of veterans put the most pressure on the top institutions, since the government would pay for a man at the best institution he could get into. As Time magazine put it, "why go to Podunk when the government will send you to Yale?" (quoted in Olson 1974:45). In response to the pressure for places, leading universities simply reduced or restricted women's admissions to gain space in overcrowded classrooms and dormitories. At the University of Michigan, for example, freshman women's enrollments were cut nearly one-third in 1946 and the quota
Introduction
5
remained until 1952 (McGuigan 1970:112). Similar reductions were in effect at many other universities. The eventual outcome was, of course, to displace even very able women into less prestigious, lower-quality colleges, many of them the former teacher's colleges or "normal schools" now refurbished as "state colleges." Equipped and staffed to prepare schoolteachers but generally inadequate to train students for graduate work, they tended to be particularly deficient in facilities and faculty for science and engineering fields. Their female graduates had little chance of competing successfully for places in graduate and professional schools that already looked askance at women, maintaining low quotas of 5 percent to 8 percent in medical schools, about 3 percent in law schools, and 2 percent or less in engineering and veterinary schools. Additionally, financial aid for women students averaged about two-thirds of men's; in 1969-70, male college sophomores received $671 but females only $515 in institutionally administered funds (Haven and Horch 1972). Women's support problems were compounded by their lower earnings (about 60 percent of men's) due to sex differentials in pay and by smaller loans before passage of the Equal Credit Act in the 1960s. As women became more aware throughout the 1960s of the inequities imposed on them by universities, the academic women's movement for equality gained momentum under the gathering impact of the great civil rights legislation of that decade. Although Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed sex discrimination in employment, it did not include higher education; in 1969 the law was extended to education by Executive Order 11246 as amended by 11375, but regulations for its implementation were not issued until late 1972. In the meantime several Ivy League universities began admitting women undergraduates, whom they had excluded specifically until then, and began liberalizing their graduate admissions as well. Although this action appeared to be a move toward gender equity, it was in fact financially so advantageous for the universities that few could afford to ignore its possibilities, and only CalTech held out for another decade or so. During this period most major universities were "tenured in," committed to faculties that had expanded in the plush years of government support in the 1960s and were now underutilized. This was the case especially in the arts and humanities, as male students turned increasingly to the sciences, business, and other utilitarian disciplines. It was widely assumed that admitting women would fill liberal arts classes while requiring little or no additional expenditures in more expensive fields. The Carnegie Commission on Higher
6
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Education, in analyzing the impact of adding women, found that Princeton, for example, "could admit women at a marginal educational cost per student that was below their tuition and fee charges and very much below their quite heavily subsidized average cost of education per student. This was possible in part because women tended to choose fields of study that were not especially popular with men, thus permitting the institution to take advantage of economies of scale by utilizing faculty and other resources in those fields more intensively" (Carnegie Council 1975). Put more bluntly, women looked like cash cows. Potential sex equality acquired a firmer basis with the passage in 1972 of Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments, better known as the Women's Educational Equity Act. It mandated equal treatment ofwomen in all aspects of higher education, including recruitment, admissions, financial aid, hiring, promotion, salary, and benefits, in institutions receiving federal support. Although, again, final regulations for its implementation were not issued for nearly four years, the academic establishment was quickly up in arms. The Association of American Universities, an elite group of some fifty leading institutions at the time, and other higher education associations argued bitterly against the requirement that they begin hiring women and minority faculty, on the grounds that it was subjecting them to "the hiring standards of the construction industry." The president of a flagship state university was heard complaining to a colleague that "it's getting so every broad with a Ph.D. thinks she's entitled to a place on my faculty." Faculty members with no expertise in the civil rights area (or of course in women's studies) wrote books to demonstrate that marriage and motherhood made it impossible for women to be taken seriously as scholars (Lester 1974). The widespread feelings of outrage had been undergirded neatly by Nathan Pusey, then president of Harvard, when in 1969 he criticized the drafting of college students with the phrase, "we shall be left with the lame, the blind, and the women." Because of the financial advantages, then, women students experienced little difficulty in being admitted to research universities. Recruitment of women and minority faculty, however, was another matter. Implementation and enforcement of Title IX was a long drawn out and contentious process, with universities objecting endlessly to having any requirements at all imposed on them, specifically the "goals and timetables" called for by the regulations. A book-length study by the Carnegie Council for Policy Studies in Higher Education (1975) as well as Congressional hearings (Special Subcommittee on Education 1975) detail
Introduction
7
a frustrating series of impediments raised by the universities. In hindsight it has become clear that while legal pressures ultimately led to more hiring ofwomen at the assistant professor level, goals were rarely set at higher ranks and the laws were not enforced at the tenure level. (See Leap 1993 for an extended examination of court decisions in cases where it was charged that women failed to gain tenure because of sex discrimination. ) Certain effects of the new legislation showed up quickly. Women's proportion of law degrees, for example, began a steep rise in 1973, reflecting the loosening of restrictions in 1970. In medicine and veterinary medicine, a sharp upward trend began in 1974; the difference between law and the medical fields arises, of course, from the difference in the required length of training. For doctoral degrees in arts and sciences, however, the increases were slower (Chamberlain 1988:204-205). By 1997 women earned two-thirds of degrees in veterinary medicine, a field in which they earned just 1.5 percent of the degrees in 1950 (Babco 2000:100). Women Ph.D.s in arts and sciences increased from about 12 percent in 1970 to about 42 percent of all doctorates awarded in 1998, and to 48 percent of those earned by US citizens (Sanderson et al. 1999:82-85). Although the possible causes of differences in growth rates between professional degrees and Ph.D.s have not been investigated specifically, one likely explanation lies in the different practices for admitting students. In professional schools admissions committees resemble those of undergraduate schools in that they cut across individual department lines and select students by a uniform set of standards. In the graduate schools of research universities, on the other hand, students are admitted on a departmental basis, giving rather free reign to individual faculty members in expressing their prejudices and idiosyncracies. The professional school model is amenable to administrative direction and responsive to institutional policy, while the graduate school practice tends to resist administrative intervention. In addition to such concerns, the time to completion of a degree also plays a major role in how fast change can take place. Professional degrees require at most four years of study, while research doctorates currently take an average oflO.5 years, up from 8.5 years in 1973 (Sanderson et al. 1999:18). Disciplines vary greatly in the time required for a doctorate, and that variation (as well as differences among fields and institutions) in turn arises from numerous factors including financial aid, opportunity costs compared to other activities such as paid work, state of the labor
8
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
market, and family responsibilities (Tuckman, Coyle, and Bae 1990: Chs. 2-4). Overall, the physical sciences have the shortest degree completion times, the humanities and education the longest, with a total spread in 1998 from 6.8 years in chemistry to 20.0 years in education. Contrary to popular mythology, gender differences in completion times are small within fields, ranging from 0.3 years less for women in chemistry to 0.7 years less for men in education in 1998 (Sanderson et al. 1999:82-85). The single most striking factor in accounting for field differences appears to be the amount of financial aid. In the physical sciences, where the shortest completion times are found, most graduate students are fully supported, while in the humanities and education, with the longest times to degree, there is very little financial aid. Interestingly, women predominate in fields with little support and men in fully supported fields (Chamberlain 1988:211). This curious relationship merits detailed study. In the 1970s universities claimed, quite correctly, that they couldn't have women faculty if women weren't earning doctorates and doing advanced work. This explanation, widely known as the "pipeline" problem, has persisted well after its justification disappeared. The institutions failed to note, however, that their own deliberate policies of exclusion and marginalization had created the problem. Women who had been held to a quota of 1 percent or 2 percent in engineering schools, for example, received a clear signal that this was not a welcoming profession for them. The multitude of slights, exclusions, insults, forms of sexual harassment and other restrictions women were subjected to in universities formed the basis of Congressional hearings conducted by Rep. Edith Green of Ohio that led to the passge of Title IX. Harris' report (Harris 1970) detailed a compendium ofoffenses to women students and scholars that became the start of an extended series of academic women's "war stories." The opposition to hiring and promoting permanent women faculty at research universities suggested that women simply couldn't quite make the grade, while women argued that they weren't even allowed to try. Over time both sides settled on family responsibilities as an uneasy if respectable out. The long term solution to this institutional constraints vs. individual problems debate-the creation of an academic workplace that fits both men's and women's lives and needs-remains in its infancy, as we shall see. By the mid-1970s the research universities faced a somewhat problematic future. Large-scale infusions of federal funds for research support had been declining for several years, and with the conclusion of the Vietnam War and the ending of the draft, fewer men were pursuing graduate
Introduction
9
studies. Faculties were heavily tenured in, some as high as 75 percent, leaving little maneuvering room. Most universities decreed a steady-state policy on faculty hiring, filling teaching needs instead with a growing corps ofpart time, adjunct and unranked instructors, many ofwhom were women, and making the process of awarding tenure ever more stringent. Among junior faculty undergoing tenure reviews it became a bitter joke that most of the people sitting in judgment on them would not pass muster themselves under the new criteria. As many more women took advantage oftheir newly confirmed rights to equal treatment in academe by stepping up their enrollments in undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, their growing presence among aspirants to faculty posts continued to generate somewhat mixed feelings in the academic community. On the one hand their fees, and therefore their presence in the student body, were welcome; on the other hand, their competition for ever scarcer professorships was not. But women also had some difficult decisions to make about investing large amounts of time and money in training for a problematic future. As we shall see in the following chapters, progress in the presence of women on research faculties has been slow, lagging well behind the increasing supply ofcandidates. Many factors played a part in the process, among them legal pressures, societal changes, growing participation by women, widening recognition of their abilities as well as their rights, fluctuations in labor markets, and many others. Among the most resistant to analysis are the trade-offs women, but rarely men, must make between careers and personal lives. The opportunity costs of a demanding career for women may include foregoing marriage and/or children while the rewards, at least to date, are somewhat smaller than men's. The decisions women must make about high-level academic careers are thus qualitatively different from men's. An additional and serious problem is that women's decisions about the balance between career and other aspects of life as well as decisions about hiring and promotion by individual departments are each essentially unique. The tradeoffs among family or other personal needs, career aspirations, geographic restrictions, spouses' or partners' career needs, and other highly individual factors are complex and usually quite specific to a particular person. On the other hand departmental decisions also have many issues specific to the particular unit: specialized requirements for certain subfields, optimal use of existing facilities, departmental age distribution, likely upcoming retirements of present members, the obvious desire to find the best possible candidate who meets all these
10
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
requirements without competing too much with existing personnel, and finally the personal, idiosyncratic, perhaps stereotypical, attitudes of each department member. Faculty autonomy in hiring and promotion decisions is a carefully guarded privilege that tends to be confused with academic freedom under such circumstances (Kennedy 1999:126-131). To examine the particulars of these very complex issues we have divided the general topic into five major sections. In the first, we create a snapshot ofwomen's current status in research universities and assess how it has changed since the early 1970s from several perspectives: in numbers, in rank and tenure status, and in the settings and climates in which they work in various institutions. Our concern here is to distinguish between changes in women's aspirations against the background ofnew legal rights and changes in institutional responses as well as in academic resources and labor markets. Many of these changes come into sharper focus in science and engineering fields, the topic ofPart II. Women have increased their participation in these fields as students markedly, but these increases have not been reflected adequately in their presence on faculties. Accordingly, we examine the science and engineering pipeline in considerable detail. In Part III we approach questions of how sex inequities in research universities have been identified and ameliorated in two distinct and different academic settings, those of an entire large flagship state institution and of a single large department in a private medical school. Part IV explores some of the fundamental contributions of women's studies to established disciplines to see how this approach has enlarged and enriched the curriculum. Finally, in Part V we turn to concerns with the family and work issues that both institutions and individual women regard as a central problem in research universities. The problem exists in all work settings, of course, but it is exacerbated in these intensely competitive and demanding institutions. At the same time and despite the demands, working in a university may offer women much more flexibility and autonomy-a great advantage. Significantly, reconciling these claims is becoming more ofa "people" problem than one of only women. In a changed climate of family demands and expectations, men are more in need of support structures as well. We begin by considering, in Catharine Stimpson's keynote address to the conference, Chapter One, a vision of how the research university of the future might better reflect not simply a more realistic gender balance but a new paradigm of disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks and
Introduction
11
comprehensive approaches to scholarship. From there we proceed in Chapter Two to Hornig's account of the present status of women in Research Universities I and to an overview of the policies and practices that are in place in some of them to facilitate more equitable recruitment, retention, and promotion. In Chapter Three, Astin and Cress report on their national survey of the attitudes and experiences of women in research universities and compare them to their male colleagues. Part II focuses on women in the sciences-natural, mathematical and social-and in engineering. It is widely understood that women doctorates are relatively concentrated in the humanities fields, primarily in languages and literature, as well as in behavioral and certain social sciences, and are comparatively scarce in the natural and mathematical sciences and in engineering. Over the last several decades, however, the demand for science and engineering Ph.D.s in universities has been much greater than for humanities doctorates. Partly for this reason, and partly because of lingering doubts in some quarters that women have the ability to do important work in scientific fields, it is of considerable interest to examine how women have fared in academic science. It is also especially appropriate to our topic because advanced research in the sciences is done very largely in major universities (as well as in industry, which employed very few women scientists until very recently). This is so because such work usually requires expensive facilities and equipment, as well as large research teams. An additional problem in these fields is that a new faculty member, even at the assistant professor level, generally requires large startup funding from the university, often of the order of $500,000 or more; some departments may be reluctant to risk such an investment on someone they perceive as not likely to stay permanently. In Chapter Four, Fox examines the cultures and climates of graduate science departments and the effects of these factors on women's participation and position in these fields. In particular, she identifies why it matters that there are women faculty members present in order for women students to derive the same benefits as men. Chapter Five, by Kuh, looks at the interplay between the "pipeline," i.e., the growth in the supply of women doctorates, and the basically static demand for faculty in research universities. In Chapter Six Long addresses the ultimate outcomes for women science and engineering faculty in detail in order to account adequately for the observed sex differences. Overall, Part II presents a more finely detailed career structure for these science fields (including social sciences) than is possible in the humanities, where the necessary research by field remains to be updated.
12
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
An earlier assessment (Ahern and Scott 1981) can serve as a baseline for such studies. The widespread belief that women scholars are less productive than their male counterparts has been a powerful deterrent to their placement in the most selective universities. Productivity, very generally assessed as the number of publications-papers in refereed journals, scholarly books, presentations and invited papers at conferences, even patents in some areas-is an important dividing line between research institutions and colleges devoted primarily to teaching. (Note, however, that a number of "research colleges" also stress research productivity, but to a much smaller extent than universities.) Although criteria for promotion are most often defined as teaching, research, and service, in that order, at major universities it is the research that counts most heavily. When studies in the 70s found that women published less-sometimes much less-than men, the finding quickly became the leading argument against hiring women faculty although it tended to be implicit rather than explicit. Productivity studies in that period usually compared women and men faculty across disciplines in one institution, or alternatively women and men in a given field or group of fields across a number of institutions. Neither approach yields very meaningful results because of large differences among fields in publication patterns as well as differences in expectations even among research universities. The Committee on the Education and Employment ofWomen in Science and Engineering (CEEWISE) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported in 1979 that they could find no studies of productivity that had accounted adequately for "factors such as access to appropriate research facilities, division of time between undergraduate and graduate teaching responsibilities, and especially availability of graduate and other research assistants," Their report went on to state, "As we have shown...the distribution of women faculty in research departments is such that productivity comparisons between men and women of similar age and experience in the same field and institutions, and thus with comparable research opportunities, are virtually impossible" (NAS 1979:87). That situation has changed over the years at least to the extent of increasing the numbers so that valid analyses are indeed possible. In Chapter Seven, Shauman and Xie demonstrate the dependence of productivity on the research setting, laying to rest one of the criticisms that has been most damaging to women in the sciences. The third major section of the book discusses, in Chapters Eight and Nine by Hollenshead and Fried respectively, how some major equity
Introduction
13
issues of concern to women faculty were tackled in two very different settings. At the University of Michigan plans were developed over a period of years to make the campus a more welcoming and equitable place for women at all levels; it is an ongoing process and is characterized by extensive data gathering, input from many parts of the University, dose cooperation by administrators, and vigorous leadership by the president. At the Department ofMedicine ofthe Johns Hopkins Medical School, the impetus came from dissatisfied women faculty who enlisted the help of the department chairman to equalize resources and reduce their marginalization. The lessons to be drawn from these two quite disparate situations and solutions have wide applicability. In Pan N we attempt to indicate the scope and importance of the rapidly expanding fields that comprise the area called women's studies. These had their origins in the civil rights era, along with academic women's struggle for equality, and they both furthered and hampered that struggle before winning broader recognition. Even some supporters feared that setting aside the study ofwomen as a separate discipline would simply facilitate the marginalization of women in a scholarly backwater, "the home ec. of the future," as someone termed it. Over time, however, these fears receded; the findings of the new discipline in both empirical and theoretical directions and its reconfiguring of at least parts of the academic landscape, as suggested by Stimpson above, proved far too interesting to put aside. In the humanities, the rediscovery and reinterpretation of women's work and women's history reinvigorated many fields. In the social sciences, a vast body of empirical findings came to light, literally revolutionizing much traditional thinking. Such simple findings as that by far the major portion ofdaily calorie intake in hunter-gatherer societies was provided by the gatherers rather than the hunters astonished scholars who had assumed the opposite. The range ofdisciplines that flowered with the addition ofwomen's studies is far too great to cover in this volume. We have chosen just two fields to illustrate the scope and breadth of possibilities that are opened when traditional fields are viewed through a different lens. In Chapter Ten, Schiebinger introduces us to the new world of primatology, a field of the natural sciences that has undergone a sea change when examined from a female perspective. Chatterjee illuminates, in Chapter Eleven, the insights to be gained by approaching anthropology with a feminist rather than a masculine and colonial mentality. The fifth and final section is devoted to an examination of the policies and practices that have been suggested as well as implemented to create an
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
14
academic working environment that is more responsive to a changing society. The structure ofwork in major universities evolved to meet the needs of men and ofthe male lifecourse at a time when women were believed unable to compete. Although some changes-extending the tenure clock, parental leave, and others-have been instituted in many universities, these often don't meet all the needs of a changing academic workforce. In Chapter Twelve, Ferber details the problems women encounter simply as women. Familiar as these are to most women scholars at research universities (and many other institutions as well), reminding the conference participants of their importance resonated loudly, as did the many remedies, large and small, that Ferber proposed. Sullivan and Simpson, in Chapter Thirteen, continue with their experience gained from administering a variety of policies and practices at Stanford and MIT, respectively. In a concluding chapter, Fourteen, Hornig and Lazarus summarize the many lessons learned at the conference; their discussion also includes many suggestions and experiences recounted by participants in several workshop sessions.
REFERENCES Ahern, Nancy C., and Elizabeth L. Scott. 1981. Careeroutcomesina matched sample ofmen and women Ph.D.s. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Babco, Eleanor L. 2000. Professional women and minorities. Washington, D.C.: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education. 1975. Making affirmative action work in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chamberlain, Mariam K, ed. 1988. ffiJmen in academe: Progress and prospects. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Evangelauf, Jean. 1994. A new Carnegie classification. The Chronicle of Higher Education XL (April 6). Harris, Ann Sutherland. 1970. The second sex in academe. AAUP Bulletin 56 (3): 283-295. Haven, Elizabeth W., and Dwight H. Horch. 1972. How college students finance their education. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
Introduction
15
Hornig, Lilli S. 1984. Women in science and engineering: Why so few? Technology ReJliew 87 (Nov/Dec): 30-41. Kennedy, Donald. 1997. Academic duty. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lawler, Andrew. 2001. College heads pledge to remove barriers. Science 291 (February): 806. Leap, Terry L. 1993. Tenure, discrimination, and the courts. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press. Lester, Richard A. 1974. Antibias regulation ofuniversities: Faculty problems and their solutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Long, Janice. 2001. Gender equity: Promises made. Chemical and Engineering News 79 (February 5): 8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1999. A study on the status of women faculty in science at MIT. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McGuigan, Dorothy Gies. 1970. A dangerous experiment: 100 years of women at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Nadis, Steve. 2001. Top research universities face up to gender bias. Nature 409 (8 February): 653. National Academy of Sciences, Committee on the Education and Employment of Women in Science and Engineering. 1979. Climbing the academic ladder: Doctoral women scientists in academe. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Olson, Keith W. 1974. The G.!. Bill, the veterans, and the colleges. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Sanderson, Allen R., et al. 1999. Doctorate recipients from United States universities: Summary report 1998. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Special Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, Second Session. 1975. Hearings: Civil rights obligations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Tuckman, Howard, Susan Coyle, and Yupin Bae. 1990. On time to the doctorate: A study ofthe increased time to complete doctorates in science and engineering. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Chapter One
Dreaming and Scheming Moving Towards Our Universityl Catharine R. Stimpson
Fortunate woman that I am) I have been invited to dream about a research university of the future. Inhibited woman that I can be) I will not take us into the domains of speculative fiction where visiting professors can travel from one galaxy to the next, where professors and students might be hybrids who carry the genes of several species) and where information passes swiftly from mind to mind-without benefit of speech or writing or audiovisual aids. I believe that if we scheme patiently and persistently enough) my dream might be realized within the next few years. For it melds materials that we now have on hand) not materials that we have yet to invent. My dream combines and recombines elements from the modem research university and from women)s studies) that daring bluestocking ofmany colors-in her sandals or sneakers or boots or pumps or Dr. Martens-who has marched into the university and claimed her rightful place. Most dreams have their roots in the actualities of the past. So does mine) specifically in the 1860s in the United States. The first is the birth of the research university in America) which coincided at many points with the growth ofwomen's colleges and women)s education. Both movements demonstrate the push towards greater and greater education that is a hallmark of modernization. In 1861, the year in which Vassar College was chartered) Yale University awarded the first doctor of philosophy degree in the United States) to be followed by New York University. Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
19
20
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act, which founded the great land-grant universities. In the last part of the 19th century, the American research university grew rapidly, taking as its model the new German university that stressed seminars, laboratory research, and a scholarly monograph. Between 1815 and 1918, over 10,000 Americans studied at these institutions, at least half of them at the University of Berlin, itself founded in 1810. Several of these Americans returned from their international studies to become university presidents, architects of 20th-century American higher education, and formidable patriarchs: Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Andrew D. White of Cornell, James D. Angell of Michigan, G. Stanley Hall of Clark, Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia, Benjamin Ide Wheeler of California. Such names are carved into the stones of the American research university, institutions that have grown to become sites of great achievement and well-documented growth. In 1930, they received $22 million of federal support; in 1960, $405 million; in 1998, $13.5 billion. If the 125 research universities today represent but 3% of all institutions of higher education, they nevertheless award 32% of the baccalaureate degrees. Of the people who received science and engineering doctorates from 1991 to 1995, 56 % of them had taken their baccalaureates in research universities. To be sure, not every American scholar applauded this muscular evolution. Perhaps, the most pungent mockery spurted out ofWilliam James, one of America's great intellectuals. In March, 1903, James published his polemic, "The Ph.D. Octopus," in the Harvard Monthly. In spirit and often in substance, James' critique ofthe research university as rigid, mechanistic, unfeeling, and indifferent to teaching anticipates that of Women's Studies. He compared the awarding ofdoctoral degrees to an octopus, to him a cephalopod with a pouch-shaped body and eight tentacles that seizes its prey and paralyzes it with poisonous secretions. James also described the Ph.D. as a "a tyrannical machine with unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption" (James 1987:113). For James, these two metaphors-the octopus and the tyrannical machine, one drawn from nature, one from culture-represent a "grotesque tendency" in both the university and United States society at large. We are becoming what we now call the "credentialed society," preferring outward badges to inward value. Moreover, as James urgently warns his readers, there is no guarantee that a Ph.D. can teach. "Notoriously," James writes, "his moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him for success in the
Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University
21
classroom; and of these characteristics his doctor's examination is unable to take any account." James tacks up a blazing, bracing series of warning signs on the perimeter of a dreamer's university: "Rigidity and Fear of Creativity: Do Not Enter"; "Tide Worship: Keep Away"; "Preferring the System to the Person: Do Not Even Think of Parking Here." Today, even greater criticism from a wide variety of sources is being slung at the American research university. It is variously charged from different perspectives not only with neglecting teaching (Kenny 1998), with also overproducing doctorates; with regarding divisions of continuing education as cash cows rather than as vital centers of lifelong learning; with permitting political correctness to corrupt academic standards. In addition to criticism, the research university is under real and "increased fiscal constraint," which has put pressure on research funding except in biomedicine (Brand 1998). In addition to criticism and fiscal constraint, the research university-to a degree many faculty members have not yet grasped-has strong competition as a "content provider" from new, forprofit educational companies and as a research center from private, for-profit biotechnology and software companies. Like others, I believe that the American research university-a 20th century colossus-must change or slowly atrophy. Women's studies has been among the most powerful and influential sources of critique of the research university, particularly for its historic indifference to racial and gender equity in student bodies, faculties, administrations, and trustees. However, simultaneously, women's studies has been an affirming force, taking as a central obligation the recovery of women's knowledge-both knowledge about women and the knowledge of women. This recovery has been, in turn, part of the reinvention of education that has been the large ambition of women's studies. A few weeks ago I was in a meeting room in a conference center in the suburbs of New Jersey. A well-meaning organization had brought a varied group together to discuss careers outside of the academy for freshly-minted doctorates in the humanities. "Tell me," I asked a man from a big financial services company, "what is the ideal profile of a potential employee with a Ph.D. in the humanities?" He answered without hesitation, "Team player, collaborative, able to think across the disciplines, not afraid to go outside the box, problem-solver. " I thanked him but during the coffee break, sought out a friend. "Team player, collaborative, able to think across the disciplines,"
22
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
I repeated, halfin annoyance, halfin rue, "For thirty years, that's been the ideal profile of someone in women's studies, but does anybody know it?" The answer to my rhetorical question is, of course, "Not exactly." This is a great pity, because women's studies has made such immense contributions to education in general and to the research university in particular. It has done so even though it has made mistakes, lacked money and power, been ignored because of its reputation as a "woman's thing," and endured demonization as a coven of politically correct witches who hate God, man, and footnotes with equal fury (Boxer 1998).2 To note but three of its contributions to my dream: First, women's studies has a vision ofteaching and learning that classrooms can flesh out. To borrow from Jane Roland Martin, women's studies asks that we add "care, concern, and connection" to the curriculum. Moreover, we can add "care, concern, and connection" without sacrificing argument and disputation, and without turning out either mealymouthed sycophants or sentimentalists. This vision insists that every woman, even one stigmatized as foolish or dumb, is capable oflearning. Boldly, women's studies has rewritten Aristotle to read, "All men and women by nature desire to know" (Aristotle 1947:243). Learning can be lonely and arduous, but more often, it is a lifelong process of critical thinking and of making fresh, valuable connections-among learners, among disciplines, among ideas, between thought and feeling, between thought and action. A teacher is not a magisterial, and usually masculine, authority figure. Rather, a teacher is a mentor and companion in exploration. The process of learning changes the learner. She, or he, becomes stronger, smarter, more in tune with life, more alert to realities, more capable and capacious. Second, doing the work of teaching and learning, women's studies explores significant areas and subjects. It asks the fundamental question of what gender is. What are its biological, social, and cultural causes? Why, for example, does French have "la plume" and "Ie oiseau" while English has "the feather" and "the bird"? Women's studies then explores the destructive consequences and disabilities of our gender structures. Why have so many societies given men powers over women, powers exercised both benignly and cruelly? These explorations, however, are not only ends in themselves. They also ask how we can rid ourselves of these powers, a task made so difficult because these powers are sustained in our institutions, our minds, and our psyches. As Virginia Valian suggests, we invisibly cling to ideas about gender that harm women. She writes about
Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University
23
"a set ofimplicit, or nonconscious, hypotheses about sex differences plays a central role in shaping men's and women's professional lives. These hypotheses, which I call gender schemas, affect our expectations of men and women, our evaluations of their work, and their performance as professionals. Both men and women hold the same gender schemas and begin acquiring them in early childhood. Their most important consequence for professional life is that men are constantly overrated, while women are underrated" (Valian 1998). Once again combining critique and productive scholarship, women's studies then explores the constructive consequences of our gender structures, such creations and accomplishments ofwomen as the women's rights movements on the one hand or great novels on the other. Despite these achievements, as women's studies shows, often with acute pain, there are many differences among women, some constructive but many destructive. White American husbands may have ruled their white American wives, but these wives did own black slaves of both sexes. Because of its willingness to engage in complex acts ofacknowledgment ofthe many differences among us, women's studies has been able to be a pioneering guide to a diverse, multicultural world. Third and finally, linking its interests in pedagogy and in ideas, women's studies offers a blueprint for humane excellence in educational institutions. It calls for educational systems that serve the learner, not the reverse. Doing so, they will provide access to their resources to anyone who is able to benefit from them. They are fair and democratic in governance. Their social organization will permit learners to balance academic, work, and family life. A graduate student running a lab experiment at night, a secretary who is a single mother-they and others will have access to help with child care. Humane educational institutions also prize freedom. Not only must learners be able to think freely. They must be free from sexual and racial harassment, free from economic circumstances so grinding that learning becomes impossible. Women's studies continues to refine this blueprint because of its profound belief that education is much more than a matter of picking up credentials or going to keggers. Education provides the material, psychological, and intellectual skills for living. It will give a Hmong refugee woman, for example, the ability to gain economic security and independence from male domination (Lee 1998). My simple dream is that the American research university, which once modelled itself on the German research university, will now model itself on women's studies as well. Before gender traditionalists flee before me,
24
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
as if I were the head of the Medusa, let me assure them that I am not hallucinating that every chemistry class will begin by reciting an Emily Dickinson poem or a chapter of Toni Morrison-salutary though that might be. My dream, however, does insist that every chemistry department work with primary and secondary schools to make sure that girls as well as boys learn the joys and possibilities of science. Interweaving the research university and women's studies, the research university ofmy dream would articulate a revivified set ofcore values. This is far more than a rhetorical exercise or some boilerplate for the catalogue. For the research university will not survive unless it articulates values that both appeal to new learners and distinguish it from the competition from other providers that will inexorably grow. I have often wondered why a university's statement of values can be so boring-to people who write about universities, live in them, read about them, or pay for them. In part, this is our fault, for we fail to convey the passion for ideas that is a psychic force behind our work, our ardent devotion to what was once baldly called "the life of the mind," and the reasons why we selected this life. For many of us, especially in the humanities, the possibility of a fat paycheck was not among our motives. Paradoxically, we freely made this choice out of a deep compulsion and overwhelming desire to dwell with ideas. The beauty of mathematics drew some of us, the narratives and blanknesses of history others, the structure of the atom still others, the sharp beauty of a poem still others, the meanings of an alien culture still others. No matter what our individual situation, we lovedyes, loved-the cauldrons of consciousness, the works and grandeur of the intellect. We loved to learn the Whole oflove (to paraphrase an Emily Dickinson poem)-the alphabet, the words. Not surprisingly, some of the most eloquent expressions of a desire for learning have emanated from people relegated to the outer precincts, attics, and broom closets of the research university. What, then, are the values that my dream research university will act upon? 3 The first is for the research university to serve, as it traditionally has, as an advocate for advanced inquiry and creativity, for the mind and imagination going at full tilt. Our degrees must not represent the mechanical completion of a check list of courses, seminars, exams, and papers, but the completion of one vital, fertile, restless encounter with ideas and knowledge. Obviously, because they are research degrees, they signify mastery ofa field, the well-honed capacity to understand and study an important area of
Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University
25
natural or human life. Normally, academic disciplines define a field. However, even the most internally coherent and stable of fields are shifting, changing, and fluid. As a result, mastery of a field demands the ability to live with the instability of mastery and to recognize that established paradigms within fields change. Curiosity must accompany competency. For the mind is pluripotent, capable of encountering and generating many ideas. 4 The more ideas a leamer encounters, the less stable the more rigid schemata of the mind become. Moreover, established borders among fields blur, shift, become reconfigured. Normally, interdisciplinary work-like that ofwomen's studies-defines this process of productive blurring, shifting, and reconfiguration. Crucially, the interdisciplinary approach is far more than having disciplines within the arts and sciences shake hands with each other. The handshake must go on among the arts and sciences and the professional schools as well. Recently I have been team-teaching a course in "Law and Literature" with a New York University Law School colleague. The experience provided a series offabulous jolts to my ideas about reading and writing. The second value is teaching and teaching how to teach what we know and what we are discovering. In a dream research university, teaching is not a command-and-control process in which professors pass information down to graduate students who will pass it down to undergraduates either as teaching assistants or, in the future, as faculty members. To be sure, such a chain of dissemination does exist. JustifYing it is the belief, generally correct, that professors know more than graduate students who, in tum, know more than undergraduates. However, we must supplement the pedagogy of dissemination, the passing down of knowledge, with the pedagogy of mentoring, the nurturing of the student's mind and career. The speech patterns of mentoring are those of conversation, not those of the lecture (or diatribe) with a grateful, trembling auditor. Teachers should be able to speak to many audiences inside and out ofthe research university. Thus, in my dream research university, every tenure-track and tenured faculty member must converse about ideas at least once every year with a nonacademic group that will, in turn, talk back to him or her. Third, a dream research university articulates and embodies an ethic of learning and teaching. Obviously, each field has a set of protocols that codify appropriate professional behavior within that field, but there should be an ethical code that all teachers and students must respect. My outline of this code should surprise no-one. It insists upon honesty, fairness, integrity, freedom of inquiry, and collegiality, that set of communal
26
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
relationships between cronyism and friendship. Recently, the best codes have expanded to include freedom from bullying, denigration, and racial and sexual harassment. Even the most brilliant among us should not exploit, use, and abuse colleagues and students. This expansion ofethical codes both reflects and encourages the fourth value of my dream research university: the continued creation of a cosmopolitan meritocracy. In a meritocracy, what matters is the activity beneath the skull-not the pigmentation of the skin that covers the skull, not the ratios of Xs to Ys among the chromosomes, not the nationality of the hand that holds out a passport at the U.S. border. To be sure, William James taught W.E.B. DuBois and Gertrude Stein at Harvard, both of whom praised him as a teacher, but James' Harvard was not a meritocracy. Although the critique of women's studies of racial and gender arrangements in the research university has been legitimate, one of the most admirable features of the American research university during the 20thcentury has been its effort to dilute and eradicate its religious, racial, and gender prejudices. Despite the blind claims that the United States is now colorblind, these slow, laborious, gallant, morally necessary efforts to further the talents of all of us are still necessary. If meritocracy encourages individual talent, cosmopolitanism then asks individuals to imagine themselves as citizens as well. However, we have dual citizenship, in a locality and in the world at large. As Martha Nussbaum writes, "Each of us dwells.. .in two communities-the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration that 'is truly great and truly common.' It is the latter community that is, most fundamentally, the source of our moral and social obligations" (Nussbaum 1997). A particular research university can be our locality, but we must move out from there to exemplify a human and global community. We will not be able to achieve cosmopolitanism if our ideas about The Other and others are false, or limited. After reading Valian, I concluded that research universities should institute "Schematic Workshops" in which people would discover, in apperceptive acts, what debilitating schemata they used-about gender, about race, about nationality-to organize and control their realities. Fifth and finally, a dream research university will balance the human connections that have been the heart of traditional learning and teaching with the new technologies ofinformation. Despite the fact that I am cybernetically challenged, I am no Luddite. The new technologies ofinformation are transforming scholarship, research, and teaching for the better. I am
Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University
27
tantalized by the promise of what else we might do. What, for example, if the "Law and Literature" class I now team-teach could be conducted simultaneously by direct broadcast satellite with a group in England or Scandinavia or Poland or South Africa-as long as our time wnes were sufficiently proximate. However, I fear the emergence of the exclusively on-line classroom, especially if it is conducted for profit by one of the proliferating corporate educational groups. Such classrooms can lack flesh, can lack blood, can lack spirit, do lack the stimulus and correctives of face-toface encounters. One can imagine Socrates and his students, or Sappho and her students, or William James and his students, communicating bye-mail without doing violence to our notion of their teaching. With a giggle or two, one can imagine a home page for Socrates, Sappho, or William James. However, one cannot imagine Socrates or Sappho or William James wholly on-line without doing violence to our notion of the soul-to-soul energies of their instruction. Two recent experiences have exacerbated my anxiety. In Spring, 1998, the Library ofAmerica published two volumes ofthe writings of Gertrude Stein that I co-edited. The interest in Stein is due in part to the work of feminist critics and women's studies. In order to publicize the volumes, I accepted an invitation from Compuserve to participate in chat about Gertrude Stein on its Literary Page for a couple of months. There were fewer entries on the Gertrude Stein message board than my ego would have preferred, but the wounding of my ego is not the source of my mental perturbations. In praise of my on-line conversations about Stein, let me say that they were global in scope, replete with voices that seemed genuinely interested in Stein and literature, and often informative. I learned something from a filmmaker who had shot some footage in an apartment Stein had shared with Alice B. Toklas in Paris. However, these conversations were also bloated with opinions and misinformation, and it was impossible to tell if opinions were being deepened and misinformation being erased. The experience also reminded me of the need to distinguish among information, knowledge, and wisdom. Information is data, a trickle of data, a stream of data, an avalanche of data. Knowledge distinguishes among data to determine their integrity and then fits them together into significant, deep, broad patterns. In his book about the university, which is notable for its unfortunately too traditional combination of intellectual strength and silence about women, Jaroslav Pelikan argues that the business of the research university is knowledge, not wisdom. Wisdom does
28
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
exist; it is understanding the why of things (Pelikan 1992:55), which I take to mean the place and proportionality of things. The research university may have wise people wandering about, Pelikan suggests, but it cannot guarantee that it will as an institution provide wisdom. I agree that wisdom may be found in many places outside of the research university-in a blues song, a proverb, even in a scrap of text on a website. Nor do I believe that the research university can guarantee that everything it does will be wise or even, as my experience in women's studies has shown, knowledgeable. It should, however, provide access to as many knowledgeable voices as possible and to as many sources of wisdom as possible. In brief, it should be at once a forum and a repository. Then, in Autumn 1998, I read an article in my hometown paper, The New York Times, with this headline: "A New Way to Read the Law at Home." The story then reported that Kaplan Educational Centers, a Washington Post Company subsidiary, had opened the Concord University School of Law "in which students will take all of their courses over the Internet." For those of us who care about access to education, one potential strength ofConcord U. is that it seems designed for "people whose careers, family obligations or geographic locations make it hard for them to attend traditional law schools." Moreover, Concord is less expensive than other law schools. "The cost, $4,200 a year for a fouryear law degree program, will be far below the cost at most private universities and even less than at many public ones" (Arenson 1998). Still, one must wonder skeptically about the human connections between teacher and students and among students. Will these classrooms be anything more than a tyrannical machine for punching out credits and credentials of ultimately uncertain worth? Because on-line classrooms promise comparatively cheap, convenient courses, I predict that they will infiltrate even the research university more and more aggressively, at first in the professions and then in the arts and sciences. What will traditional education be seen to offer in this newly competitive environment? Why will our excellence be sought after? One reason will be our facilities. Another will be the nature of our communities, of which facilities are a material part. Our communities, however, will continue to exert their attraction only if they are financially accessible and if they offer the opportunity to learn with humane excellence. I have suggested that we can achieve humane excellence in a dream research university if we serve the life of the mind and imagination
Dreaming and Scheming: Moving Towards Our University
29
rationally and passionately; if we learn and teach how to teach; if we practice an ethics of learning and teaching; if we create and sustain a cosmopolitan meritocracy; and if we deploy the new technologies of information in ways that neither romanticize them nor send us fleeing like scaredy-cats to the pencil shelf in Staples. Is there a metaphor that might capture my dream research university? As James' octopus did his nightmare Ph.D.? Let me offer this: the hub. The hub is the solid, central part of a wheel. So the research university can unite several spokes and sites of inquiry. In a contemporary extension of meaning, a hub is a center of airplane flights. So the research university should be a center of flights of inquiry and the imaginationin the human and natural worlds. Unfortunately, the hub airport is now a shopping mall as well, offering everything from apples to stuffed zebras to local delicacies. lfit's Vidalia onions, it must be Atlanta. However, the research university can offer a mall of data, ideas and voices instead of things. Some may fear that this will lead to a hubbub, a confusion, but if the task of the research university is knowledge, then its faculty and students can spin significant patterns from these ideas and voices. As it does so, like Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-53) providing observational evidence that supports a theory of the expanding universe, the research university will then find evidence to support a theory that the universe of knowledge must expand. However, we must avoid hubris, the arrogant conviction within the research university that it is omniscient. Yet both the research university and women's studies have shown that we can sometimes glimpse and even grasp wisdom. My dream is that they will move together towards deeper wisdom, more truths, and, if not towards more love, at least towards that mutuality that is the alphabet of respect.
NOTES 1. An expanded version of this essay, which includes some of the same materials, is "Myths of Transformation: Realities of Change," PMLA 115 (October 2000):1142-1153. 2. Boxer is a recent history of women's studies in the United States. 3. I adapt these passages from my essay, "The Octopus and Excellence," published as an Occasional Paper by the Council on Graduate Schools. 4. A pluripotent stem cell can "form many body tissues." (Wade, F2).
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
30
REFERENCES Arenson, Karen W. 1998. A new way to read the law at home. The New YOrk Times, September 20, WI( 3. Aristotle. 1947. Metaphysics. In Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library. Boxer, Marilyn Jacoby. 1998. When women ask the questions: Creating women)s studies in America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, The. 1998. Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America)s research universities. New York: State University of New York at Stony Brook. Brand, Myles. 1998. Research universities in transition. Paper prepared for Colloquium on Postbaccalaureate Futures, Aspen Institute, November 1-3. James, William. 1987. The Ph.D. octopus. In William James: Writings 1902-1910, ed. Bruce Kuklick. New York: Library ofAmerica. Kolodny, Annette. 1998. Failing the future: A dean looks at higher education in the twenty-first century. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Lee, Stacey J. 1998. The road to college: Hmong American women's pursuit of higher education. In Minding Women: Reshaping the Educational Realm, ed. Christine A. Woyshner and Holly S. Gelfond. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Educational Review, Reprint Series No. 30. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1997. Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1992. The idea ofthe university: A reexamination. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wade, Nicholas. 1998. Primordial Cells Fuel Debate on Ethics. The New YOrk Times, November 10, FI-2.
Chapter Two
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities Lilli S. Hornig
In this chapter we establish a baseline of the position of women faculty at the turn of the millennium, a mark against which future change can be measured. To set this in its proper context we also look back, to the extent possible, at the situation in 1970, just as efforts to increase the participation of women began. It is not only the proportion of women that is of interest, but also their varying distribution among institutions and departments, whether the conditions of their work settings and environments are supportive or constraining, and how these factors have changed in the last three decades. No very dear starting point for such an analysis exists. Data on women faculty were not of general interest before 1970, when approximately 23 percent offaculty across all postsecondary institutions were women (Vetter and Babco 1997:151), and no database on this topic exists for the research universities. Reliable data on women's distribution across fields and departments are also scarce or nonexistent. However, a number of reports from leading universities concerning the status of women were compiled around 1970, in response to the impending requirement for affirmative action plans, by newly appointed ad hoc or sometimes statutory committees on the status of women. These reports were to serve as the basis for calculating "goals"-the number of women or minorities that would have to be added to academic units in order to match their availability-and "timetables" for attaining the specified goals. Note that Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, K1uwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003
31
32
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
universities were expected to recruit women or minorities only at the levels of competence that were traditional for each institution, not to lower their standards in any way, and that the timetables were flexible.
DATA SOURCES The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) publishes an annual report on the economic status of the profession which also reports on numbers and proportions of women, and their salary differences from men, at each regular academic rank in over 1800 universities and colleges. These data serve as our source ofthe proportions ofwomen faculty at the three regular ranks (although instructors are also included in the tabulations). Although the published tables also include the proportion of each rank that is tenured, this unfortunately does not yield unequivocal data by gender, and a summary table (Academe, March-April 2000:20) does not separate data on tenure for research universities only. We include data for 2000 and comparisons with 1988 and 1998 figures to gauge the rate of change. In an effort to also understand better the distribution of women across departments, we asked the affirmative action officers at the RU I institutions to send us their most recent affirmative action reports, assuming that these would be using a fairly standard format and thus be at least roughly comparable across the institutions. This approach was only partially successful. Only 40 of the 88 universities responded by sending the reports, which are public documents, and they used many different formats. Although we were able to sort out some information about departmental or divisional distributions, these were often not comparable among universities because of differing organization. To gain a better understanding of the general climates and attitudes toward the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in various universities, we also sent a letter survey to the chief academic officers of the 88 institutions. The questions we asked were the following: 1. What steps has your institution taken to insure that no gender bias enters into recruitment, appointment, promotion, and tenure decisions? Do you feel they have been successful? If not, where have they failed? 2. What, ifany, incentives exist for departments to increase the numbers of women faculty? Are set-aside funds available to take advantage of targets of opportunity in recruitment and hiring? Do you feel that such strategies have been effective?
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
33
3. If the numbers of women faculty at your institution remain relatively small, to what do you ascribe this problem? 4. Does your institution facilitate access to daycare? Do you encourage the hiring/tenucing ofcouples? Are there other "family-friendly" policies in place, such as provision for extending probationary periods for young parents, or for assistance with caring for ill or elderly family members? 5. Which of the initiatives you have taken do you consider most successful? Which least? 6. If increasing the proportions of women faculty is a priority at your institution, how is this conveyed to departments? What mechanisms exist for insuring that the policies are carried out? 7. Is there a standing committee on women faculty in your institution? What is its charge, and how often does it report? After one reminder mailing, answers to this set of questions were received from only 20 universities, about 23 percent of the total. It is probably fair to assume that non-responding institutions had relatively low interest in these issues.
RESULTS A. PROPORTIONS OF WOMEN FACULTY
A sampling of reports on the status of women produced in the early 1970s, while in no way comprehensive, does serve as an indication of the low starting point from which we can assess changes over the last three decades. The institutions mentioned here are representative of the top research universities at that period as well as currently. In 1971 the AAUP Committee on the Status of Women (Indiana 1971:8) studied the position ofwomen at Indiana University, Bloomington Campus, and reported a total of 5.2 percent women full professors, 8.8 percent associate professors, 14.3 percent assistant professors, and 26.3 percent instructors, for an overall total of 10.6 percent. Out of 43 schools and divisions, 16 had no women at any level (Ibid., Table 2). Also in 1971, a report from the Committee on the Status ofProfessional Women at Yale (Yale 1971) found that women were 0.5 percent of full professors, 1.3 percent of associate professors, and 8.2 percent of assistant professors; including the 12.5 percent ofinstructors, the total faculty of 469 had 19 women, or 4 percent. The departments of chemistry, political science, and sociology had no women at any rank.
34
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
A 1972 report from UCLA (Chancellor's Advisory Committee 1972:3) found that women made up a total of 7 percent of all faculty in what was termed the Regular Professorial Series, and only 4.5 percent of full professors. The authors pointed out that these proportions exaggerate the representation of women overall because only four departments (Nursing, Dance, Public Health, and Physical Education) accounted for one-third of all women faculty. They further investigated the historical record at UCLA, finding that in 1940-41 women had been 12 percent of the regular faculty. Ten years later they were 13 percent of full professors, 10 percent of associate professors, and 12 percent of all tenured faculty, contrasted with 5 percent in 1972. The University ofCalifornia (UC 1972) studied the position ofwomen faculty at three ofits graduate campuses-Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Davis. At Berkeley the study found 48 women, 4 percent of 1,214 regular faculty at the rank of instructor or higher (p.l0). Two years after the previous study, UCLA had a total of 11 percent women faculty including both regular ranks and instructors, lecturers and associates. UC-Davis counted 88 women, 8 percent of the total including the 45 who were lecturers. The remaining 43 comprised 2.5 percent of professors, 6.6 percent of associate professors, and 7.4 percent of assistant professors. The Task Force on Women of the University of Tennessee reported to the Chancellor (U-TN 1972:72) that women were 8.2 percent of professors, 9.6 percent of associate professors, 21.7 percent of assistant professors, and 52.2 percent of instructors. Women were 13.6 percent of the total at the three upper ranks. Cornell's ad hoc Trustee Committee on the Status ofWomen (Cornell 1974:4) reponed that there were no women out ofa total 1,474 persons at the three professorial ranks, or 7.5 percent, but that one half of these women were in the College of Human Ecology. In descending rank order, women were 3 percent, 10.5 percent, and 12 percent of the three ranks. A somewhat later study from the University of Minnesota (U-MN 1978:5) prepared while the university was being sued for sex discrimination-a suit which eventually cost them a reputed $10 million-listed a total of 13.5 percent women at the three professorial ranks in 1977, a reduction from the 15.4 percent that had been present in 1951. The College of Technology had only 1.6 percent women in 1977. All of these universities, and all other RU Is, have changed markedly since then, as the data in Table 1 demonstrate. However, the changes have been uneven in several ways. By 1988 all but three of the universities
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
35
(CalTech, Georgia Tech, and MIT) had 10 percent or more total women faculty, and by 2000 the great majority were well above 20 percent. The range of these figures was considerable, from 4.1 percent to over 28 percent in 1988 and from 10.7 percent to 34.3 percent in 2000, with CalTech and Vrrginia Commonwealth University being the low and high extremes, respectively, in both years. Some institutions showed growth spurts in one time interval but lagged in another, probably reflecting such factors as age distributions of faculty or expansion in some fields. Overall the regular faculties did not grow much, and shrank in some universities, a symptom of steady-state policies and the ever-increasing use of temporary, part-time, and adjunct faculty. Comparing the results for 2000 with the reports of the '70s gives us a rough idea of the rates of increase over almost thirty years, and the results are not very impressive. The annual increases amount to about 0.5 percentage points in most of these institutions over the entire period. Table 1 also includes the average annual growth (or loss) in the proportion ofwomen for the two intervals, 1988-98 and 1998-2000. Again, the results are widely scattered, from a low of zero at the University of Alabama to 1.53 points at the University of New Mexico in the first interval, and from -4.7 at Yale to 6.45 at Ohio State in the second. The average proportion of women has grown by over 60 percent in twelve years, and the average annual increase is 0.6 to 0.7 percentage points. The rank distributions of women and men faculty, also obtainable from the AAUP tables and detailed in Table 2, paint a more complex picture. The ranks of full professors in 1988 are sparsely populated by women, with fewer than one-fifth of the institutions exceeding 10 percent; they average 7.9 percent. At the associate professor rank women held about one fifth of positions, on average, and they were almost one third of assistant professors. Note, however, that the range of these proportions is again considerable: in 1988 CalTech had only 1.2 percent women full professors while at the other extreme New York University had 15.9 percent. By 2000 women's share of full professorships had nearly doubled, to an average of 14.4 percent, associate professorships increased by 50 percent, and assistant professorships by 29 percent. Again, there was a wide spread, from a low of 5.7 percent women full professors at Georgia Tech to a high of 23.1 percent at Georgetown. Similarly, women associate professors were 15.8 percent at Georgia Tech and 43.4 percent at Johns Hopkins, while for assistant professors the range was from 23.9 percent, again at Georgia Tech, to 57.8 percent at
36
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Virginia Commonwealth University. It is still the case that most of the men are full professors while the majority of women remain assistant professors. Tenure
The information supplied in affirmative action reports often includes tenure status only as consolidated figures for tenure and tenure-track personnel. These do not furnish much insight for two reasons: 1) we do not know how they break down between tenure and tenure-track, and 2) perhaps more significantly, some top private institutions do not have a tenure track in the sense it is understood in public systems. In the latter, there are usually well defined criteria for promotion to tenure after a set probationary period; it is generally assumed that a tenure review will end favorably, absent any explicit failures to meet expectations. In many other universities, however, the practice is to search nationally or internationally for the best possible person who can be recruited, a search in which existing junior faculty may also be candidates. In the past this resulted only occasionally in granting tenure to junior faculty already in place, although in recent years these institutions have generally relaxed this rule, primarily because they found that lacking the expectation of tenure, many outstanding people chose to seek junior appointments elsewhere. Both Harvard and Yale have recently been promoting junior faculty at much higher rates than in the past. Due in large part to the great diversity among universities even in this relatively small segment, we were unable to extract any meaningful national data on tenure from the affirmative action reports. This is the case because there are great differences in size, mission, and types of units or divisions among institutions. For example, flagship state universities and other land grant campuses usually have schools of nursing, home economics, library science, and education, all heavily skewed toward women, and schools of engineering, technology, agriculture, and other traditionally maledominated fields. Such divisions may be absent or very small in other universities, and in any case the balance among them may fluctuate widely. It should be noted that equal-opportunity regulations take account of this diversity by allowing each institution to work out its own goals and timetables and assess its own performance, subject to federal review. A few illustrative examples from affirmative action reports will serve to show the range ofdata presented. UC-Berkeley, for instance, reported in 1997 on a retrospective look at its women faculty, finding that the
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
37
proportion of tenured posts held by women had grown from 4.9 percent in 1976 to 20.2 percent in 1997, while the proportion of "ladder" posts went from 22.4 percent to 38.4 percent. In another summary Cornell reported an increase in new tenure appointments of women from 14.1 percent (1993) to 16.0 percent (1997). At MIT the tenure fraction rose from 9.7 percent in 1996 to 11.2 percent in 1997. Between 1990 and 1995 at the University of Illinois (Chicago) women's share increased from 18.6 percent to 22.7 percent of combined tenured and tenure-track positions in the college of arts and sciences, and from 35.1 percent to 46.5 percent in the college of education. At the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) from 1992 to 1996 the increase for women in combined tenure and tenure-track appointments was from 21.3 to 23.6 percent. Table 3 shows the breakdowns for tenure, tenure-track, and off-track positions for women, to the extent they could be identified from the affirmative action reports we received. Note that the figures are for three different years and are grouped accordingly.
Field Distributions An issue of considerable interest is how the actual proportions of women faculty in various fields are related to their presence in the appropriate doctoral pool, i.e. in that pool as it existed in a relevant time period. For example, reaching full professor status is generally taken to require ten to twelve years post-Ph.D. whereas assistant professors are drawn from a recent Ph.D. pool; "recent" differs from one field to another, depending on the need for one or more years ofpostdoctoral fellowship experience. So-called "availability" estimates are based on the Doctoral Records File of the National Academy of Sciences; academic departments are expected to use these data to determine what the expected availability of female or minority candidates is for a given position. Some of the affirmative action reports we examined contain comparisons ofactual hiring with availabilty. Representative examples are listed in Table 4. There is no single case where the actual proportions of female faculty even approach the institutions' own availability figures. As Duke University's report for 1996 (p. 17) states, "University hiring has lagged behind availability of women in the workforce for years; as availability continues to increase each year, this trend has continued." The differences between actual proportions and availability are very large in chemistry and math, somewhat less so in biology and social sciences, and smallest in English. The discrepancy in
38
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
chemistry has persisted nearly unchanged since the 1970s; chemistry is much the largest field in the physical sciences for women, annually producing about as many women Ph.D.s as English and currently amounting to over 30 percent of new doctorates.
Salaries Salary differences between male and faculty have existed for many years, as they have in other professions (Ahern and Scott 1981:76; NAS 1983:4.21; Hornig and Ekstrom 1984:188). That situation remains unchanged, although the differences have declined somewhat. Faculty women's salaries by rank, as a percentage of men's, are listed in Table 5. Out of over 770 cases included there (three ranks for each institution for each of three different years) there are six instances of equal salaries: full professors at Georgetown in 1988, associate professors at Stanford in 1988, Georgetown in 1998, and Berkeley in 2000, and assistant professors at Cornell (statutory colleges) in 1988 and CalTech in 2000. Note that there are also four cases of women having higher salaries than men, at Georgetown for associate professors in 1988, at Duke in 1988 and Oregon State in 2000 for full professors, and at Temple in 2000 for assistant professors. B. SURVEY QUESTIONS
As noted above, the seven questions we asked in letters addressed to presidents and chancellors received replies from fewer than one quarter of the universities, with answers ranging from perfunctory to comprehensive and thoughtful. Perhaps significantly, in view of its subsequent admission of problems concerning the treatment of senior women faculty (see Introduction, this volume), MIT responded with the simple statement that "faculty are asked to recognize and avoid gender bias," surely the zenith of faith in faculty judgment in this area. Most universities were less sanguine, however. A perceptive observer at the University of Washington wrote, "It is not possible to insure that no bias enters into the employment process." That may indeed be the case, but many institutions are trying in many ways to minimize the possibility. There is general agreement that effective steps can be taken to foster fairness in faculty employment decisions. The following are steps that the responding institutions generally agreed on: 1. Frequent updating and dissemination to departments of availability data on women scholars in their respective fields;
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
39
2. Continuous monitoring of search design and execution; 3. Monitoring of results, continuous evaluation of whether goals are met, and feedback to departments; 4. Insuring inclusion of women on all search and promotion committees; if none are available in the department or institution they are recruited from outside; 5. Where external referees are customary, they must include women; 6. Accountability for results is essential; success or failure in meeting established goals must be considered in performance reviews; 7. Integration of diversity goals into institutional planning processes and line decision-making; and 8. Responding universities emphasize that the most important ingredient is effective high level leadership to set clear expectations for bias-free recruitment and promotion. Among explicit policies that foster recruitment and retention of women, provisions for extending the tenure clock and for family leave are widespread, although several institutions noted that they were used less than expected and speculated that some disadvantage was believed attached to their use. A widely favored tool for fostering faculty diversity is a "target of opportunity" program by which special funds are set aside for recruiting outstanding women or minorities who might become available even though no regular faculty line is open. University of California campuses that had such programs in the past regretted having had to end them, in accord with new state law. The University of Washington's program is noteworthy for its flexibility and comprehensiveness. It is not limited to women and minorities. It provides funding in anticipation of a later vacancy (as do several other programs), for summer or other special support needs, to meet competitive offers to existing faculty, and to help with placement of partners. The institutions that have such programs in place uniformly regard them as highly successful tools. A few mentioned having had to end them due to budgetary constraints, and several also noted that they were used more often for minorities than for women. Most of the responding universities are concerned about the placement problem for spouses or partners, especially if they have failed to recruit a faculty member they wanted who came with an academic partner, or have lost a star whose spouse could not be accommodated. Most of the institutions that singled out this issue are in locations without other suitable universities that might broaden the possibilities. Accommodations
40
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
include use of bridge funds until line positions become available, help with placement elsewhere, counselling, and some moral support and general encouragement.
DISCUSSION What do all the numbers mean, and how do they relate to the answers to the survey questions? First, we note that there seemed to be no particular correlation between response rates to our requests for information and "good" or "bad" statistics. Judging by brief notes attached to reports sent to us, the differences mostly had to do with whether a particular affirmative action officer or a president or provost was interested in the issues. Beyond that, what is striking about the results is that despite the many differences in the universities represented-differences in mission, structure, fields included, size, population base, and location-the figures overall show remarkable consistency. This fact suggests, but certainly does not prove, that the problems ofsimply gaining access for women are no longer primarily structural. The increases in the total proportion of women faculty have slowed: although the average annual percentage point gain remains essentially constant, this means, of course, that the rate of increase is declining steadily, from about 4 percent per year around 1990 to about half that by 2000. Note, however, that this represents a characteristic growth curve, rapid near the beginning and slowing as it approaches an end point. In any case, individual institutions vary enormously in this respect; many that were slow to begin adding women faculty made up the difference later, and many that had larger proportions at the start either slowed the pace later or even reversed it quite drastically, like Yale and Georgetown. The net effects ofthese changes become evident in Table 2, where we find that between 1988 and 2000 the proportion of women full professors has almost doubled, on average, while that of assistant professors is up nearly one-third, and now matches quite precisely the fraction of new women doctorates in the mid-'90s, about 40 percent. Since the 1970s the gains are quite encouraging. Again, variations among institutions are very large, however. Individual universities need to review their own figures to determine not just how well or badly they are doing compared to the average, but where within their system major departures from the norm are occurring. Tenure status may be one of the factors to examine. The proportion of women with tenure continues to lag a long way behind men; at one
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
41
institution after another, many more men hold full professorships than other ranks, while most of the female faculty are assistant professors. In part, of course, that is a result of women's relatively late entry into the field, although there is also plentiful evidence that women are promoted more slowly. A few of these universities acknowledge this problem in their reports. (See Chapter Six for an extended analysis.) Another factor that emerges is departmental distributions compared to availability (Table 4). In the humanities, especially in languages and literature, women remain underrepresented, generally comprising about one-half of the available pool. The comparison is slightly better in social sciences, but very much worse in natural and especially physical sciences and math, where only about one-third of available women are appointed. Since very few women hold full professorships in the latter fields it is likely that the situation is actually worse than the numbers suggest, because there have been more hiring opportunities in the sciences than in the humanities, and the proportion of women in the pool of recent doctorates is well above that in the overall pool. The suggestion that emerges is that far from breaking down outmoded stereotypes, universities are actually reinforcing them in their faculties. By not having representative numbers of women science faculty, they support the increasingly false perception that women aren't scientists-surely not the message they want consciously to transmit to their students. Another message implicit in the numbers is that women students are in a sense not getting the same education as men. The ratio of male students to male faculty varies from about 4:1 in the Ivy League to about 12:1 in large public universities; for women the corresponding figures are 11:1 and 40:1. Tens of thousands of women graduate each year without ever having had a woman professor, and that has ramifications for mentoring, role models, and messages conveyed about the suitability of academic careers for women. If the gender ratios were reversed, would it be acceptable? Despite their apparent precision, the data on salaries are somewhat ambiguous. Confounding factors include field distributions, since salaries in the sciences are generally higher and there are proportionately fewer women in these fields, and age in rank, because at each rank women as a group are the more recent entrants and therefore paid less, legitimately. However, the most striking fact about salaries is that on average the differential between men and women has remained essentially unchanged for more than a decade. In fact, it has remained that way for over half
42
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
a century (Ahern and Scott 1981:82). Except for one four-year interval, 1970-74, these authors consistently found the largest salary differences in chemistry, with biological sciences next highest. The rank with the largest inequity remains full professor, and the difference that is hardest to explain away is at the entry level, assistant professor, where one must assume that appointees have very similar qualifications. This is an area that institutions should review very carefully. Salary inequities are not merely a current disadvantage to women; perhaps their most deleterious effect shows up at retirement. Salary issues are treated in greater detail by Long (this volume). A broad-gauge overview of the situation suggests strongly that this growth in numbers would not have taken place without the impetus provided by the civil rights laws. However, the fact that change at higher ranks has been disappointing, and the essentially unchanging salary differentials, also corroborate what is known about lack of enforcement of the regulations beyond the entry level (see Introduction, this volume). However, it is not at all clear that more stringent enforcement is the best answer to creating an academic environment that is more supportive of achievement by women. Enforcement efforts generate opposition which is likely to exacerbate existing problems rather than solve them. Rather, the responses to our questions as well as the public acknowledgment by MIT and some of its sister institutions of not having treated senior women faculty equitably argue strongly for a more individualized, intrainstitutional approach. The factors involved in the differential treatment of women faculty are very hard to quantify, and again vary not just from one university to another but also from department to department and over time. They are probably most damaging in the sciences, where problems such as research funding, facilities, and space assignments are likely to affect both satisfaction and productivity. An exemplary approach to dealing with these issues is described by Fried (this volume). Central to such an approach is the fact that the process ofundertaking it itself sensitizes faculty and administrators to the "climate" issues that contribute to women's disadvantage. These include matters such as scheduling meetings at times convenient to all participants, inclusion of women in faculty decision-making, informal as well as formal, and better information flow. In particular, the process must include careful review of how colleagues evaluate women candidates for appointments and promotions. In fields where it is possible to have anonymous reviews, i.e. where the track record does not necessarily identify an individual, these should be required. Such practices have been the norm in Modern Language
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
43
Association publications for many years, and were found to improve acceptance of women's works markedly. Valian (1998, Ch. 7) offers an extended discussion of the many factors that differentiate evaluations of women's scholarly work from men's and downgrade women's achievements simply because they are women. An interesting statistical corroboration of this effect comes from data on science and engineering faculty disaggregated by institutional type. Among a total of almost 300,000 faculty members, 29 percent of the men are in a research university, but that opportunity comes to only 17 percent of similarly qualified women (Vetter and Babco 1997:154). To insure continued growth in opportunities and equality for women faculty, universities will have to develop ways to cope with deep-rooted prejudices. TABLES Table 1
PERCENT WOMEN TOTAL FACULTY, RESEARCH I UNIVERSITIES, 1988, 1998, and 2000 (Nonmedical instructional faculty, alphabetically by state, 3 professorial ranks)
Institution
1988
1998
2000
Annual Change 1988-19981998-2000
U-Alabama AZ State U U-AZ CaiTech Stanford UC-Berkeley Davis Irvine Los Angeles San Diego Santa Barbara USC Colorado State U U-Colorado U-Connecticut Yale Georgetown Howard Florida State U U-Florida V-Miami Emory·
23.8% 19.1 14.9 4.1 10.5 14.2 14.1 15.1 16.7 13.7 13.8 16.5 12.3 14.3 19.0 18.9 24.3 31.1 21.2 14.8 16.9
23.6% 25.2 26.6 10.5 17.3 23.7 26.9 23.9 24.6 18.0 24.2 24.1 20.7 24.2 26.0 33.2 34.8 34.5 28.9 22.5 22.0 31.7
27.1% 30.5 30.0 10.7 19.0 23.1 24.0 24.8 26.1 19.6 24.7 24.6 22.7 25.3 28.2 23.9 28.9 32.0 30.4 23.6 21.6 30.7
0 0.6 1.2 0.6 0.7 1.0 1.3 0.9 0.8 0.4 1.0 0.8 0.8 1.0 0.7 1.4 1.1 0.3 0.8 0.8 0.5
1.8 2.4 1.7 0.1 0.9 -0.3 -1.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.3 0.3 1.0 0.6 1.1 -4.7 -3.0 -1.3 0.8 0.6 -0.2 -0.5
44
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 1 continued Institution
1988
1998
2000
Annual Change 1988-19981998-2000
Georgia Tech V-Georgia V-Hawaii (Manoa) V-Chicago V-Illinois, Chicago V-Illinois, Vrbana Northwestern Indiana V (Bloomington) Purdue V (Main Campus) Iowa State V-Iowa V-Kansas V-Kentucky Louisiana State V Johns Hopkins V-Maryland (College Park) Harvard Mass. Inst. of Technology Tufts V-Mass (Amherst) Michigan State V-Michigan (Ann Arbor) Wayne State V V-Minnesota (Twin Cities) V-Missouri (Columbia) Washington V V-Nebraska Princeton Rutgers New Mexico State V-New Mexico Columbia Cornell (endowed colleges) Cornell (statutory colleges) New York Vniversity Rockefeller Vniversity SVNY Buffalo Stonybrook V of Rochester Duke North Carolina State V-North Carolina Case-Western Reserve Ohio State V V-Cincinnati Oregon State Carnegie-Mellon Penn State
6.4 15.9 22.0 12.7 21.3 12.6 14.6 19.6 14.6 18.8 19.8 15.6 16.6 14.0 18.2 19.5 15.6 9.7 25.8 19.1 20.1 17.8 23.7 22.3 16.9 13.6 20.7 13.1 23.8 16.8 17.8 19.2 11.4 15.9 25.0 14.0 14.8 14.7 20.9 15.2 16.6 22.1 15.4 18.0 24.4 16.8 14.0 12.6
11.9 23.6 28.5 19.1 28.3 19.9 22.1 26.8 21.1 24.9 27.6 23.6 25.1 18.5 25.5 21.1 21.2 14.4 31.6 24.6 24.5 26.0 30.5 25.8 23.2 22.1 20.8 20.2 26.8 30.9 33.1 22.5 18.8 20.7 31.9 17.5 24.6 26.5 22.2 22.3 17.2 27.7 24.7 18.8 33.1 26.7 19.2 22.8
13.5 25.9 29.8 21.0 29.3 21.6 23.8 27.2 21.8 23.5 30.5 24.8 26.1 18.9 27.1 26.5 22.7 15.7 32.9 26.3 26.7 28.6 31.0 27.6 26.1 22.6 21.8 21.8 26.9 30.4 35.0 23.0 21.3 21.7 31.5 22.9 27.5 26.0 21.9 21.8 18.5 29.2 25.0 31.7 34.6 28.9 19.9 31.5
0.6 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.4 0.8 0.9 0.5 0.7 0.3 0.6 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.8 0.7 0.4 0.6 0.9 0 0.7 0.3 1.4 1.5 0.3 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.4 1.0 1.2
0.1 0.7 0.1 0.6 0.9 0.1 0.8 1.0 0.5 1.0
0.8 1.2
0.7 1.0 0.5 0.9 0.9 0.2 0.4 -0.7 1.5 0.6 0.5 0.2 0.8 2.7 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 0.3 0.9 1.5 0.3 0.5 0.8 0.1 0.3 1.0 0.3 1.3 0.5 -0.2 2.7 2.0 -0.3 -0.2 -0.3 0.7 0.8 0.2 6.5 0.8 1.1 0.4 4.4
45
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
Table 1 continued 1988
Institution
1998
2000
Annual Change 1988-19981998-2000
Temple U-Pennsylvania U-Pittsburgh Brown U-Tennessee Vanderbilt Texas A & M U-Texas (Austin) U-Utah Utah State U-Virginia Virginia Commonwealth U Virginia Polytech U-Washington West Virginia U U-Wisconsin (Madison)
24.1 16.3 25.6 18.5 19.0 16.1 10.7 18.0 18.2 13.5 14.6 28.4 12.4 17.1 21.5 16.6
32.0 23.0 30.5 23.5 23.7 22.4 15.9 23.8 27.2 25.0 24.9 33.1 18.7 24.5 26.4 26.0
33.3 24.6 31.0 25.1 24.7 24.1 16.9 24.4 28.0 24.9 26.3 34.3 19.8 28.0 27.5 25.9
0.8 0.7 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.0 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.5 0.9
0.7 0.8 0.3 0.8 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.3 0.4 0 0.7 0.6 0.5 1.7 0.5 -0.1
Average
17.3
24.3
25.2
0.7
0.6
Source: Compiled from Academe, March-April 1988, Vol. 74, No.2; March-April 1998, Vol. 84, No.2; March-April 2000, Vol. 86, No.2 Note: No data were published for Boston University. UC-San Francisco was omitted from the tabulations because, with heavy concentration in medical sciences, the results were anomalous compared to most universities • Data for Emory were not available in 1988
Table 2 PERCENT OF WOMEN FACULTY BY RANK Research I Universities, 1988, 1998, and 2000 (Nonmedical instructional faculty, alphabetically by state) 1988
Institution
PR· AO·
AI·
PR
1998 AO
AI
PR
U-A1abama Arizona State U U-Arizona CalTech Stanford UC-Berkeley Davis Irvine Los Angeles
11.0 22.6 12.1 18.2 5.8 22.3 1.2 13.5 3.6 20.0 8.5 21.7 7.7 20.9 10.4 18.8 8.9 23.4
35.2 31.7 27.0 8.6 24.3 31.3 23.2 21.7 33.9
14.2 15.7 14.1 5.4 11.4 16.5 19.1 15.9 18.2
25.7 30.9 34.2 18.6 28.7 38.3 35.8 32.1 35.2
47.5 51.2 46.4 31.0 26.7 34.4 40.9 34.4 33.0
13.7 17.5 16.6 6.8 12.4 15.6 17.9 15.8 19.6
2000 AO
AI
28.5 46.4 34.0 53.7 36.5 39.5 26.7 26.1 25.8 32.5 40.5 33.8 37.3 33.3 39.8 30.5 35.5 35.8
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
46
Table 2 continued 1988
Institution
PR* AO* AI*
7.1 San Diego Santa Barbara 8.6 U-Southern California 9.4 4.2 Colorado State U-Colorado (Boulder) 3.7 U-Connecticut 9.2 Yale 6.2 Georgetown 8.2 Howard 14.1 Florida State 10.2 U-Florida 6.9 U-Miami 9.4 Emory# Georgia Tech 1.3 U-Georgia 4.8 U-Hawaii (Manoa) 8.5 U-Chicago 6.7 U-Illinois (Chicago) 14.9 U-Illinois (Urbana) 5.9 Northwestern 6.5 Indiana U (Bloomington) 8.6 Purdue (Main Campus) 4.3 Iowa State 6.8 U-Iowa 8.6 7.2 U-Kansas U-Kentucky 6.7 Louisiana State U 6.8 Johns Hopkins 8.9 U-Maryland (College Parlc)9.9 Harvard 7.7 Mass. Inst. of Tech. 5.4 Tufts 13.2 U-Mass (Amherst) 9.1 Michigan State 10.2 U-Michigan (Ann Arbor) 8.2 9.2 Wayne State U U-~ (Tmn Gries) 11.0 U-Missouri (Columbia) 5.5 Washington U 7.4 U-Nebraska 6.8 Princeton 6.0 12.3 Rutgers 7.0 New Mexico State U-New Mexico 11.0 Columbia 10.8 Cornell (endowed colleges) 3.9 Cornell (statutory colleges) 6.8 New York University 15.9
23.0 25.0 21.3 28.0 15.6 26.7 14.5 26.8 22.0 28.9 23.8 38.3 28.6 35.9 23.3 41.4 35.1 45.9 28.5 36.5 17.3 24.2 19.6 29.5 8.0 15.4 23.5 21.0 24.6 17.4 22.9 29.3 15.2 21.8 24.2 22.5 22.6 15.0 27.4 22.3 24.0 13.9 30.1 24.7 25.8 23.1 25.1 27.5 18.6 14.8 24.6 26.8 28.5 14.8 24.1 26.9 11.7 16.9 29.9
13.7 30.9 42.7 21.9 38.4 21.6 23.9 32.6 28.3 33.5 37.4 28.9 25.5 21.8 29.9 33.5 27.0 18.6 32.5 37.2 36.5 33.1 45.1 41.1 34.1 23.9 35.1 22.6 37.0 31.7 39.6 30.3 23.9 32.7 38.5
PR 12.8 15.5 12.8 9.4 12.4 18.7 13.7 19.9 21.2 15.5 10.1 14.2 17.0 3.3 12.8 16.3 13.6 16.6 10.1 13.6 17.1 7.7 10.6 13.7 12.1 10.0 9.6 13.2 14.3 14.3 8.1 22.8 16.0 15.6 14.0 11.6 14.6 12.2 11.1 8.3 13.1 16.4 12.9 21.5 16.6 11.0 9.6 21.0
1998
AO
AI
PR
22.2 32.0 30.3 26.9 33.0 28.9 40.2 38.8 40.2 40.6 25.1 23.9 37.5 12.2 25.7 34.4 23.8 29.2 25.7 28.3 30.5 25.6 29.6 37.8 31.1 29.6 21.8 40.7 25.2 31.7 28.2 33.5 30.7 32.5 32.2 31.7 33.9 24.7 23.1 33.5 34.5 32.0 30.7 31.6 31.5 24.0 29.3 36.7
33.0 40.7 38.8 42.9 39.0 38.6 37.3 45.1 45.1 43.9 44.9 38.8 44.8 25.9 42.3 46.1 30.1 45.6 34.8 34.7 40.7 40.0 46.2 44.7 37.1 45.3 34.8 44.4 34.1 34.2 21.1 42.2 46.1 37.3 42.0 54.4 48.4 37.4 41.3 39.0 35.0 45.2 47.5 39.6 29.6 32.8 41.4 50.0
14.4 16.7 14.5 10.4 14.0 19.5 16.2 23.1 18.2 17.0 11.3 13.4 18.0 5.7 14.1 22.1 14.8 17.4 11.5 14.3 19.6 8.9 11.9 14.6 13.3 11.2 9.5 17.2 18.1 15.9 10.3 21.3 17.8 16.6 16.0 14.1 17.9 15.7 14.9 12.8 13.8 16.9 11.7 23.7 17.1 13.0 10.6 22.5
2000
AO
AI
27.5 33.3 31.8 30.8 32.8 30.1 39.4 37.4 37.3 41.6 26.3 24.7 37.7 15.8 29.8 37.9 27.9 31.7 28.0 30.0 31.2 26.5 27.3 41.7 31.3 31.7 22.8 43.4 31.6 41.3 24.3 32.9 32.6 35.1 37.4 31.6 32.9 26.8 23.3 24.0 40.7 33.3 35.5 35.9 30.8 27.0 33.3 38.3
31.0 42.0 37.2 42.9 40.1 41.9 33.3 48.5 47.6 43.4 42.5 38.7 49.6 23.9 43.9 47.4 31.8 45.6 35.7 40.4 38.4 39.2 38.6 44.8 39.5 42.5 34.2 42.8 37.9 29.7 24.7 49.2 45.1 40.0 41.2 52.3 45.5 40.7 38.0 38.7 36.3 41.0 39.3 51.2 31.1 38.7 36.3 45.5
47
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
Table 2 continued Institution
PR*
Rockefeller University SUNY-Buffalo 7.2 7.2 Stonybrook U of Rochester 6.8 Duke 6.0 North Carolina State 4.8 U-North Carolina 8.4 Case Western Reserve 5.4 Ohio State U 6.5 U-Cincinnati 10.2 Oregon State 4.8 Carnegie-Mellon 5.7 Penn State 5.0 Temple 15.4 U-Pennsylvania 8.4 U-Pittsburgh 12.2 Brown 6.9 U-Tennessee 7.9 Vanderbilt 5.0 TexasA&M 2.8 U-Texas (Austin) 7.2 U-Utah 6.5 Utah State 2.9 U-Virginia 4.4 Vrgilia ~ U 15.8 Virginia Polytech 3.4 U-Washington 9.7 West Virginia U 8.1 U-Wisconsin (Madison) 9.3 Average 7.9
1988 AO* AI*
PR
1998 AO
AI
PR
2000 AO
AI
24.2 30.4 25.0 40.4 27.5 31.4 42.1 31.0 31.2 41.5 33.7 24.1 24.9 38.7 30.7 48.0 38.9 41.6 25.3 22.2 32.7 37.4 37.5 33.3 41.9 26.6 31.5 40.8 30.7 31.5
5.0 10.4 13.1 11.3 12.9 7.4 18.2 12.2 11.8 17.3 10.9 12.4 10.8 20.7 15.2 15.1 12.5 12.5 13.0 5.2 12.1 14.5 7.2 11.6 13.3 6.6 14.3 10.8 16.2 13.3
23.3 27.7 29.0 29.6 28.0 25.0 33.0 34.0 29.0 32.0 31.2 23.7 23.3 35.3 24.5 28.0 41.6 33.6 21.9 20.4 32.6 31.9 28.0 28.4 32.0 20.6 31.8 25.8 39.7 30.0
23.2 44.2 45.8 32.0 36.9 26.4 44.8 41.3 43.4 44.3 45.7 31.5 41.0 48.2 43.0 53.9 33.3 40.7 41.9 36.2 44.3 44.7 42.8 49.3 55.0 43.3 45.5 50.7 44.1 40.5
8.1 12.5 13.7 12.9 14.0 9.3 20.5 12.3 13.2 19.9 13.5 13.4 11.2 21.8 16.2 17.7 15.9 13.5 14.7 6.4 13.3 16.0 9.4 12.1 15.3 7.3 17.4 11.8 18.4 14.4
17.4 31.5 32.0 30.9 29.8 24.5 35.1 33.1 31.3 32.7 36.1 25.5 27.8 35.5 27.4 29.6 40.0 31.7 24.8 23.9 33.8 33.4 27.0 31.9 32.7 21.9 36.3 27.1 37.5 31.7
37.8 44.3 38.1 32.0 30.9 29.3 45.9 43.6 39.2 45.3 43.1 29.8 40.1 53.6 42.6 49.1 32.9 43.5 42.3 33.1 42.6 42.6 40.8 50.7 57.8 40.9 43.6 49.8 38.6 40.3
8.3 16.0 18.1 21.6 23.1 19.7 31.7 15.4 20.8 27.3 15.9 16.2 11.5 24.4 19.5 23.5 28.6 22.0 22.7 10.4 24.1 23.3 7.2 13.1 25.5 11.8 20.3 23.9 28.2 21.0
Source: Compiled from Academe, March-April 1988, Vol.74, No.2; March-April 1998, Vol. 84 No.2; March-April 2000, Vol. 86, No.2 See Note, Table 1 * PR • Professor; AO • Associate Professor; AI • Assistant Professor # Data for Emory were not available in 1988
Table 3 TENURE STATUS OF WOMEN FACULTY Institution 1995 Berkeley Harvard
Tenured
Tenure-Track
Not on Track
%
%
%
18.5 12.1
39.4 *29.0
28.6
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
48
Table 3 continued Institution
Tenured %
Tenure-Track %
Not on Track %
1996 Harvard MIT Stanford U-Georgia U-Washington
12.6 9.7 13.3 18.0 18.3
*31.4
29.5
30.9 43.0 24.1
12.0 47.1 59.2
1997 Case-Western Reserve Cornell (Total) Emory Harvard Howard Rutgers Temple U-North Carolina U-Pittsburgh U-Texas (Austin) Yale
24 16.0 19.2 13.4 28.6 24.7 24.0 21.7 17.7 18.6 11.7
42 38.3 35.0 *32.0 42.2 41.8 50.5 41.5 41.5 42.7 **15.7
50.0 22.9 37.0 28.1 43.5 54.5 50.0 44.2 50.6 40.7
Source: Compiled from the institutions' affirmative action reports for the years indicated * Designated as "ladder" faculty * * Designated as "term" appointments
Table 4 SELECTED DEPARTMENTAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN FACULTY
All Ranks, percentages Institution
Math English Sociology Biology Chemistry Act. Avail. Act. Avail. Act. Avail. Act. Avail. Act. Avail.
1995 U -Ill. (Chicago)
1996 Berkeley Duke U -Massachusetts
14.3
38.3
6.3
23.8
24.7 28.1 22.2
28.9
9.5 13.6 39.2 12.5
15.7 21.4
20.0 8.4
24.8
ILl
5.9 6.5
36.2
56.4
33.3 40.4
36.8 17.0 26.0
51.4
38.9 24.0 42.6
50.0 32.4
58.2
26.6 30.8
26.8
1997 Carnegie Mellon 36.0 UC-Santa Barbara 21.1
38.3
15.0 6.9 21.1
Source: Compiled from institutional affirmative action reports
51.7
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
49
Table 5 WOMEN'S SALARIES AS PERCENT OF MEN'S, BY RANK Research I Universities-1988, 1998, 2000 1988 PR· AO· A!. Institution 94 96 84 U-Alabama Arizona State Univ. 94 91 95 91 97 93 U-Ariwna Cal Tech 82 100 93 Stanford 93 94 UC-Berkeley 86 Davis 92 95 94 82 92 102 Irvine LosAngeles 90 92 98 SanDiego 82 98 96 90 SantaBarbara 90 96 U-Southern California 83 91 89 Colorado State U 88 93 95 U-Colorado (Boulder) 85 95 98 U-Connecticut 90 93 97 94 90 Yale 95 Georgetown 100 104 93 Howard 99 97 95 91 89 FloridaStateU 87 U-Florida 82 91 89 V-Miami 88 95 92 Emory Georgia Tech 89 89 U-Georgia 94 94 91 U-Hawaii (Manoa) 89 96 96 Northwestern 92 92 90 U-Chicago 87 97 90 U-Illinois (Chicago) 91 87 98 U-Illinois (Urbana) 85 91 90 Indiana U 88 90 88 Purdue 85 90 81 Iowa State U 93 90 84 U-Iowa 89 89 84 U-Kansas 88 93 89 U-Kentucky 92 87 92 Louisiana State U 91 94 91 Johns Hopkins 88 93 90 U-Md. (College Park) 97 93 95 Harvard 88 77 102 MIT 87 88 99 Tufts 92 90 95 U-Mass. (Amherst) 94 96 93 Michigan State U 89 92 93 U-Mich. (Ann Arbor) 85 89 88
PR 95 90 88 83 94 90 90 89 88 89 85 91 90 91 88 92 94 92 91 90 98 85 87 96 92 91 92 92 86 88 82 90 89 91 92
90 97 91 89 89 89 93 92 92
1998 AO 91 93 94 96 98 95 94 98 94 95 94 95 94 94 92 91 100 99 95 95 97 90 94 97 96 95 98 98 95 92 92 88 89 96 95 95 95 97 97 97 99 93 96 89
AI 94 92 97 93 93 98 97 93 94 94 95 96 98 92 94 90 91 96 96 91 93 91 94 94 96 83 93 93 95 93 91 95 93 94 95 93 95 95 92 93 90 91 95 93
PR 92 89 90 87 95 89 91 94 90 89 86 90 90 91 89 92 92 89 94 91 93 83 94 96 90 88 92 92 86 90 84 89 89 90 93 94 85 92 92 94 89 92 93 94
2000 AO A! 92 91 91 95 97 95 91 100 95 93 100 94 94 97 99 97 99 86 94 91 96 99 92 90 96 94 94 92 93 97 91 91 104 84 100 90 92 93 93 89 96 93 90 90 93 96 97 98 95 95 98 84 91 87 95 92 95 92 93 92 94 91 89 95 90 90 97 96 98 92 93 96 99 95 96 88 94 97 96 92 94 96 92 92 98 91 90 96
50
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 5 continued 1988 Institution PR· AO· A!. Wayne State V 95 101 94 V-Minn. (Twin Cities) 91 91 89 V-Missouri (Columbia) 92 95 92 Washington V 89 89 92 V-Nebraska 94 94 95 Princeton 92 97 93 96 96 92 Rutgers New Mexico State V 91 90 90 V-New Mexico 93 90 95 Columbia 85 98 98 Cornell (endowed colleges) 83 94 89 (statutory colleges) 93 95 100 New York Vniversity 88 97 91 Rockefeller 97 97 SVNY-Buffalo 84 90 91 SVNY-Stonybrook 89 90 92 V of Rochester 91 88 79 Duke III 97 90 North Carolina State V 87 93 94 V of North Carolina 88 95 88 Case Western Reserve 91 99 91 Ohio State V 90 94 89 V-Cincinnati 89 97 92 Oregon State V 91 95 91 82 Carnegie-Mellon 79 88 Pennsylvania State V 89 94 84 Temple 89 91 96 V -Pennsylvania 92 95 88 V-Pittsburgh 88 95 92 Brown 86 92 90 91 V-Tennessee 88 93 Vanderbilt 88 97 84 TexasA&M 89 89 88 V-Texas(Austin) 86 93 86 V-Vtah 84 94 89 91 Vtah State V 93 V-Virginia 96 97 90 91 Va. Commonwealth V 90 93 Virginia Polytech 89 92 95 V-Washington 89 94 93 West Virginia V 88 89 89 V-WISConsin (Madison) 87 90 89 Average 88 93 91 Source: See Table 1
1998
2000
PR
AO
A!
PR
AO
A!
96 92 88 94 87 94 93 89 86 91
96 96 96 92 94 92 94 94 95 95
101 93 88 97 94 99 96 91 95 96
94 92 87 96 88 97 92 87 89 91
96 94 93 93 94 94 95 94 91 87
98 94 96 88 97 96 99 91 98 94
89 93 90
92 97 92
99 96 90
94 95 87
88 97 96
88 87 81 93 88 91 91 94 87 99 82 93 93 96 88 94 88 89 92 87 86 91 93 94 81 91 91 87 90
90 95 88 90 9 92 94 90 93 94 85 90 94 90 96 93 97 86 92 94 96 87 96 98 93 92 95 92 94
94 96 90 91 97 97 91 95 92 94 83 94 99 84 93 99 91 93 96 89 82 93 98 96 97 93 95 91 94
91 89 81 95 87 95 93 92 89 101 84 93 92 90 89 93 81 90 90 88 87 94 94 94 82 92 90 85 91
91 99 90 88 91 95 96 94 90 94 85 91 92 87 95 96 91 88 93 94 97 89 93 94 92 93 96 92 94
97 104 89 96 94 94 79 97 94 95 88 99 96 92 88 91 102 80 90 94 86 92 94 89 88 93 100 88 100 94 97 90 93
The Current Status of Women in Research Universities
51
REFERENCES Mfirmative Action Reports of the late 1990s are referenced in the text. Academe. 1988, 1998,2000. Academe 74 (March-April 1988); 84 (MarchApril 1998); 86 (March-April 2000).
Ahern, Nancy C., and Elizabeth L. Scott. 1981. Career outcomes in a matched sample of men and women Ph.D.s: An analytical report. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Cornell University. 1974. A commitment to equality: One century later. Report of the Ad Hoc Trustee Committee on the Status of Women, Cornell University. Hornig, Lilli S., and Ruth B. Ekstrom. 1984. The status of women in the humanities. Report to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Indiana University. 1971. Study ofthe status ofwomen faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington campus. Report of the AAUP Committee on the Status of Women. University of California. 1972. Women in the graduate sector of the University of California. Report of an Ad Hoc Committee of the Coordinating Committee on Graduate Mfairs. University of California-Los Angeles. 1972. Report of the chancellor's advisory committee on the status ofwomen at UCLA. University of Minnesota. 1978. Preliminary report on the status ofwomen faculty on the Twin Cities campus. Report prepared for TC-AAUP Committee W, by Charlotte Striebel. University of Tennessee. 1972. Taskforce on women. Report of the Task Force. Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Vetter, Betty M., and Eleanor L. Babco. 1997. Professional women and minorities. Washington, D.C.: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Yale University. 1971. A report to the president. Report of the Committee on the Status of Professional Women at Yale.
Chapter Three
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities 1 Helen S. Astin Christine M. Cress
During the last three decades, the pool offemale Ph.D. recipients potentially available for academic appointments has increased dramatically. In 1977, women earned 25 percent of awarded doctoral degrees. A decade later (1987), this percentage had risen to 35 percent. By 1996, women constituted 40 percent of the total number of doctorates and 47 percent ofthe pool of U.S. doctoral recipients (National Research Council 1996). The representation of women faculty within American higher education institutions, however, has not increased at the same rate. For example, in 1972-73 women represented 22 percent of all faculty across academic ranks. By 1982, they occupied 27 percent of faculty positions, and by 1995-96 women accounted for 35 percent of all faculty (Vetter and Babco 1986; Sax, Astin, Arredondo, and Korn 1996). In other words, there has been a relatively slow rate of gender integration in the academy (West 1995 ). Over the years, scholars have examined the lives of women in academe (Astin 1969; Dickens 1993), with particular focus on women faculty (Aisenberg and Harrington 1988; Chamberlain 1988; Rossi and Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, K1uwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
53
54
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Calderwood 1973; Simeone 1987). Areas of study have included career patterns (Finnegan 1993; Tack and Patitu 1992); job satisfaction (Aguirre 1994; Boice 1993); challenges faced by academic couples (Ferber and Loeb 1997); and tenure, promotion, and salary equity (Finkel 1994; Strober 1993; Wunsch 1994). Researchers have also investigated the barriers and "chilly climate" that women faculty face (Sandler 1986; Parson, 1991) as well as the struggles associated with balancing various roles and responsibilities (Johnsrud and Wunsch 1991). From this body ofresearch, specific strategies on how academic women can succeed in higher education institutions have also emerged. This is particularly important since retention of women faculty is just as serious a concern as retention of students (Sandler 1991, 1992). As the demographics of college student populations continue to evolve, the need for increasing efforts to identify, recruit, and retain women and racial/ethnic minority faculty is especially critical (Elmore and Balmert 1995). While women are currently more than one-third of the faculty across all types of institutions, their representation is lower within research universities (28 percent). Moreover, academic women are more likely to be employed by four- and two-year colleges rather than universities (Sax et al. 1996). Further, Hensel (1991) has reported that women are an under-represented group in tenured faculty positions and suffer from subtle gender discrimination in teaching, research, salary differentials, and promotion. In an effort to explore further the lives of female academics, this paper describes the status of women faculty in research universities I and II, based on data collected by the Higher Education Research Institute (HER!) at the University of California, Los Angeles, during the 1995-96 academic year. We compare women at research universities to women at all institutions of higher education combined. Academic women in research universities are also compared to academic men at these same institutions. METHODOLOGY
The data were collected in the fall of 1995 by mailing 143,816 questionnaires to faculty at a representative sample of 403 institutions across the country. A total of 59,933 usable survey questionnaires were returned for an overall response rate of 42 percent (see Sax et al. 1996).
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
ss
Faculty participants were identified as teaching faculty if they met at least one of the following criteria: 1. employed full-time at the institution and noted teaching as his/ her principal activity. 2. employed full-time at the institution and taught at least two courses in the last term. 3. employed full-time at the institution and spent at least 9 hours per week in scheduled teaching, but did not specify the level of courses being taught. From this database we selected faculty who were teaching at research universities I and II which comprised 48 research universities. Within these institutions there were 19,858 respondents, of whom 5,659 (28 percent) were women. The paper presents the results of cross tabulations and regression analyses. For the cross tabulations where we compare women with men at research universities and across all institutions, we have weighted the data to represent the population of teaching faculty at U.S. colleges and universities. (Data are weighted by correcting for sampling and response bias. For specific weighting procedures, see Sax et al. 1996.) We also have used weighted data to compare women and men regarding the analysis for time to tenure, and differences on composite measures representing selected values and behaviors. The regression analyses employ the unweighted N that includes all women and men at research universities I and II who responded to the survey questionnaire. These analyses were performed to identify predictors of salary and research productivity. Differences between predicted and actual salary received by women as well as differences in actual and predicted rate of publication were also explored. Finally, a brief case study is included in the appendix that describes trends over time on the status of women at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a large public research university I.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FACULTY AT RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Overall, women are younger than are men across all institutions combined as well as at research universities (see Table 1).
56
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 1 AGE
~34
35-49 50-64 65+
RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
8.7 55.4 32.6 3.2
5.7 39.4 46.5 8.3
10.9 53.6 33.6 1.9
8.5 42.1 44.6 4.8
Note: All data are weighted
Table 2 RACIAUETHNIC BACKGROUND
RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Men
Women
Men
88.5 4.2 1.3 3.2
90.7 1.7 0.8 4.2
90.1 3.8 1.7 2.9
90.9 2.4 1.4 3.8
1.2 0.8 1.7 1.6
0.6 0.2 1.2 1.5
1.8 0.5 1.4 1.4
1.3 0.3 1.0 1.9
Women White/Caucasian African Am./Black American Indian Asian Am./Asian Mexican Am./Chicano Puerto Rican Am. Other Latino Other
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Note: percentages will sum to more than 100.0 if respondents checked more than one category
Women of color represent a slightly higher percentage of the faculty at research universities than at all other institutions, however, these percentages are still quite dismal (see Table 2). Currently, full-time teaching faculty from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups account for only about 9 percent of all faculty (Astin et al. 1997). As such, while this analysis is concerned with examining women at research universities, it should be noted that only about 12 percent of these faculty are women of color. With respect to rank, across all institutions more than halfofwomen faculty are at the assistant professor level or lower ranks, compared to
57
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
Table 3 RANK RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES ALL INSTITUTIONS Women Men Women Men Professor Associate Assistant/Other·
19.6 28.7 55.4
50.4 26.9 39.4
17.5 24.5 53.6
41.3 26.3 42.1
*Note: includes assistant, lecturer, instructor, other
Table 4 HIGHEST DEGREE EARNED RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Women Men B.A., B.S. M.A., M.S. LL.B., J.D. M.D., D.D.S. Ed.D. Ph.D.
1.5 18.7 0.4 1.0 3.0 70.4
0.9 7.14 0.6 0.6 1.7 85.8
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women Men 3.4 0.9 0.5 0.3 5.1 42.5
2.4 21.9 0.7 0.4 3.7 65.2
32 percent ofmen. Likewise, twice as many women at research universities (52 percent), compared to men (23 percent) are at these lower academic ranks. While only about one-fifth of women at research universities are at the full professor level, more than half of the men at research universities are full professors (see Table 3). There are discernible differences between men and women with respect to highest degree attained. Within research universities, 70 percent of women hold the Ph.D. compared to 86 percent of men. These proportions, not surprisingly, are much higher for both genders at research universities when compared to faculty across all institutions (see Table 4). There are marked differences between men and women with respect to salary (see Table 5, next page). While almost one-fourth of men at research universities earn $70,000 or more, only 6 percent of women earn such salaries. This salary differential can be explained to a large
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
58
Table 5 EARNED SALARY RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
$ (000) ~29
30-49 50-69 70+
Women 10.5 59.8 23.4 6.3
Men 2.8 36.7 37.3 23.2
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women 13.2 65.4 18.8 2.8
Men 4.9 46.5 36.3 12.5
Table 6 ACADEMIC FIELDS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Agriculture Biological Sci Business Education Engineering English Fine Arts Health Sci. History/PoliS Humanities Math/Stats Physical Sci Social Sci
Women
Men
1.1 4.8 4.8 6.4 1.4 7.6 9.5 12.8 5.4 13.8 2.1 2.6 12.9
3.2 7.0 5.1 3.7 10.4 5.1 8.3 3.1 7.9 9.6 5.0 9.3 11.2
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women
0.3 4.2 6.8 10.8 0.8 10.7 8.1 16.6 3.5 8.8 5.2 2.9 10.8
Men
1.8 6.6 8.2 6.1 6.2 6.6 9.4 2.4 7.0 7.8 6.5 9.6 11.4
extent as a function of gender differences in both rank and field. For example, at research universities 25 percent ofmen are in the more highly paid fields of physical science, mathematics/statistics, and engineering combined, compared to 6 percent of women. Likewise, more than twice as many women (33 percent) as men (16 percent) are in the less financially lucrative fields of education, health science and humanities combined (see Table 6).
59
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
RESEARCH INTERESTS AND PRODUCTIVITY Our survey queried faculty on whether their primary interests leaned toward research or teaching. Men's interests were found to lean more toward research while women's interests were more oriented toward teaching (see Table 7). More than half of men at research universities (55 percent) lean toward research compared to 47 percent of women who indicate a research preference. Likewise, 53 percent of women compared to 45 percent of men say that their interests lean more toward teaching. Tables 8-10 report gender differences with respect to number of hours spent on teaching, advising/counseling, and research and scholarly writing. The descriptive analyses indicate that women tend to spend more hours than men on teaching and advising, while men spent more hours on research and writing.
Table 7 PRIMARY INTERESTS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Teaching Research
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
52.6 47.4
45.1 54.9
80.5 19.5
71.3 28.7
Table 8 HOURS PER WEEK SPENT ON SCHEDULED TEACHING RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES None
1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 17+
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
0.5 12.8 53.2 21.1 5.4 7.1
0.8 17.0 56.6 17.0 4.7 3.9
0.4 6.0 22.8 31.7 19.8 19.4
0.5 7.8 29.8 31.5 15.8 14.8
60
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 9
HOURS PER WEEK SPENT ADVISING/COUNSELING STUDENTS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Women Men None 1-4 5-8 9-12 13+
1.6 57.2 31.1 7.6 2.5
2.3 61.3 27.2 6.7 2.5
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women Men 2.9 53.2 32.0 8.0 3.8
2.7 59.7 28.2 6.9 2.6
Table 10
HOURS PER WEEK SPENT ON RESEARCH/SCHOLARLY WRITING RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES None 1-4 5-8 9-12 13+
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
12.0 23.8 20.5 14.9 28.8
6.0 16.0 18.2 18.8 41.0
34.7 32.8 14.3 7.8
22.2 28.5 17.3 12.1 20.0
lOA
Tables 11-13 report data on research/scholarly productivity. With respect to faculty's cumulative publication record, men report more authorship on articles and books than do women. However, men have typically been in their academic positions much longer than women as is evident based on differences in age and rank (see Tables 1 and 3). However, when we control for productivity during the last two years, the gender differences are less marked (see Table 13), and in part some of these differences can be explained based on differences in rank and field (see the later regression analysis that controls for these relevant variables) .
61
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
Table 11
NUMBER OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN ACADEMIC OR PROFESSIONAL JOU RNALS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Men Women None 1-4 5-20 21+
14.3 30.1 38.1 17.6
5.6 13.8 35.1 45.5
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women Men 38.8 36.2 19.6 5.4
22.0 28.0 29.3 20.8
Table 12
NUMBER OF BOOKS, MANUALS, AND/OR MONOGRAPHS PUBLISHED RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Women Men None 1-2 3-4 5+
47.8 34.6 11.1 6.5
35.8 33.2 15.2 15.8
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women Men 67.7 23.0 5.9 3.3
52.9 28.2 10.1 8.9
Table 13
PUBLICATIONS IN THE LAST lWO YEARS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Women Men None 1-4 5+
20.3 48.2 31.5
17.9 42.9 39.2
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women 40.9 41.3 17.8
Men 34.5 42.2 23.4
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN VALUES AND ATIITUDES Our survey questionnaire included a number of questions designed to assess faculty's values and attitudes about their work; their views about
62
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
goals for undergraduate education; and attitudes about social issues. A number of questions were also posed to faculty regarding their satisfaction with work, feelings of stress, and perceived sources of such stress. CHOICE OF AN ACADEMIC CAREER
One of the sets of survey items explored the reasons faculty give for choosing an academic career (see Table 14). While both men and women list "intellectual challenge," "freedom to pursue their interests," and "intellectual freedom" as the most compelling reasons for their choice, there are some notable differences between women and men. For example, women are more likely than men to indicate a "flexible schedule" and "teaching opportunities" as important reasons for their choice. Gender difference in academic career choice is especially notable with respect to the importance women in research universities attach to "opportunities to influence social change" (27 percent ofwomen compared to 15 percent of men). On the other hand, men at research universities tend to endorse more often the "prestige and status of the occupation" and "opportunities for research" as reasons for their choice of an academic career. Table 14 REASONS FOR PURSUING AN ACADEMIC CAREER RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES ALL INSTITUTIONS Intellectual Challenge Freedom to Pursue Interests Intellectual Freedom Autonomy Flexible Schedule Opportunities for Teaching Opportunities for Research Opportunity to Influence Social Change Prestige and Status
Women
Men
Women
Men
91.0
90.5
85.6
82.9
85.2 84.0 75.9 72.1
84.9 84.7 77.0 62.6
74.9 79.0 69.8 72.0
74.6 78.7 69.8 61.1
66.2
58.6
77.7
68.8
59.5
67.8
33.4
42.2
26.6 18.0
14.5 21.2
28.3 18.7
16.6 17.7
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "very important" or "essential"
63
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL GOALS Table 15 reports faculty responses to items related to the importance they attach to achieving various professional goals. Both women and men were found to attach high importance to being a good teacher, engaging in research, and being a good colleague. Where we see the most notable gender differences are in the areas of service to the institution and community. Women are by far more likely to report that such service is an essential or very important goal in their professional lives. Interestingly, these findings seem to re-emphasize a fairly recent publication entitled, "Women faculty excel as campus citizens" (Carnegie Foundation 1990). A related question dealt with personal goals. The goals addressed in this question covered areas ofinterest, importance, and concern to faculty outside their academic/work life (see Table 16). Examining the responses of faculty to these questions we note some very interesting differences between men and women. Women are much more outward and/or "other" directed, while men are more concerned with achieving personal recognition. Women much more often endorse goals such as "influencing social values," "engaging in environmental cleanup," "helping others in difficulty," and "helping to promote racial understanding," while men much more often than women endorse as essential or important goals, "becoming an authority in their field," "obtaining recognition from others" and "being very well-off financially. "
Table 15 PROFESSIONAL GOALS RESEARCH
UNIVERSITIES Be a Good Teacher Be a Good Colleague Engage in Research Community Service Committee/Admin. Work
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
98.4 86.8 76.5 44.6 27.0
98.6 82.1 81.9 31.5 19.2
99.3 90.9 48.7 50.3 36.6
99.1 84.5 57.5 37.6 24.2
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "very important" or "essential"
64
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Table 16 PERSONAL GOALS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Develop a Meaningful Philosophy of Life Help Promote Racial Understanding Help Others in Difficulty Become Authority in Own Field Raise a Family Obtain Recognition from Colleagues Influence Social Values Environmental Cleanup Involvement Be Very Well-Off Financially Influence Political Structure
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
80.2
73.3
82.5
76.6
68.6 65.7
52.0 54.7
68.4 71.6
55.7 60.5
63.4 61.4
72.1 78.9
54.0 64.8
58.0 77.7
58.1 47.1
60.8 29.9
43.9 48.5
46.0 35.6
34.9
29.7
37.5
31.7
27.9
37.7
31.8
37.8
22.8
13.8
19.6
14.0
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "very important" or "essential"
Table 17 CURRENT MARITAL STATUS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Married With Partner Single Divorced
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
61.6 7.5 16.4 30.3
84.1 3.5 6.1 24.3
65.2 5.4 29.4 28.4
82.7 3.2 14.1 23.6
Note: Divorced category refers only to whether or not respondents have "ever" been divorced at any time and does not include separated or widowed responses
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
65
With respect to the question of the importance of raising a family, the difference among faculty in research universities favors men by a considerable margin (79 versus 61 percent). This is consistent with the differences between men and women with respect to their marital status (fewer women are married than are men) (see Table 17, previous page). GOALS FOR UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
Faculty were asked to indicate the importance of each of 12 educational goals for undergraduate students. Examining the faculty's responses to these goals (see Table 18) we observe that the larger differences between men and women involve goals that have to do with the importance of personal development and civic responsibility (e.g., "instill commitment to community service," "enhance self understanding," "prepare for responsible citizenship"). Women tend to endorse these as very important or essential goals for undergraduates more often than do men. The only difference favoring men's views on an undergraduate goal is the "teaching of the classics of Western civilization." SOURCES OF SATISFACTION
The questions on satisfaction dealt with over-all satisfaction as well as satisfaction with various aspects of academic work. In research universities, men report greater overall satisfaction with their work (see Table 19). Men also report greater satisfaction with most aspects of their work with the exception of the "quality of students" where women are more satisfied. The two aspects where men show a notable difference from women is in their satisfaction with "job security" (81 percent versus 62 percent, respectively) and "opportunities for scholarly pursuits" (71 percent versus 54 percent, respectively). Both of these items relate to one's seniority and, as noted earlier, men occupy the more senior academic ranks in academe, where tenured faculty and faculty at the higher ranks are the most likely to enjoy both greater job security and more resources for their work. These findings are congruent with other research that indicates that women faculty report high levels of satisfaction with the amount of autonomy they have in their jobs as well as with their student and peer relationships. Low levels of satisfaction are associated with the lack of mentoring from senior colleagues, balancing work and other activities, working conditions, and pay (Robertson and Bean 1997).
66
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 18 GOALS FOR UNDERGRADUATES RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Women Men Develop Ability to Think Clearly Increase Self-Directed Learning Enhance SelfUnderstanding Employment Preparation Responsible Citizenship Preparation Graduate School Preparation Personal Values Development Develop Moral Character Enhance Out-of-Oass Experience Instill Commitment to Community Service Emotional Development Teach Classics of Western Civilization
ALL INSTITUTIONS Women
Men
99.3
99.3
99.6
99.3
92.3
89.2
94.8
90.0
63.0 62.1
49.9 57.2
70.7 77.2
56.7 66.3
59.9
50.8
67.8
58.2
55.1
51.3
56.0
52.2
54.4 48.3
47.4 44.3
65.2 63.1
56.6 54.5
39.2
30.6
47.0
38.5
35.4 34.8
23.4 24.5
42.6 46.1
30.6 33.0
24.4
28.5
25.7
29.6
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "very important" or "essential"
STRESS AND THE SOURCES OF STRESS Not only do we find women to be less satisfied with their work, we also observe that they report experiencing more stress than do men. Fortyeight percent of women compared to 28 percent of men report having experienced extreme stress during the past two years. In examining the aCUlal sources of stress (see Table 20), what is especially disheartening is the fact that 44 percent of the women in research universities compared to 16 percent of men report experiencing stress from "subtle discrimination". The review and promotion process) while stressful for both men and women, is more stressful for women, as are the demands placed on them for research and publications. "Personal finances" is also a major
67
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
Table 19 SATISFACTION RESEARCH UNIVERSITffiS Autonomy and Independence Opportunity to Develop New Ideas Working Conditions Professional Relations with Faculty Teaching Load Quality of Students Job Security Opportunity for Scholarly Pursuits Salary and Fringe Benefits Visibility for Jobs at Other Institutions Overall Satisfaction
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
86.7
91.2
85.0
86.8
72.9 71.7
80.6 78.1
71.9 70.2
74.0 73.2
70.1 68.7 64.5 61.8
73.2 77.2 55.6 81.4
78.0 59.5 53.0 66.1
76.1 64.7 45.3 77.1
54.4 43.7
71.3 50.8
46.7 49.8
57.3 50.8
44.3 72.0
46.4 77.7
46.5 75.7
46.1 75.7
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "satisfactory" or "very satisfactory"
source ofstress for both women and men (56 and 54 percent, respectively, report such stress). Finally, very high proportions ofwomen (91 percent) report feeling stressed because of "lack of personal time." Comparing women at research universities to women across all institutions, we find that women at research universities are less satisfied with their work (see Table 19) and are somewhat more stressed in general (see Table 20). For example, while 44 percent of women at research universities report stress from subde discrimination, 34 percent of women at all institutions combined report to have experienced stress from subde discrimination. Further, 56 percent of women faculty at research universities are stressed about the review and promotion process, as compared to 50 percent of women faculty across all institutions. Not surprisingly, the greatest difference in reported stress between women at research universities and women across all institutions combined is in the area ofresearch and publishing demands (76 percent versus 48 percent).
68
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 20 SOURCES OF STRESS RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Time Pressures Lack of Personal Time Research/Publishing Demands Household Responsibilities Colleagues Teaching Load Students Committee Work Personal Finances Review/Promotion Process Faculty Meetings Physical Health Subtle Discrimination Child Care Care of Elderly Parent Children's Problems Marital Friction
ALL INSTITUTIONS
Women
Men
Women
Men
93.8 90.8
86.0 78.3
92.0 90.0
82.6 76.5
75.7 74.9 64.5 63.5 60.5 58.4 55.7
72.2 63.0 55.7 51.2 52.7 53.1 54.2
47.5 76.4 59.4 69.8 66.2 60.0 59.7
50.2 64.7 54.0 59.5 58.0 53.5 58.3
55.6 54.4 47.2 44.1 34.4 29.5 29.1 24.6
41.7 46.1 39.2 16.2 32.8 24.1 34.3 26.5
50.1 54.2 47.5 34.4 32.9 31.7 31.6 23.3
42.0 48.2 41.1 18.4 32.0 25.3 32.7 25.6
Note: Percentage of respondents marking "somewhat" or "extensive"
COMPOSITE VARIABLE DIFFERENCES In addition to the assessment of gender differences on individual items representing various values, we created some composite measures utilizing a factor analysis (varimax rotation and principal components methods) and tested for differences in means across gender. Table 21 lists means and standard deviations on these measures for women and men. (The individual items in each composite measure are listed in Appendix B.) All measures indicate significant differences between women and men. Women express a stronger humanistic orientation, are more interested in activism and service, and are more student-centered in their pedagogy. On the other hand, men have a greater interest in prestige and status, and value intellectual freedom to a greater extent.
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
69
Table 21 COMPOSITE VARIABLES: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN n*
Mean
Use of Student-Centered Pedagogy·· Women 26,454 18.28 Men 83,838 15.80 Humanistic Orientation Women 27,133 13.72 Men 82,193 12.52 Personal Commitment to Service·· Women 22,567 12.35 Men 70,085 11.50 Intellectual Freedom·· Women 27,415 11.07 Men 86,046 11.20 Need for Autonomy Orientation·· Women 27,500 5.41 Men 85,999 5.31 Activist/Service Orientation· * Women 27,488 4.63 Men 86,080 4.26 Career Importance: Occupational Prestige/Status· * Women 27,556 1.91 Men 86,295 1.96
*.
Standard Deviation 5.11 4.45 2.88 2.93 2.83 2.83 1.29 1.23 0.89 0.94 0.99 0.99 0.66 0.68
Note: * weighted data, **p
Significantly more women endorse the need for autonomy and flexible schedules. In part, this can be explained as a function of their need to attend to family responsibilities as is evident in terms of the amount of time reportedly spent on household chores and/or childcare. Forty percent of women faculty, for example, report spending 13 or more hours per week on such duties as compared to 23 percent of male faculty. REGRESSION ANALYSES
Recently, Bellas (1997) found that faculty salary inequities across disciplines incorporate levels of gender bias. This is consistent with Olsen
70
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
(1991) who revealed that race and gender affect the amount of compensation received, independent of whether personal and professional goals fit within institutional values and norms. Similarly, utilizing data from the 1992-93 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, Nettles and Perna (1995) found that even after controlling for experience, education, productivity, and institutional characteristics, women received 11.3 percent lower salaries than men, had lower probabilities than men of being tenured, and were less likely than men to be full professors. After controlling for race, education, experience, instructional and research activities, and institutional type, the study also found women faculty had 16.7 percent higher levels of career productivity standardized by teaching field than men. Hispanic faculty were found to be 17.1 percent more productive than faculty of other race groups. Our interest was to assess the impact of gender on yearly salaries earned and on publication productivity at research universities. In order to determine the effect ofgender on these dependent variables (salary and publications), we performed hierarchical stepwise regression analyses. In these analyses we controlled first for relevant predictor variables before entering gender at the last step. We also ran separate analyses for each gender in order to assess the differential impact of the various predictor variables. The gender regression analyses also helped assess the difference between predicted and actual salary and between predicted and actual number of publications. Although we were interested in examining the predictors of time to tenure with a special focus on the effect of gender on tenure, we were unable to examine the appropriate predictor variables since a longitudinal database for faculty is not available. We did perform a regression analysis on a limited set of variables as predictors for time to tenure, but unfortunately, they were not able to explain much of the variance. Nonetheless, we calculated field by gender differences on time to tenure and their significance level (see later section). SALARY
The sample for this analysis (respondents at research universities) included 13,825 cases. Salary, the dependent variable, was scored as a continuous variable as reported by the respondents. As such, it represents a nine-month academic salary. We utilized 47 variables as independent predictors. These included: racejethnicity; actual age; field of highest
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
71
degree (13 major categories, see Appendix C for field classifications); academic rank; highest degree earned (four dichotomous variables); total number of publications; marital status; whether they had children as well as the actual number ofchildren; whether they had tenure; having a spouse or partner who is also an academic; hours per week spent in teaching, advising/counseling of students, research and writing, and household/ childcare duties. In addition, we utilized variables which represent faculty's values and attitudes such as interests in teaching versus research and occupational prestige/professional status as reasons for choosing an academic career. As described earlier, we included seven composite measures: humanistic orientation, intellectual freedom orientation, activist/service orientation, occupational prestige/status orientation, student-centered pedagogy, personal service commitment, and need for autonomy orientation. Finally, we controlled for three institutional variables: 1) selectivity-a measure based on students' total SAT scores; 2) total student enrollment-a measure of institutional size; and 3) type of institution-a research university I or II based on the Carnegie Classification. (All regression variables and their coding are listed in Appendix C.) Twenty-four of the original 47 variables carried significant weights at the final solution (see Table 22, next page). These variables explained 58% of the variance in salary (R2=.5856). As indicated earlier, gender (female=2) was forced at the last step in the stepwise regression analysis. This variable was found to have a significant negative weight indicating that being a woman is predictive of earning a lower salary even after control of key relevant variables. Most of the control variables that entered for predicting salary were of no surprise: being older, having a higher academic ranking, and number of publications. Also, faculty in the fields of business, engineering, physical science, and mathematics/ statistics earn more than faculty in humanities and fine arts. Psychology, social sciences, and health science were also positive predictors of earned salary. Married faculty and faculty with children were found to enjoy higher salaries than single or married faculty without children. When we examined the analysis with women only, being married or having children did not enter the regression equation. In other words, being married and having children affect men's salaries but not women's. In previous research a similar finding emerged (Astin and Bayer, 1973). At that time our interpretation was that married people with children may be better able to negotiate higher salaries because of their added/larger expenses,
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
72
Table 22 PREDICTORS OF 9-MONTH SALARY AT RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Variable
Step at entry
Zero Order r
Standardized Regression Coefficienr'
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
+.416 +.170 +.233 +.018 -.061 +.656 +.533 +.182 +.045
+.124 +.022 +.027 not significant not significant +.432 +.170 +.151 +.161
10
-.203
-.055
11 12 13 14 15 16
+.039 -.226 +.120 +.059 +.039 -.153
+.093 -.057 +.060 +.065 +.045 -.025
17
-.196
-.041
19 20 21 22 23 24
+.113 +.015 +.523 -.142 -.107 -.130
+.029 +.016 not significant -.038 -.051 not significant
25 26 27 28 29
+.027 +.223 +.013 +.054 -.308
not significant +.173 +.034 +.022 -.023
Actual Age Married Children Asian American/Asian With Partner Academic Rank Number of Publications Engineering Business Hours Per Week: Scheduled Teaching Professional Degree (M.D., J.D., etc.) Primary Interest: Teaching Physical Sciences Math/Statistics Social Sciences Humanistic Orientation Hours Per Week: House/ChildCare Reason for Becoming an Academic: Prestige/Status Psychology Tenured Fine Arts Humanities Personal Commitment to Service Hours per week: Advising/Counseling Institutional Selectivity Total Enrollment Research University I Sex (R2 = .5856)
Note: N - 13,825 • Values shown reflect final solution beta coefficients All depicted values are significant at p So .01
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
73
or that administrators may be more willing to pay higher salaries to married faculty with children using similar rationales (e.g., greater financial need because of spouse and children). In addition, being a faculty member at a large institution as well as at a selective institution is predictive of earning a higher salary. Regarding the relationship between faculty values and earned salary, those faculty with a humanistic orientation earn less, while those with a status/prestige orientation earn more. This may reflect the choices faculty make to engage in certain kinds of behaviors which are frequently more substantially rewarded by institutions (e.g., spending more time researching and writing for publication). Along this line of thinking, the number of hours spent in teaching and on household chores affect faculty negatively with respect to salaries earned. After controlling for the above variables, women still earned less money (i.e., gender: female entered with a negative weight in the regression at the last step). In order to explore the extent to which the salary differentials between men and women might be attributed to other than these relevant variables such as differential treatment of men and women with respect to rewards, we calculated a predicted salary for women by matching women to the characteristics and performance of men based on the derived significant predictor variables in the men's equation. In other words, we examined what a woman's salary "should be" if she were in the same field, had the same academic rank as a man, had the same publication record, was employed at the same type of institution, and so forth. The predicted salary in the calculation was found to be $45,997, while women's average actual salary was $45,355. Therefore, women who match men on all predictor variables make on the average $642 per year less than men. Whether this differential can be attributed to sex discrimination or to variables we were unable to control remains as a question for further research.
PUBLICATIONS DURING THE PAST lWO YEARS The second regression analysis involved examination of the effect of gender on research productivity after controlling for relevant predictor variables. Since the number of publications is a critical determinant on promotions and salaries we believed that it was critical to examine whether women's somewhat lower salaries could be attributed to their publication record. As was shown in the descriptive analysis (Table 13), women
74
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
indicated somewhat lower rates of publication. Twenty percent ofwomen within research universities as compared to 18 percent of men reported that they had not published anything during the previous two years. Men also indicated higher levels of overall productivity than did women. For example, 39 percent of the men compared to 32 percent of women indicated that they had published 5 or more pieces during the past two years. Male faculty at research universities, on the average, published 3.15 articles during the past two years; women faculty reported an average publication rate of 2.89 for the previous two years. Given these differences, we were interested in examining whether women faculty do, in fact, publish less if we control for relevant predictor variables on research productivity. In this analysis, again using hierarchical stepwise regression analysis, we controlled first for the same set of variables we listed and described earlier (see section on salary) and forced gender (female=2) into the regression equation last. The dependent variable, publications, was a continuous variable indicating the number of publications or artistic presentations in the last two years. Twenty-one variables entered and maintained their significance as predictors in explaining rate ofpublication (see Table 23). While faculty at higher academic ranks tend to publish more, older faculty within each rank publish fewer pieces. There were field differences as well. Faculty in business and law tend to publish less, while those in physical science, education, and psychology publish more. Education actually started with a negative correlation with number of publications, but changed signs to a positive association once academic rank was controlled for in the regression analysis. In contrast, holding a Ph.D. or Ed.D. is initially positively correlated with number of publications until hours per week spent on scholarly research and writing enters the regression. That is, it is not whether one holds a Ph.D. or Ed.D. that is significant, but rather what counts is how much time one devotes to research and scholarly writing. Being in fine arts also entered as a positive predictor. While fine arts faculty do not necessarily publish, the survey queried faculty about presentations as well as publications. Our sense is that fine artists are much more likely to indicate artistic presentations as a demonstration of productivity. Faculty in education and health sciences publish more when they reach the higher academic ranks. Being married also carried a positive weight. Previous research had demonstrated this as a positive variable in productivity.
75
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
Table 23 PREDICTORS OF NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS AT RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Variable
Step at entry
Zero Order r
Standardized Regression Coefficient"
Single Actual Age Mrican American/Black Children Academic Rank Hours Per Week: Research/Writing Fine Arts Primary Interest: Teaching Student-Centered Pedagogy Personal Commitment to Service Physical Sciences Reason for becoming an Academic: Prestige/Status Business Masters Degree Hours Per Week: Advising/Counseling Ph.D./Ed.D. Education Reason for becoming an Academic:lntellectuaJ Freedom Psychology Hours Per Week: House/ChildCare Law Institutional Selectivity Sex (R2 - .1840)
1 2 3 4 5
-.052 -.042 -.035 +.027 +.225
not significant -.149 -.027 +.027 +.234
6 7 8 9 10 11
+.255 +.108 -.256 +.050 -.006 +.096
+.173 +.149 -.124 +.101 +.066 +.060
12 13
14
+.077 -.062 -.142
+.043 -.039 -.081
15 16 17
+.049 +.122 -.040
+.036 -.061 +.033
18 19
+.193 +.034
+.030 +.025
20 21 22 23
-.006 -.033 +.065 -.080
-.022 -.023 +.028 not significant
Note: N - 15,070 • Values shown reflect final solution beta coefficients. All depicted values are significant at p S .01
Not surprisingly, institutional selectivity did predict higher productivity, most probably a function of more resources and a culture that supports and validates more productive and visible faculty. Three of the six value orientation variables entered the regression equation with positive weights: student-centered pedagogy, intellectual freedom, and personal
76
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
commitment to service. Given the challenges that faculty face in trying to balance the demands of teaching, research, and service, the results are quite interesting. Faculty at research universities who are committed to student-centered instructional and evaluation techniques, and who are also committed to service, are the most likely to publish. This is in addition to the fact that number of hours per week spent on advising and counseling was a positive predictor ofnumber of publications. These findings seem to indicate that faculty in research universities are, indeed, trying to "do it all" which may account for some of the higher levels of stress reponed regarding research and publishing demands. As might be expected, how much time one spends on research and writing predicts higher levels of productivity. As mentioned earlier, somewhat puzzling is the finding that faculty who spent time in counseling and advising are also more productive. This may describe faculty interactions with graduate students whom they not only advise but also collaborate with on research projects. Gender did not enter the equation, suggesting that levels of productivity cannot be explained by one's gender. To further examine whether women are as productive as men we calculated predicted publication productivity. We find that women have a somewhat lower actual productivity rate (2.89) than what is predicted (2.96) based on the critical predictors that emerged (e.g., age, rank, and field). However, the difference is not significant as was evident from the regression analysis. TIME TO TENURE For the analysis on time to tenure we selected only the faculty who were tenured. To compute time to tenure we subtracted year of Ph.D. received from year of tenure received. Unfortunately, this may not be a completely accurate measure since we do not know whether people entered academe right after the Ph.D., or did some other work during this time or whether they came to their faculty appointment before completion of the Ph.D. Nonetheless, the average calculated time for all tenured faculty was 7.93 years. We calculated time to tenure for men and women separately and for selected fields as well. Table 24 reports the n's, mean time to tenure, and the standard deviation within selected fields by gender. We tested for mean differences between men and women and significant differences are indicated by two asterisks.
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
77
Table 24 TIME TO TENURE: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN SELECTED FIELDS n*
Mean (time to tenure)
Standard Deviation
Total ** Men Women Biological Science** Men Women Business** Men Women Education Men Women Engineering* * Men Women FineArts Men Women Health Science Men Women Humanities** Men Women Math/Statistics Men Women Physical Science Men Women Psychology* * Men Women Social Science** Men Women Note: * weighted data, **ps..Ol
52,529 9,443
7.62 7.98
3.88 3.89
5,440 734
8.64 10.96
3.89 4.57
1,780 199
7.19 9.00
3.24 6.06
1,223 719
6.84 6.87
3.64 3.42
6,135 128
8.08 6.46
4.35 1.85
1,330 367
7.30 7.32
3.99 2.44
708 269
7.60 8.25
3.18 6.21
11,238 3,159
6.98 7.66
3.73 3.45
3,756 322
7.43 7.15
3.90 2.47
6,545 259
8.81 9.04
4.12 3.65
2,233 577
7.26 8.17
3.16 3.22
6,908 1,383
7.12 8.37
3.64 4.23
78
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
An examination of Table 24 indicates that across all fields, with the exception of engineering and mathematics/statistics, women take longer to attain tenure. Significant field differences at the p~.Ol level favoring men (shorter time to tenure) were found in biological sciences, business, humanities, psychology, and social sciences. However, women in engineering were found to attain tenure in a shorter amount of time than men.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS Comparing women to men in research universities I and II we find them to be younger and to occupy the lower academic ranks. They continue to earn less even when they are matched statistically to men on key relevant variables in predicting salaries. While they publish somewhat less, the difference between women's and men's publication rate is not significant. Women in research universities, while quite interested in the pursuit of research, are still found to spend more hours than do men in teaching and advising. Women are more student-centered in their pedagogy and their values about what ought to be the goals of undergraduate education differ from those held by men. While both women and men place high value on the intellectual development of students, women are much more likely than are men to indicate that helping students gain self-understanding, develop personally, and become more civic-minded should be important undergraduate goals. On a personal level, women and men also differ significantly on the values to which they adhere: women are much more humanistically oriented, socially concerned, and committed to helping the community, while men are much more likely to be motivated by self-advancement-gaining prestige and visibility. Men are also more financially motivated. We also find women to be less satisfied overall with their faculty positions and responsibilities, and to feel more stressed. Further, while there is some progress in terms of women's greater participation numerically, the academy has not completely embraced them nor the values they bring to their faculty roles especially with respect to teaching and serving. It appears that women are still not as central to the institutional culture as it exists today in spite of the rhetoric about the importance of undergraduate education and higher education's responsibility to serving the community.
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
79
While in the past, some have suggested that it is marriage and children that interfere with women's progress, we find that this is not the case. Neither marriage nor having children predict women's lower salaries or publication rate. Instead, we believe that women's success in the academy is often stymied by the fact that women's work and commitment to educating and serving are still not what is valued and rewarded in higher education. Given the recent debates about the importance of paying more attention to student learning, to engaging students in community service, and instilling in them a strong sense of civic responsibility, women represent a model ofan academic. Women faculty can indeed provide leadership in these new directions and concerns expressed by the society at large and by the institutions themselves. To accomplish these goals, however, women in research universities need the support of their colleagues and the support of the administration in promoting and advancing not only their scholarly work, but also their teaching and service.
NOTES 1. We would like to thank Jennifer Lindholm and Liz Guillory for their help with some of the computer analyses.
REFERENCES Aguirre, A., Jr. 1994. Perceptions of the workplace: Focus on minority women faculty. Initiatives 56 (3): 41-50. Aisenberg, N., and Harrington, M. 1988. Women ofacademe: Outsiders in the sacred grove. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Astin, Helen S. 1969. The woman doctorate in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. _ _ _, and Alan E. Bayer. 1973. Sex discrimination in Academe. In Academic women on the move, eds. A. S. Rossi and A. Calderwood. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. _ _ _, et al. 1997. Race and ethnicity in the American professoriate, 1995-96. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA. Bellas, M. L. 1997. Disciplinary differences in faculty salaries: Does gender bias playa role? Journal ofHigher Education 68 (3): 299-321.
80
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Boice, R. 1993. New faculty involvement for women and minorities. Research in Higher Education 34 (3): 291-341. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1990. Women faculty excel as campus citizens. Change 22 (5): 39-43. Chamberlain, M. K, ed. 1988. Women in academe: Progress and prospects. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Dickens, C. S. 1993. Collaboration in the research and scholarship offeminist women faculty. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 365 188. Elmore, G. C., and M. E. Balmert. 1995. A profile of college and university faculty: Minority and women in advertising, communication, journalism, media studies, public relations, and related fields. Journal ofthe Association for Communication Administration (2): 66-81. Ferber, M. A., and J. W. Loeb, eds. 1997. Academic couples: Problems and promises. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Finkel, S. K 1994. Childbirth, tenure and promotion for women faculty. Review ofHigher Education 17 (3): 259-270. Finnegan, D. E. 1993. Segmentation in the academic labor market: Hiring cohorts in comprehensive universities. Journal ofHigher Education 64 (6): 621-656. Hensel, N. 1991. Realizing gender equality in higher education: The need to integrate work/family issues. Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education. Johnsrud, L. K, and M. Wunsch. 1991. Barriers to success in academic life: Perceptions offaculty women in a colleague pairing program. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 399 312. National Research Council. 1977,1987,1996. Summary reports: Doctorate recipients from u.s. universities. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Nettles, M. T., and L. W. Perna. 1995. Sex and race differences in faculty
salaries, tenure, rank, and productivity: Why, on average, do women, African Americans, and Hispanics have lower salaries, tenure, and rank? ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 391 402.
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
81
and minority faculty job satisfaction: A structural modelexamining the effect ofprofessional role interests. ASHE Annual Meet-
Olsen, D. 1991.
~men
ing Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 339 323. Parson, L. A. 1991. The campus climate for women faculty at a public university. Initiatives 54 (1): 19-27. Robertson, L.
J., and J. P. Bean. 1997. Job satisfaction for women faculty
members in a predominantly female discipline. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Ill. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 406895. Rossi, A. S., and A Calderwood, eds. 1973. Academic women on the move. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sandler, B. R. 1986. The campus climate revisited: Chilly for women faculty, administrators, and graduate students. Association of American Colleges, Washington, D.C. _ _ _. 1991. Women faculty at work in the classroom, or, why it still hurts to be a woman in labor. Communication Education 40 (1): 6-15. _ _ _. 1992. Success and survival strategies for women faculty members. Association of American Colleges, Washington, D.C. Sax, L. J., et al. 1996. The American college teacher: National normsfor the 1995-96 HERIfaculty survey. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA. Simeone, A 1987. Academic women: Working towards equality. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey. Strober, M. H., et al. 1993. Report of the provost's committee on the recruitment and retention of women faculty. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 366 269. Tack, M. W., and C. L. Patitu. 1992. Faculty job satisfaction: Women and minorities in peril. ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, Washington, D.C. Vetter, B. M., and E. L. Babco. 1986. Professional women and minorities. Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Washington, D.C. Wenzel, S. A, and C. Hollenshead. 1994. Tenured women faculty: Reasons for leaving one research university. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 375 713.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
82
West, M. S. 1995. Women faculty: Frozen in time. Academe 81 (4): 2629. Wunsch, M. A. 1994. Giving structure to experience: Mentoring strategies for women faculty. Initiatives 56 (1): 1-10.
APPENDIX A THE STATUS OF ACADEMIC WOMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES: A CASE STUDY In addition to investigating faculty nationally, we thought it important to examine a research university as a case study in order to get a sense of trends at a specific institution. Tables 25-27 list the trends in the proportion of women in ladder and non-ladder ranks at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). These tables also include the proportion ofwomen within each step at the full professor rank for UCLA which has eight steps plus an above scale category. Women currently occupy 22 percent of all ladder ranks and 16 percent of full professors (see Table 25, next page) and they are more likely to be represented in higher proportions among non-ladder ranks (see Table 26). For example, they represent 43 percent of lecturers and 36 percent of adjunct faculty. There are also a total of 18 Deans in the Letters and Science division and in the professional schools. Of those 18 deans, currently four are women (Nursing, Public Policy, Humanities, Law). Examining the distribution of women at full professor rank, we observe that women are truly underrepresented among the highest steps (see Table 27). Most remarkable is the finding that the number of women at above scale (the highest level) has increased from 4 women in 1991-92 to 12 women in 1998-99. Table 28 lists new hires by rank in 1998-99 with a comparison of new hires eight years earlier (1991-92). In 1991-92, there were a total of 75 new hires ofwhom 19 (25 %) were women. In 1998, the total number of new hires were 30 of whom 10 were women. Also in 1998, women have fared better with respect to full professor among new hires (3 out of 11) compared to 2 out of 23 during 1991-92.
83
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
Table 25 LADDER RANKS FOR FACULTY AT UCLA 1991-92
1971-72 %
Men Women (of total)
Full Professor 631 290 Associate 376 Assistant 1,297 TOTAL
30 22 46 98
Men Women
4.5% 903 7.0% 235 10.9% 206 7.0% 1,134
111 86
121 318
1998-99 Men Women
10.9% 999 26.8% 215 37.0% 178 21.9% 1,392
188 100 102 390
15.8% 31.7% 36.4% 21.9%
Table 26 NON-LADDER APPOINTMENTS AND DEANS AT UCLA 1991-92 Position
Men
Women
In-Residence Lecturer Adjunct Researcher Librarian Dean
284 245 129 576 41 15
60 210 56 259 104 6
1998-99 % (of total)
17.4% 46.2% 30.2% 31.0% 71.7% 28.6%
Men
Women
270 383 151 825 28 14
83 285 84 259 97 4
% (oftotal)
23.5% 42.7% 35.7% 23.9% 77.6% 22.2%
Table 27 FULL PROFESSORS BY STEP AT UCLA 1991-92 Step
Men
Women
I II III IV V VI VII VIII above scale
58 68 84 125 183 81 78 85 141
23 16 19
11 19
11 6 2
4
1998-99 % (of total)
28.4% 19.0% 18.4% 8.1% 9.4% 12.0% 7.1% 2.3% 2.8%
Men
Women
68 68 74 78 135 74 97 134 271
29 26 30 27 33 11 9
11 12
% (oftotal)
29.9% 27.7% 28.8% 25.7% 19.6% 12.9% 8.5% 7.6% 4.2%
84
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Table 28 NEW HIRES AT UCLA 1991-92 Position
Full Professor
Men
Women
21
2
1998-99 %
%
Men
Women
8.7%
8
3
27.3%
2
1
33.3%
(of total)
(oftotal)
Associate
8
1
11.1%
Assistant
27
16
37.2%
10
7
41.2%
TOTAL
56
19
25.3%
20
10
33.3%
Table 29 LADDER FACULTY SEPARATIONS AT UCLA 1997-98
1989-90 Position
Full Professor Associate Assistant TOTAL
Men
Women
47 8 15 70
5 2 10 17
% (of total)
9.6% 20.0% 40.0% 19.5%
Men
Women
26 9 22 57
3 7 2 12
% (of total)
10.3% 43.8% 8.3% 17.4%
We also examined separations during 1989-90 and 1997-98 (see Table 29). Among all the departures/separations, women constituted 20 percent in 1989-90 and 17 percent in the later year. Of interest is how many of them had separated at the assistant professor level either because they did not make tenure, or because they had left for other employment, or had left because they did not expect to make tenure. In 1989, women accounted for 10 out of 25 separations (40 percent) at the assistant professor level. In 1997-98, they accounted for 2 out of 24 (8 percent) of separations at that level. The lower number and percentage at that level in 1998 may indicate fewer available choices elsewhere or that the promotion rate for women had increased. Other research has revealed that aspects of the environment facilitate faculty decisions to leave institutions, specifically, experiences
85
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
and incidents where their career opportunities were blocked, where others treated them with disrespect, where they had too little personal or financial support, where salary was inequitable, and/or where the university did not help with dual career issues (Wenzel and Hollenshead 1994). Tables 30 and 31 list the rate of promotion to associate and full professor levels for men and women at two periods of time, 1990-91 and 1998-99. At both periods of time, women fared better than men with respect to promotion to tenure. Women also fared better than men in the more recent year with respect to promotion to full professor but not as well at promotion from assistant to associate. Of course, we do not have data with respect to how quickly or slowly women move up the academic ladder. What we can tell from these data, however, is that when they do come up for review female faculty at UCLA tend to fare quite well.
Table 30 PROMOTIONS AT UCLA ASSISTANT TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR 1990-91 Position
Reviewed Approved Percentage
Mm
1998-99
Women
23 18
14
12 86%
78%
Men
Women
23
4 3
20 87%
75%
Table 31 PROMOTIONS AT UCLA ASSOCIATE TO FULL PROFESSOR 1990-91
1998-99
Position
Men
Women
Men
Women
Reviewed Approved Percentage
27 23 85%
9
20
8 8
8
89%
17 85%
100%
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
86
APPENDIX B COMPOSITE VARIABLES Variable Humanistic Orientation' Goal: Goal: Goal: Goal: Goal:
Factor Loading .
(alpha-.74) .77 .75 .69 .63 .61
helping to promote racial understanding influencing social values helping others in difficulty developing a meaningful philosophy of life becoming involved with programs to clean up the environment
Intellectual Freedom' Career: Career: Career: Career:
(alpha-.69) .77 .73 .71 .70
freedom to pursue interests intellectual freedom opportunities for research intellectual challenge
Activist/Service Orientationb Career: opportunity to influence social change Career: opportunity for teaching
Need for Autonomy Orientationb Career: autonomy Career: flexible schedule
Use ofStudent-Centered Pedagogy Instructional Technique: group project Evaluation Technique: student presentations Instructional Technique: cooperative learning Evaluation Technique: student evaluations of others' work Instructional Technique: experiential learning Instructional Technique: individual projects Instructional Technique: recitals/demonstrations Instructional Technique: class discussion
Personal Commitment to Service
.
(alpha-.37) .73 .66 (alpha-.66) .68 .59 (alpha-.SO) .76 .73 .68 .60 .55 .50 .48 .43
(alpha-.90) Activity: performed service/volunteer work'! .88 Hours per week spent on community/public service .88 Goal: provide services to the community' .83 Goal for undergraduates: instill commitment to community service' .79 Goal for undergraduates: prepare students for responsible citizenship' .76 Activity: advised student groups in service/volunteer workd .75 • Personal goals measured on a 4 point scale, "not important" to "essential" b Reasons to choose an academic career measured on a 3 point scale, "not important" to "very important" , Number of courses utilizing specific instructional/evaluation techinque measured on a 4 point scale, "none" to "all" d Activity engaged in the past two years measured on a 2 point scale, "no" or "yes"
A National Profile of Academic Women in Research Universities
87
APPENDIX C LISTING OF VARIABLES AND CODING UTILIZED IN REGRESSION ANALYSES DemogrlJphic/BlJckground ChlJrlJcteristics race/ethnicity
actual age have children number of children married single with partner
AClJdemic BlJckground ChlJrlJcteristics highest degree earned tenured spouse an academic academic rank primary interest: teaching hours per week: scheduled teaching hours per week: advising/counseling students hours per week: research and scholarly writing hours per week: household and childcare duties occupational prestige/status
5 dichotomous variables: African American/black, Asian American/ Asian, American Indian, Latino/a, white continuous scale 1 "no," 2 "yes" continuous scale 1 "no," 2 "yes" 1 "no," 2 "yes" 1 "no," 2 "yes"
4 dichotomous variables: BA, MA, Phd/EdD, Professional Degree 1 "no," 2 "yes" 1 "no," 2 "yes" 4 point scale, "instructor" to "professor" 4 point scale, "heavy research interest" to "heavy teaching interest" continuous scale continuous scale continuous scale continuous scale 3 point scale, 1 "not important," 2 "somewhat important," 3 "very important"
Composite VlJrilJbles Humanistic Orientation Intellectual Freedom Activist/Service Orientation Need for Autonomy Orientation Use of Student-Centered Pedagogy
PersonlJJ Commitment to Service
4 point scale, "not important" to "essential" 3 point scale, 1 "not important," 2 "somewhat important," 3 "very important" 3 point scale, 1 "not important," 2 "somewhat important," 3 "very important" 3 point scale, 1 "not important," 2 "somewhat important," 3 "very important" 4 point scale, "none" to "all" courses (see appendix B)
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
88
Major Field Classifications Biological Science Business Education Engineering Fine Arts Health Science Humanities Law Mathematics/Statistics Physical Science Psychology Social Science Social Work
dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous, dichotomous,
I I I I I I I I I I I I I
"no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no," "no,"
Institutional Characteristics
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
"yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes" "yes"
size: total enrollment .. continuous scale selectivity (average SAT composite of freshman class) continuous scale research I or II university . dichotomous, I "no," 2"yes"
Gender
I "male," 2 "female"
Chapter Four
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering1 Mary Frank Fox
INTRODUCTION Initiatives to increase the numbers of women faculty derive in part from understandings that the representation of women faculty is cmcial for the culture and climate of the university and for the development of students' capacities and potential. Faculty are consequential for students through what they convey, demonstrate, and exemplify. This is true throughout educational stages. But it is the case particularly for doctoral education. For graduate students, the impact of faculty is broad and deep-affecting the way students acquire knowledge, values, norms, skills, and beliefs (Zuckerman 1977). Graduate students report that faculty are the single most important aspect of their education (Clark and Corcoran 1986; Katz and Hartnett 1976). That influence, however, may be for better or worse, positive and/or negative (as is the case for undergraduate education; see Astin and Sax 1996). For those students who enter academic careers, the effects of their graduate school faculty are often so strong as to provide perspectives and orientations that guide their lifetimes of teaching and research (Trow 1977:15). What we need to know-and largely have not-are features of the social complexity and dynamics offaculty in doctoral education, as they vary Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
91
92
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
both by gender of faculty and by faculty's reference to gender ofstudents. That is my subject in this chapter. The focal questions are these: In science and engineering fields, do women and men faculty have comparatively different or similar patterns in 1) the gender composition of advisees and research team (student) members; 2) the nature/character of their interaction with advisees; and 3) their beliefs about what is important in doctoral education for female compared to male students? By implication, these questions go to a fundamental issue: What are the consequences ofhaving women faculty? How and why does it matter to have women as well as men faculty? In the study of gender, faculty, and doctoral education, science and engineering (S&E) fields represent a revealing site for research. This is because scientific work and training revolve strongly on faculty-student interchange. In science and engineering, faculty and students are bound together potentially in research facilities and projects, funded through faculty as principal investigators, on which students largely undertake daily work (see, for example, National Research Council 1998). In these fields, students rarely, if ever, go off to do research and dissertations "on their own"; thus, faculty have particular immediacy and exigency in the students' lives (Fox 2000).
METHOD DATA
The data are from a national mail survey that I conducted in 199394 ofl215 faculty in doctoral-granting departments of: computer science, chemistry, electrical engineering, microbiology, and physics. The study is distinguished by sampling of faculty from known populations. Details on sampling design are in the Appendix. Response rate of faculty to the survey was 69%-with those faculty in computer science and electrical engineering having somewhat lower, and those in chemistry and physics having somewhat higher, response (than average); and with women's response rates somewhat higher than men's.
VARIABLES Gender compositions of advisees and research teams are represented by faculty's reports of: 1) the number of male and female students for whom faculty "act as primary research advisor"; and 2) the number of
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
93
male and female graduate students on the faculty's research team (for those who conduct their research as "a team group of persons"). Features of faculty interactions with students are represented by faculty's reports on: 1) orientation to graduate training; 2) characterization of ideal relationship with students; 3) structure of working with students; and 4) frequency of speaking with advisees. Orientation to graduate training is measured by response to the question, "If you have one of the following orientations toward graduate education, which orientation fits you best: a) move students along; teach them to succeed; or b) sift through students; let them sink or swim?" Characterization of ideal relationship with students is assessed through faculty's response to the question, "Ideally, how do you envision the relationship between advisor and doctoral-level graduate student: a) as one between faculty member and student; b) as one between mentor and mentee; or c) as one between colleagues?" The structure of working with students is assessed with faculty's response to the question, "To discuss a student's research, do you usually make an appointment or not?" Frequency of interaction is measured by answer to the question, "How frequently do you discuss research projects and interests with advisees: almost never, once/twice a term, once/twice a month, once a week, almost every day, several times a day?" Faculty attitudes and beliefs about what is important in doctoral education are indicated in the scaled levels of importance ("not important," "slightly important," "moderately important," or "very important") faculty place upon: 1) twelve areas of help for advisees; 2) eight areas of skills/capacities in students' attainment of the doctoral degrees; and 3) seven factors accounting for success among students. For the importance of skills/capacities and factors accounting for success, faculty were asked for separate ratings of importance for male students and for female students. The findings are for faculty across fields, separated by gender; the limited numbers of women faculty in S&E fields do not lend themselves to gender comparisons separated by field. Figure 1 shows the distribution by departments of women faculty and men faculty in the study; the distribution of women and men faculty by their academic ranks appears in Table 1. Throughout, and simply for rhetorical purposes of distinguishing between gender of faculty and of students, I refer to faculty as "women and men faculty" and students as "female and male students."
94
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 1 FACULTY PROFILE BY DEPARTMENT
26.8%
• •
Physics
17.3%
Micro
18.4%
Elec Eng
10.7%
CompSci
26.8%
Chemistry
D
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
Table 1 FACULTY PROFILE BY RANK Rank Instructor;Lecturer Assistant Professor Associate Professor Full Professor Named Professor Admin., Res. Fac., Adjunct
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
(N=137)
(N=628)
2.2% 40.9% 23.4% 29.2% 1.4% 2.9%
0.5% 17.4% 20.4% 56.4% 2.9% 2.9%
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ADVISING AND RESEARCH TEAMS: STUDENT COMPOSITION BY GENDER OF FACULTY AND OF STUDENTS
The vast majority of faculty-88% men, 84% women-act as primary research advisors for graduate students. By gender, who advises whom?
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
95
Figure 2
NUMBER OF STUDENTS ADVISED
4
3
Female Students
D Male Students
2 p<.05
Q _ _L...-_L...-_ _- - - - J ' - - _ ' - - _
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
Compared to men faculty, women advise more female students and fewer male students; for men faculty, it is the reverse. In total number of students advised, women and men faculty do not significantly differ (Figure 2). The data on advising include those who do and do not conduct their research in what is described as "teams." The 70% majority of faculty report that they conduct their research as "team research" with groups of graduate students, and sometimes post-docs as well as other participants such as technicians and undergraduates, working together on a project. What is the composition of research teams, by gender of faculty and students? Women faculty doing team research have a larger number of female graduate students in their groups than do men faculty. However, women and men do not differ significantly in the number of male students on their teams. Thus, if women faculty have more students on their teams (and they do), it is because the number of female students is higher (Figure 3).2
96
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 3
NUMBER OF STUDENTS ON RESEARCH TEAM 6 5 4
IFemale Students
3
Male Students
2
O-.....l..--"'-----.......~-Women Faculty Men Faculty
FACULTY INTERACTIONS WITH STUDENTS: ORIENTATION/ CHARACTERIZATION, STRUCTURE, AND FREQUENCY Faculty interactions with students involve faculty's orientation to doctoral education, and the structure and frequency of interaction. These data on interactions refer to students advised without reference to gender of students.
Orientation and Characterization In assessing "general orientation" to graduate training, two types of orientations were posed to faculty: 1) that of taking a stance to "moving students along and teaching them to succeed," and 2) "sifting through students, letting them sink-or-swim." The majority of faculty-78% of women, 74% ofmen-reponed "yes," they have one ofthese orientations. Of these, over 90% of both women and men faculty repon their own orientation is "moving students along/teaching them to succeed." On this, both women and men faculty overwhelmingly agree (Table 2).
97
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
Table 2 FACULTY ORIENTATION TO STUDENTS Orientation to Students
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
Teach Them to Succeed Let Them "Sink or Swim II Both Depends
90.8% 5.5% 2.8% 0.9%
91.5% 7.0% 0.8% 0.6%
Table 3 IDEAL RELATIONSHIP WITH STUDENTS Relationship Faculty-Student Mentor-Mentee Colleagues Combination
Women Faculty 3.6% 82.0% 9.4% 5.0%
Men Faculty 3.0% 76.1% 12.7% 8.2%
In the ways in which faculty envision the ideal relationship between advisor and advisee-as "faculty and student," "mentor and mentee," or "colleagues"- we begin to see marks of patterns for women and men faculty. It is not, however, a pattern of women idealizing peership with students. Compared to men, women faculty are more likely to cluster in their response that the ideal relationship is "mentor/mentee." Men's characterizations are more variable, with somewhat higher proportions of men choosing "colleagues" or saying that it is a "combination" or that "it depends" (Table 3).
Structure In the structure ofworking with students, by appointment or not by appointment, gender shapes practice. Less than a third (28%) of men faculty compared to 41% of women faculty discuss by appointment (Figure 4, next page). This, in combination with the clustering regarding ideal relationship, suggest that women faculty may have an approach with students that is "by design"- that is, a more deliberate, perhaps more consciously "intentional," pattern.
98
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Figure 4
MEET WITH STUDENTS BY APPOINTMENT 100
80
D
60
Both
IDo
40
ot Make Appt
Make Appointment
20 p<.Ol
o
Women Faculty
Men Faculty Table 4
FREQUENCY OF DISCUSSION WITH STUDENTS Frequency
Once a month or less Once a week Almost every day Several times a day Varies with need
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
6.0% 45.7% 35.3% 11.2% 1.7%
5.6% 38.5% 47.7% 8.1% 0.4%
Frequency
Further indication of this pattern is in the response to the question "how frequently does the faculty member speak with advisees about the students' research?" For women faculty, the most common response is "once a week"; for men faculty, "almost every day" (Table 4). Women
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
99
faculty's discussion with students by appointment or "by design," shown in Figure 4, is consistent with discussion once a week. Men faculty's discussion without appointment may be less structured, more casual perhaps, and thus, more frequent, which is what we see in Table 4.
FACULTY ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS ABOUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION Faculty's attitudes/beliefs about doctoral education are indicated in the levels of importance faculty place upon: I) areas of help for students, 2) areas of skills/capabilities for students, and 3) factors that account for success of students.
Importance of Help, by Type Presented with twelve areas of help for advisees, faculty were asked to rate the importance ofeach area on a four point scale, where 1 = not important, and 4 = very important (Figure 5). This question does not distinguish between help for male or female students. Both women and men faculty Figure 5
HOW IMPORTANT TO HELP STUDENTS * Organize people ~~~~::I Teach
~~~~~~
** Organize time ~~~~~~ ** Write grant proposals ~~~;~;;~ * * Prepare presentations in dept. ~ * * Introduce to researchers ~!!!~~~~~~ ** Get funding
~~~~;~~~;
Find jobs ~
* Co-author papers ~~~~~~~~~ ** Prepare outside presentations ~~~~~~~~~ ** Execute research
~~~~~~~~~~
* * Design research ~
1
ot
•
Men Faculty
2
Slight
3
Moderate
4
Very
Women Faculty
100
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
rank certain areas of help to be most important, namely help in designing research, executing research, making outside presentations, co-authoring papers, and finding jobs. Among women and men faculty in science and engineering, consensus is then high on ranking of what is important help for doctoral students. In non-science fields, consensus is generally much lower about a range of fundamental issues, including what constitutes an important (compared to an insignificant) question, an elegant (compared to banal) research design, and a grand (compared to a trivial) problem (Fox, 1989:189). Likewise, in non-science fields, agreement about what is important in doctoral education may also be expected to be lower among faculty, including women compared to men faculty. At the same time, however, for 10 of these 12 areas of help, women faculty in these science and engineering fields rank the help as significantly more important than do men faculty (these 10 areas are starred in Figure 5). The only areas of help in which women do not give significantly higher rankings of importance are in "learning teaching skills" and "finding jobs." In short, across all areas of help but these two, women Figure 6
IMPORTANCE OF SKILLS: MALE STUDENTS Learn Teaching Skills
~
..
III• • • •~... Interact with Faculty • • • •!II....
Perform Course Work
....
Participate in Lab Meetings Present Seminars Judge Important Research
** Publish Papers Execute Research
III
..
IIII!I"
~• • • • • •
III
11I• ••11III"".
I Ot
Men Faculty
2 Slight
3
..
Moderate
p<.Ol
4
Very
Women Faculty
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
101
faculty are significantly higher in the weight or emphasis put upon help to advisees. Importance of Students' Skills/Capacities in Attaining Degree
Graduate education is linked-
IMPORTANCE OF SKILLS: FEMALE STUDENTS Learn Teaching Skills . . . . .~ Perform Course Work
~
..
** Interact with Faculty
p<.Ol
• Participate in Lab Meetings
p<.05
•• Present eminars
.,
Judge Important Research , .
..
p<.Ol
•• Publish Papers
~~~~~~!!~~
Execute Research
~~~~~~~~~~ 1 ot
•
Men Faculty
2 Slight
3 Moderate
p<.OI
4 Very
Women Faculty
102
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 8 IMPORTANCE OF SKILLS: FEMALES VS. MALES Learn Teaching Skills
p<.Ol
Perform Course Work Interact with Faculty Participate in Lab Meetings
p<.Ol ..............,;;,;..jJ
p<.05
Present Seminars Judge Imponant Research
......._",;o"".""""'..... p<.Ol
Publish Papers Execute Research 0.04 -0.04 0.00 Female Importance
Men Faculty
0.08 0.12 Male Importance
Women Faculty
students, women faculty place significantly higher rating than do men faculty upon the importance of presenting seminars, participating in laboratory meetings, and interacting with faculty. Further, the contrasts between women faculty's assessment of the importance ofcertain interactional capabilities for female compared to male students-that is, the paired comparisons-are significant. Figure 8 shows the level of importance for females minus level of importance for male students (thus, positive values indicate the skill is more important for female students). In this way, we see that women faculty believe that all skills, except publishing papers, are unevenly important by gender of student-that is, more important for female than for male students. Importance of Factors Accounting for Success
A third set of beliefs are faculty's accounts of the importance of factors explaining success ofstudents. These are sometimes called "attributions ofsuccess." Attributions can vary in emphasis placed upon factors that are more (comparatively) "internal" to the students themselves, such as being
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
103
Figure 9
SUCCESS ATIRIBUTIONS: MALE STUDENTS
Lucky.···..
Prestige of Previous Degree . . . . . . . . p<.05
Working in Hot Area
~~~~~~~
Aligned with Successful Faculty • • • • • •1..., p<.05 ...
Brighter
More Ambitious • • • • • • • •11II Harder Working • • • • • • • • • • 1
ot
•
Men Faculty
2 Slight
3 Moderate
4 Very
Women Faculty
"ambitious" or "hard working," and those more "external" to the students, such as "being aligned with successful faculty" or "working in a well-funded area" (Fox and Ferri 1992). In their ratings of factors that account for the accomplishment of the "most successful" students, both women and men faculty put their strongest emphasis-that is, highest ratings of importance-upon "ambition" and "hard work," factors more internal to students. In attributions for the success of male students, women faculty think that "alignment with successful faculty" and "having prior degree from a prestigious university" are significantly more important than do men faculty (Figure 9). Women faculty are putting greater emphasis upon the importance ofcomparatively "external" factors. For female students, women faculty think that the majority offactors-internal factors and external factors-are more important than do men faculty (Figure 10, next page). Another way to view the pattern is in the paired comparisons in levels of importance faculty place upon factors for female compared to male students. Figure 11, next page, shows the difference between ratings of the importance of factors for female compared to male students among women faculty and men faculty. Among women faculty, the difference is
104
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 10
SUCCESS ATIRIBUTIONS: FEMALE STUDENTS Prestige of Pre\ious Degree Lucky Working in Hot Area
~• •L ....
p<.Ol
JII• • • • •l" • • • • •L.,p<.os
• .....
_----~
...
••• •II..,~p<.Ol "'-'iCI Aligned with ucce ful Faculty '•-• Brighter . .. . . . . . . . . . p<.05
........"'""""""-'""""--"''''''"
'------'-
More Ambitiou . . . . . . . . .L,IP<.05 Harder Working
III
.. 2 Slight
1 ot •
Men Faculty
3 Moderate
4 Very
Women Faculty
Figure 11
SUCCESS ATIRIBUTIONS: FEMALES VS. MALES Pre tige of Previous Degree
p<.OI
Lucky
p<.OI
Working in Hot AreJ. Aligned with uccessful Faculty
p<.Ol p<.Ol
r::::::=:==:::::1 p<.O 1
Brighter lore Ambitious
....-_.,...._...,..... p<.Ol
Harder Working -0.04 0.00 0.04 Female Importance
0.08 0.12 Male Importance
•
Women Faculty
Men Faculty
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
105
significant for 5 out of 7 of the factors-for each area except "working in a hot area" and "being lucky." In short, women faculty believe most factors are more important for the success offemale compared to male students.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS In summary and conclusion, let us consider the findings as they bear upon issues fundamental to practices and policies to increase the representation of women faculty. Specifically, what are the consequences of having women faculty? In what ways does it matter to have women (as well as men) faculty? First, compared to men, women faculty act as primary research advisors for a larger number of female students. Second, for those faculty doing "team research" (and this is the 70% majority in these S&E fields), women faculty have more female students on their research teams. They also have as many male students on their teams as do men faculty. On the average, then, women faculty are not substituting female for male students; they are including both, and have larger groups. Third, in the features of their interaction with students-indicated by orientation to students, and structure and frequency of interactionwomen are more likely than men faculty to proceed in what might be termed a "deliberate" manner. Women are more likely to regard the ideal relationship as "mentor-mentee," to make appointments to see students, and to discuss students' research with them each week, as though "by design." This structured approach may be linked to equity of access and treatment; that is, by making appointments and meeting with students once a week, women faculty may be consciously aiming to provide equitable or relatively uniform access of students to their advisor. 3 Fourth, in beliefs about what is important in doctoral education, women faculty put significantly more emphasis upon giving help to advisees, across areas of help. When reference is made to gender of students, women faculty place greater importance for female compared to male students on a range of skills/competencies, not only publication of papers, but also a span of interactional capacities. Women faculty believe that participating in laboratory meetings, making presentations, and interacting with faculty are unevenly important by gender, that is, significantly more important for female than male students. Finally, women faculty may make a difference in the extent to which they believe that success of female students, especially, is governed not
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
106
only by "ambition" and "hard work" but also by factors more external to students, such as "alignment with successful faculty." Thus, women faculty are recognising the role of social and organisational opportunities/ constraints, as well as personal characteristics, in understanding and explaining success for female students. What underlies these patterns of gender, faculty, and doctoral education? Why do women faculty place significantly more importance-more emphasis-upon facets of graduate education, especially for female students? At the heart of the matter, I propose, is heightened awareness among women faculty of their faculty positions, of the path that took them there, of the complex conditions that may govern attainments, and of the penalties for shortfall in any dimension. Different experiences of women and men faculty, and different resources, ease of opportunities, and privileges (Fox 1991), may engender differences in their interaction with students and attitudes and beliefs about matters of importance. Women and men faculty do experience objectively (and subjectively) different social conditions in science and academia, particularly in the slower and lower rate of promotion of women faculty, and the lower returns to women of rewards of salary and rank for performance (Fox 1996, 1999). To the extent that differential conditions prevail for female graduate students as well, women faculty's more emphatic emphasis upon matters of importance may be a realistic adaptation, not only for themselves, but for the preparation of female students-at least until (and if) more gender equitable conditions reign in academia.
NOTES 1. The research reported here was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SED-9153994). 2. The number of students for whom women and men faculty serve as "primary research advisors" does not correspond strictly to the number of students women compared to men faculty report as being on a "research team." First, while the vast (87%) majority offacuIty serve as primary research advisors for one or more graduate students, 30% of those who advise do not conduct "team research." Second, faculty may have on their research teams students for whom they do not (yet) serve as research advisors because of the early stage of the students' work.
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
107
3. For the suggestion of the relationship between structure of interaction and equitable access, I thank Angela Ginorio.
REFERENCES
Astin, Helen, and Linda Sax. 1996. Developing scientific talent in undergraduate women. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement of women in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering, ed. C. Davis, A. Ginorio, C. Hollenshead, B. Lazarus, and P. Rayman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Clark, Shirley, and Mary Corcoran. 1986. Perspectives on the professional socialization of women faculty. Journal ofHigher Education 57 (Jani Feb.): 20-43. Fox, Mary Frank. 1989. Disciplinary fragmentation, peer review, and the publication process. The American Sociologist 20 (Summer): 188-191. _ _ _. 1991. Gender, environmental milieu, and productivity in science. In The outer circle: Women in the scientific community, edited by H. Zuckerman, J. Cole, and J. Bruer, pp. 188-204. New York: W. W. Norton. _ _ _. 1996. Women, academia, and careers in science and engineering. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement of women in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering, edited by C. Davis et al., pp. 265-289. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. _ _ _. 1999. Gender, hierarchy, and science. In Handbook ofthe sociologyofgender, edited by J. S. Chafetz, pp. 441-457. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. _ _ _. 2000. Organizational environments and doctoral degrees awarded to women in science and engineering departments. Women's Studies QJt.arterly 28 (Spring/Summer): 47-61. _ _ _, and Vincent Ferri. 1992. Women, men, and their attributions for success in academe. Social Psychology Quarterly 55 (Summer): 257-271. Katz, J., and Rodney T. Hartnett. 1976. Recommendations for training better scholars. In Scholars in the making, edited by J. Katz and R. T. Hartnett, pp. 261-80. Cambridge: Ballinger.
108
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
National Research Council. 1998. Trends in the early careers oflife scientists. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Trow, Martin. 1977. Departments as contexts for teaching and learning. In Academic departments, edited by D. E. McHenry and Associates, pp. 12-33. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Zuckerman, Harriet. 1977. Scientific elite. New York: Free Press.
APPENDIX: SAMPLING DESIGN For each of the fields (except microbiology, discussed subsequently), the doctoral granting departments sampled were those, identified on the basis of data from the National Research Council (NRC), Survey of Doctoral Recipients, as being a) consistently low, b) consistently high, or c) most improved in proportions of doctoral degrees awarded to women over a 17-year period. For chemistry, computer science, electrical engineering, and physics, the rate ofdegrees awarded to women was computed for the first five years and the last five years of the period for which data were available. The first five years were 1974-78 except for computer science (1978-1982) and electrical engineering (1977-81); the last five years were 1986-90. Within each field, the departments were ranked based upon the total number of Ph.D.s produced during the period. The largest Ph.D. departments (those producing 70% of all doctorates in the field) were selected as the "population of interest," except for computer science where a 50% cutoff was used. Within each of the four fields, departments were then ranked, based on the difference between the ending rate ofwomen Ph.D.s (Le., the rate over the last five years) and the beginning rate (Le., the rate over the first five years). For chemistry, the "most improved" departments were those with an increase of 15% or more in the rate of women Ph.D.s . For computer science and engineering, the most improved were 8% or more, and for physics, 9% or more. For each of the four fields, the "consistently low" and "consistently high" departments were those for which the difference in the rate ofwomen Ph.D.s was within a range ofnot more than -5% and +5%. Within each field, the consistent departments were then ranked, based on the average of the beginning and ending rates. Depending upon the field, cutoffs were selected by "low" consistent rate and "high" consistent rate. By field, the cutoff points are: chemistry, high ~15%, low
Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering
109
computer science, high ~10%, low ~8%; electrical engineering, high low ~1 %; physics, high ~8%, low ~4%. The study is distinguished by sampling of faculty from known populations. To accomplish this, I obtained rosters offaculty from the respective departments determined through the NRC data. Because of the low proportions ofwomen compared to men faculty in these four S&E fields, and the aim for sufficient numbers to allow gender comparisons, sampling fractions were applied separately for male and female faculty. For the departments in these four fields, all women and 40% ofmen were sampled. Likewise, because the study focused upon differences in organizational and outcome variables among departmental categories (low, high, improved), it is desirable to put those categories in the design and not leave sample outcome to randomness of departmental categories. Microbiology cannot be sampled with the same design (of departments that have been low, high, or improved in proportions of degrees awarded to women). That is because for microbiology, the field in which students identify degree (in NRC Survey of Doctorate Recipients) corresponds more loosely with department. For example, a degree listed as field of biology or microbiology may be from variable departments, such as molecular genetics, neurobiology, or other units. Thus, for microbiology, rosters of faculty and students were obtained from 69 responding departments of the 103 US doctoral-granting departments of microbiology in the listing of "Colleges and Universities Granting Degrees in the Microbiological Sciences," American Society ofMicrobiology. The sample of faculty was drawn from the 19 departments granting 50% of all microbiology degrees. Sampling fractions were applied separately for women and men faculty, with 40% of male faculty and 50% of female faculty sampled. ~13%; ~5%,
Chapter Five
You've Come
a Long Way
Data on Women Doctoral Scientists and Engi neers in Research Universities 1 Charlotte V. Kuh
In the world of the most highly trained professionals-doctoral scientists and engineers-women have indeed advanced a long way in the past 25 years. Where women were only 13% ofnew science and engineering Ph.D.s in 1973, they were 33% in 1996. Even in engineering, the broad field that has the lowest representation of women, they had grown from less than 1%to over 12% of new doctorates. This growth in both share and numbers has increased the representation of women throughout the fields of science and engineering. The question addressed in this paper is whether similar progress had been made in American research universities. A simple answer would involve just looking at the share of women in broad fields in research universities and showing how that share has been growing-and this paper will do that. A simple answer, however, is not sufficient because in the past twenty-five years, research universities have moved from a time of growth and expansion to what is, at best, a steady state in terms of employment and funding. The period of most rapid entry of women into the Ph.D. labor force occurred at the same time as this slowing ofgrowth. ElJual R.ites, UnelJual Outcomes: Women in American R.esearch Universities
Edited by Hornig, Kluwer AcademicjPlenum Publishers, 2003
111
112
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Thus, we need to look at the experience of different cohorts of Ph.D.s, since different cohorts entered science and engineering at times when opportunities for everyone, male and female, changed. This paper is going to present facts, usually in the form of graphs supported by appendix tables, without delving into causation-that is the task of other papers at this Conference. We are going to look at the progression of cohorts, defined by decade of Ph.D., as well as outcomes for all women employed in research universities. At this point, it is also helpful to explain why, in this paper, we will generally talk about research universities as a whole and about broad fields rather than specific disciplines. The data on which this paper is based derive from data sets sponsored by the National Science Foundation and come from the Doctorate Records File, which is compiled from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, a census of new Ph.D.s from American universities. An 8% sample ofPh.D.s from the most recent two years is then followed for forty years in the Survey of Doctoral Recipients (SDR). This is the data set that allows us to track the career outcomes of men and women in science and engineering. The difficulty with this data set is that, except for very large fields, an 8% sample is too small to make reliable inferences for narrowly defined subpopulations-e.g., women in chemical engineering in research universities. 2 From such data, we simply cannot make inferences about whether Harvard, for example, is treating its women faculty well. There is only a very small chance that a Harvard woman faculty member would be in the SDR. We can, however, talk about research universities as a whole and Harvard, peerless as it is, could look at its own faculty compared to these numbers that represent a sort of peer group. The other data issue concerns the definition of a research university and, more specifically, a Research University I (RU I), as defined by the Carnegie Classification and which is the special focus of this conference. At any point in time, it is possible to present data on the status ofwomen in the RU Is. The problem is that over time there has been considerable movement from the RU lIs to the RU Is. Thus, comparisons over time of the RU Is alone include the effects of the change in composition of this class. The way I have solved this problem for the purposes of time comparisons is to lump together the RU Is and the RU lIs. The class of research universities taken as a whole has had essentially constant membership over the past 25 years.
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
113
The paper that follows is divided into three parts:
1) The stlltus ofwomen in research universities: how has it changed over time? This section looks at total numbers and the share of women in research universities by broad field and, within each field, by part-time and full-time status, by tenure status, and by faculty rank for the years 1973, 1979, 1989, and 1995.
2) In the right pllJCe at the right time? This follows four cohorts-those who received their Ph.D.s in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s through different stages of their careers (early, middle, and late) as observed in the SDR for the four years defined above.
3) Does something different happen in research universities? This section compares research universities to other types of institutions and sees whether there are differences in the career outcomes for women that depend on being in a research university.
THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: HOW HAS IT CHANGED OVER TIME? The percentage of Ph.D.s who are female and employed by research universities has grown impressively in the past 20 years. All fields have increased their share of the number ofwomen in academic positions by at least a factor of 3, as shown in Fig. 1. Figure 1
PERCENT FEMALE: RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES BROAD FIELDS 35.0% . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , 30.0% 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0%
~ ~§ cu t= EGl
:; '0 cuC/)
::2
GlGl
t=
'51 t=
w
~~
o(l
(ij.Q t=
i:O
o.£:. 0 C/)GlC/)
C/)
B1979 01989 1995
~~
'8> ~ ~~
01973
~I.
m
Source: Survey of Doctoral Recipients, unpublished tabulations, various years. For data, see Appendix Table 1
114
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Figure 2 ACADEMICALLY EMPLOYED PH.D.s 1995 RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES I
14000 -r-----------------....., 12000 10000
~ ~
8000 6000 4000 2000
o-l-J..:mL.--+-----t-L-+-------J Engineering
Mathematics
Physical Sciences
Source: Survey of Doctoral Recipients, 1995. Unpublished tabulations. For data, see Appendix Table 1
In the physical sciences, mathematical sciences, and engineering, the numbers are still very small, however, and the percentage is still below 15%. This is shown in Fig. 2. Overall shares and numbers, however, do not tell the whole story. The question we address next is: what kinds of jobs do women hold in research universities? Are they tenure or tenure track positions? Our findings are summarized in Figures 3a and 3b. Although the share of women in tenured and tenure track positions has shown impressive growth in all fields, the share of women in nontenure track positions has also grown. In fact, women hold a disproportionate share as shown in Appendix Table 2. In the fields with relatively low representation of women (physical sciences, mathematical sciences and engineering), women's share of non-tenure track positions is double their share of tenured and tenure track positions. The gap is narrower in fields where women have a higher share of all positions. Another angle is to look at the prevalence of non-tenure track positions for women in RU Is as compared to men. This is done in Figure 4a and 4b. It is apparent that non-tenure track status is far more prevalent among women than among men. The incidence of non-tenure track status has been growing among men, however, as the academic job market has softened, while for women it has been staying more or less level. (See Appendix Table 2b). This is a reflection of the rapid growth of "soft
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
115
Figure 3a
TENURE TRACK: PERCENT FEMALE RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 50.0%~---------------------,
40.0% ~1979
30.0%
[J 1989 .1995
20.0%
10.0% 0.0%
0)
~In ~C
>'Q) .s: .0
[l.
oo
c
'C
Q) Q)
e:: '81 e::
w
~
In
.~ Ole:: .Q Q) a .._ 0 loOO
In
~ ~ o e::
a
oo
Q)
'(3
oo
Figure 3b
NON-TENURE TRACK: PERCENT FEMALE RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0%
~------------------=..,
1979 01989 .1995 W ell
oo ~
0)
,5 Qj Q) e:: '0> e::
~ 8l
'-8> gQl a ,0 lOen
._
In
(ij ~ '(3
a en
e:: Q)
'(3
en
UJ
Source: Survey of Doctoral Recipients, unpublished tabulations (comparable data unavailable for 1973). For data sec Appendix Table 2
money" research positions in research universities, while there has been very slow growth in the number of regular faculty positions. Faculty rank is another measure of the status of women in research universities. In Figures 5a and 5b, for full professors and assistant professors, respectively, we again see the pattern of steady growth in the percent female for all fields, with the greatest growth in those fields where there are the most women.
116
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Figure 4a
WOMEN IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES I TENURE TRACK STATUS 1995 4500..-----------------....., 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500
10 Tenure Track • Non-Tenure Track
o
~VI c:~ >.
Q)
.s::. "~ <.l C/l
~ ro E
Ol VI
~
c:
.s::. "91 <.l Q)
roC/l
:E
c: Q)
c:
"5 c: W
VI
VI
~ ~ c:
"8>
.~
"6
iii
~ ~ <.l c:
0 Q) C/l "(3 C/l
Q)
"(3
C/l
Figure 4b
MEN IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES I TENURE TRACK STATUS 1995 14000 . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , 12000 10000 8000
Tenure Track
6000
• Non-Tenure Track
4000 2000
o
~
~VI c:~
a;
.s::. "<.l
-6
>'Q)
~
C/l
E Q)
Ol
c:
~
";::
Q)
"5
c:
"(3
cuC/l
Q) Q)
c: c:
W
~ VI~ c:
"8>
Q)
iii
C/l
"6 ·0
VI
(ij ~ ·0 c: 0 Q) C/l "0
C/l
:E Source: Survey of Doctoral Recipients 1995. Unpublished Tabulations. For data see Appendix Table 2
117
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
Figure Sa
FULL PROFESSORS: PERCENT FEMALE BROAD FIELDS 25.0%
-r-----------------------,
20.0%
....--....,
15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% +'-.-.................=-L-
w
O/S CJ)
~
~ cB .en Q) >- '.c u Q..CJ)
Cl
~
c
en :; B E c Q)
£
'C Q) Q)
'0
11lCJ)
~
lX)CJ)
CJ) '0 CJ)
Q) o .._ u
c c
'5>
Q)
en
en .-~g>cB
g
B c Q)
W
~
Figure 5b
ASSISTANT PROFESSORS: PERCENT FEMALE BROAD FIELDS 50.0%
45.0%
-r--------------------,
"'-1-9-73""
1m
~~
35.0% 30.0% 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0%
01989 E1iJ
~ B .cQ) l/) >- ..c u Q..CJ)
~ ~ ~ E c
l/)
Q)
Q)
:; '0
11lCJ)
Cl
c
'C Q) Q)
c
'5> c: w
~
'8>
en
Q)
u
c
Q)
(5 '0 CJ)
iii
1995
l/)
Q)
~ u c Q) CJ) '0
g
CJ)
:E Source: Survey of Doctoral Recipients. Unpublished Tabulations. See Appendix Table 3
It should be noted that although the patterns over time are similar, a far smaller percentage of full professors are women than is the case for assistant professors. We shall investigate a number of explanations for this. The most obvious explanation is that if it takes ten or more years for a faculty member to become a full professor and if only a small percentage offaculty were women ten or more years earlier, then we would not expect
118
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
to see an appreciable percentage ofwomen in the ranks of full professors. We shall also look at differences between men and women in generational "luck"-being in the pool of the academically employed at a time when academia was expanding. Before we venture into these detailed analyses, however, we can ask whether women are represented among assistant professors at research universities in proportion to their share ofthe pool ofnew Ph.D.s. One answer to this question is shown in Table 1 for the RU Is. A negative difference indicates that women are underrepresented among assistant professors relative to their representation in the pool. Although the differences are not large, women would appear to be consistently underrepresented among Table 1 ARE WOMEN AT RUs REPRESENTED AMONG ASSISTANT PROFESSORS AS THEY ARE IN THE POOL OF PH.D.s PRODUCED IN THE PREVIOUS SEVEN YEARS? &search University I
Percent Female
Assistant professors
1973
1979
1989
1995
AllS&E Physical Science Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences
9.4% 4.9% 0.9% 0.7% 10.9% 15.9%
18.9% 5.3% 11.2% 3.7% 15.8% 34.4%
25.8% 12.9% 14.1% 8.3% 33.0% 35.9%
32.0% 18.2% 22.3% 14.7% 39.2% 45.4%
Ph.D.sPrevious Seven Years
1973
1979
1989
1995
AllS&E Physical Science Mathematics Engineering Biological Science Social Science
9.8% 5.3% 6.7% 0.4% 14.1% 16.7%
15.5% 7.8% 10.8% 1.6% 19.3% 25.0%
26.7% 15.6% 15.8% 5.9% 32.8% 41.3%
30.1% 19.8% 18.5% 9.0% 39.4% 47.7%
-0.4% -0.4% -5.8% 0.2% -3.2% -0.8%
3.4% -2.4% 0.4% 2.1% -3.5% 9.4%
-0.9% -2.7% -1.7% 2.4% 0.2% -5.5%
1.9% -1.6% 3.7% 5.7% -0.2% -2.3%
Difference in Percentage AlIS&E Physical Science Mathematics Engineering Biological Science Social Science
119
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
physical science assistant professors. On the other hand, for engineering, a field in which the numbers of women continue to be very low, it would appear that women are represented among assistant professors in consistently higher percentages than they appear in the pool ofPh.D.s. In 1995, that is also the case for mathematics.
IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME? THE EXPERIENCE OF COHORTS One way to examine the progress ofwomen in research universities is to ask: is the share of women in each Ph.D. cohort who are employed by research universities increasing over time? We know that women are a growing share of Ph.D.s, and this would lead us to expect that women should have a growing share of academic positions shortly after receipt of the Ph.D. But as these Ph.D. cohorts age, is this growing percentage of the research university work force maintained? In short, we wish to follow Ph.D. cohorts over time and see if the younger cohorts are faring better than their counterparts did at an earlier time and whether, as these cohorts age, the share of women employed in research universities is staying constant or increasing. The Survey of Doctoral Recipients is barely up to this task, although it is the best data we have. There are simply too few women, especially in the early years, to make meaningful comparisons. What we have done to get around this problem is to lump together all the Ph.D.s from a ten year period. For the surveys from 1973 to 1995, this aggregation gives us 4lf2 cohorts, defined as follows: 1979 Survey
1989 Survey
1995 Survey
1949-58
1959-69
1969-78
Fifties Cohort
Sixties Cohort
Middle Career
1959-68
1969-78
Late Career
1969-78
1979-88
Seventies Cohort 1979-88 Eighties Cohort 1989-94 Nineties Half-cohort
Late Career
This ten year aggregation will give a somewhat distorted picture of the condition ofwomen relative to men, because the population ofwomen is growing in any given decade while the number of male Ph.D.s produced per year is growing much more slowly. Thus, when we look at
120
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
attainment measures (tenure track, rank), women will be, on average younger than men in the same cohort. Still, the comparison of the experience of women in each cohort is instructive. (See Appendix Table 4 for gender composition of cohorts.) The progress that has been made over the past 20 years in increasing the participation of women in research universities is well illustrated in Figure 6. Women are a growing share in all fields at all career stages, but the later the career stage, the smaller that share is. It is also clear that the greater the share ofwomen in early career, the greater the share in late career. We only have complete data for one cohort, those who received their Ph.D.s in the 1970s, but we can look at field differences for this cohort and we can follow the other cohorts as they move through two career stages. 3 The full experience for the 1970s cohort is shown in Figure 7 and the two stage experiences are shown in Figure 8. Although always less than 30% of those employed in research universities, the share ofwomen increased as this cohort advanced from early to middle career in the life and social sciences. From middle to late career, the share remained approximately constant for the physical and life sciences, with slight declines in the other fields. Examining the early to middle career transition, for which we have data for the 1980s cohort, it does not appear that this cohort is faring as well, as shown in Figure 8a. The 1980s cohort experienced declines in the women's share of research university employment in the physical and social sciences, while holding their own in other fields. This could have resulted from lower rates of tenuring for women, which we will investigate below. On the other hand, it is true that the '80s cohort has a greater share than the '70s cohort in research university positions for all fields and for each career stage. A similar improvement in cohort experience over time is shown in the middle to late career transition, shown in Fig. 8b. On the other hand, the '60s cohort shows growth in the share of female employment in math and life science in late career, which does not occur for the '70s cohort. The '70s cohort, however, has a larger share than the '60s cohort does at all career stages. Although there has been considerable improvement in the share of women of more recent cohorts, we now have to examine what kind of employment it is and how it has changed over time. Achieving tenure is probably the most visible sign of status in research universities and we
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
121
Figure 6a
PERCENT FEMALE: EARLY CAREER RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 60.0%
50.0% 40.0%
r-------------------., I~ 1 1979 .1989 01995
30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% Physical Science
Mathematical Engineering Sclence
Life Science
Social Science
Figure 6b
PERCENT FEMALE: MIDDLE CAREER RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 60.0%
r-------------------.....,
50.0%
I ~1979 .1989 01995 1
40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% t-"""",""--....L..-,..."" Physical Science
Mathematical Engineering Sclence
Life Science
Social Science
Figure 6c
PERCENT FEMALE: LATE CAREER RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 60.0% , . . - - - - - . . , . .
..,..---------,
131979 .1989
1995
so.O%
40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.00/. 0.0% +-"~--...!..l-~--..L..+---+_'""' Physical Science
Mathematical Science
Engineering Life Science
Social Science
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
122 Figure 7
PERCENT FEMALE, 1970S COHORT RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 30.0%T"""-----------------------, L1Early 1979
25.0%
• Middle 1989 Clate 1995
20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% Physical Science
Engineering
Mathematical Science
l~e
Science
Social Science
Figure 8a
COHORT EXPERIENCE: EARLY TO MIDDLE RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 45,0%T"""----------------------, 40,0% .!! 35,0% ~ 30.0% If 25.0% c: 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0%
j
Physical Science Mathematical Science
Engineering
l~e Science
Social Science
e 70's cohort Early 1979
E170's cohort Middle 1989 c 70's cohort Middle 1989 D80's cohort Early 1989 -80's cohort Middle 1995
Figure 8b
COHORT EXPERIENCE: MIDDLE TO LATE RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 30.0%T"""-----------------------, 25.0% .!! Ol
~
20.0%
~ 15.0%
~ 10.0% 5,0% 0.0% Physical Science Mathematical Science
Engineering
life Science
1360's cohort Middle 1979 S60's cohort late 1989 c 70's cohort Middle 1989 _ 70's cohort lats 1995
Social Science
o 60's cohort late 1989
Source: Appendix Table 5. Survey of Doctoral Recipients, unpublished tabulations
123
You've Come a long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
Figure 9
PERCENT TENURED-RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES MIDDLE CAREER 110%r--------------------,
e 100% , 90%
t ~
80%
~70% ~80%
i
50%
1>.40%
30% +WILIoIol.... Physlcal Sciences
I
Matllem8l1c8l Sdences
1979 Men. 1979 Women
Eng_ng
LIfe SCIences
l
SocIal SCIences
1989 Men 13 1989 Women.,995 "'81101995 Women
I
Source: See Appendix Table 6
would expect that most of those who are academically employed ten to twenty years past their Ph.D. would have achieved this status. In fact, men and women in mid-career have quite different rates of tenure and these differences persist and are shown in Figure 9. In all cases, the percentage ofwomen with tenure (the right hand bar of the bar pairs) is lower than that of men. Between 1979 and 1989, the percent of women with tenure grew in most fields, while the percent of men with tenure declined. The gap, though narrower, remained. From 1989 to 1995, the percentage with tenure declined for both men and women. The difference in tenure rates, however, continued to decline or stayed constant in the physical, mathematical and life sciences but increased in the social and behavioral sciences. Although it appears that there was also a widening gap in engineering, the numbers are still so small that the apparent widening may be due to sampling variability. The source of the continued differential in tenure rates for men and women probably lies in differences in early academic careers. At this career stage, women have been more likely than men to find themselves in academic employment that is not tenure track. This difference disappeared for the 1990s cohort, when the academic job market worsened for both men and women, but the gender differential in off-tenure track employment disappeared or reversed except in the social sciences. 4 This is shown in Figure 10. The absolute numbers present a bleaker picture. Rather than looking at what percent ofwomen or men achieve tenure track status, ~e can
124
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 10
PERCENT IN NON-TENURE TRACK POSITIONS IN EARLY CAREER RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
5O%T"'""--------------------------. 45% 40% 35% 30%
25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
+-""'..................................ItLJ.....w__ Physical Sclences
~.-..L.L-=-
Mathematical SCiences
Engineering
Lffe Sclences
Social Sciences
1989 Men flI1989 Women .1995 Men 81995 Women
I
look at the numbers of women relative to the numbers of men who hold tenure track positions in each cohort. This is done in Fig. lla-llc. The significance ofthese numbers could be stated as follows: In 1995 a woman undergraduate or graduate student in a research university had slightly over one chance in ten ofencountering a tenure track woman ifshe was in the physical sciences, math, or engineering, and one chance in three if she was in the life or social sciences. Although underrepresentation of women is declining, it is still very much present. In fact, the answer to the question: "Are women in the right place at the right time?" is that women are in university careers in significant numbers at exactly the wrong time. In all science and engineering fields, tenure track employment in research universities was down in 1995 compared to 1989. Women were there in increasing numbers, but the size of the overall enterprise was smaller.
IS THE STATUS OF WOMEN DIFFERENT IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES THAN IN OTHER KINDS OF ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS? Research universities differ from other four-year institutions of higher education in a variety ofways. As their name suggests, research and doctoral education are a primary part of their mission. Teaching may also be important, but unless a faculty member demonstrates the ability to
125
You've Come a long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
Figure 11a
TENURE TRACK FACULTY-MIDDLE AND EARLY CAREER, RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: MATH, PHYSICAL, AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES 16000..-------------------. 14000 12000 1ססoo
6000 6000 4000 2000
o
1979
1989
1995
Figure 11 b
TENURE TRACK FACULTY-MIDDLE AND EARLY CAREER, RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: LIFE SCIENCES 14000....-
...,
12000 1ססoo
6000 6000 4000 2000
o
1979
1989
1995
Figure 11c
TENURE TRACK FACULTY-MIDDLE AND EARLY CAREER, RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES: SOCIAL SCIENCES 14000 12000 1ססoo
8000
6000
4000 2000
0 1979
'989
I_Men Ilwomenl
1995
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
126
publish research in reputable journals and to attract research funding in competition with other researchers through the peer review process, he or she is unlikely to receive tenure and remain employed in a research university. The four year institutions of higher education that are not research universities are highly heterogeneous. They include highly prestigious liberal arts colleges, comprehensive institutions that grant very few doctoral degrees, and faith-based institutions. What they have in common is that research and doctoral education is less central to their mission than is the case for the research universities. The first question to investigate is: are women as likely as men to be employed in research universities? Then we may ask the question: does the kind ofinstitution make a difference to the proportion ofwomen in tenuretrack positions? The difference between the proportion ofmen and ofwomen employed in research universities is found in Table 2. In all fields but the life sciences and engineering, we see that a smaller proportion of women than men are employed in research universities but that, over time, this difference is shrinking. Further, it is likely that what we observe for these two fields is a statistical artifact resulting from the classification of free-standing medical schools and engineering institutes as non-research universities. Given that women are narrowing the gap in their proportion employed in research universities, is there a difference by type of institution Table 2 PERCENT OF TENURE TRACK FACULTY IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES BY GENDER All Science and Engineering
1979 1989 1995
Mathematical Sciences
Men
Women
Differenec
Men
Women
Differenec
Men
Women
Differenec
39% 43% 33%
29% 37% 32%
10% 6% 2%
36% 40% 42%
12% 34% 38%
23% 6% 4%
53% 52% 51%
15% 32% 36%
38% 20% 15%
Engineering
1979 1989 1995
Physical Sciences
Life Sciences
Social Sciences
Men
Women
Differenec
Men
Women
Differenec
Men
Women
56% 60% 63%
57% 58% 54%
-1% 2% 9%
39% 44% 46%
25% 36% 35%
14% 8% 11%
35% 35% 37%
31% 40% 38%
Differenec
4% -5% -1%
127
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists Figure 12
PERCENT WOMEN IN TENURE TRACK POSITIONS: NON RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES V5. RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES 10.0% 8.0% 6.0% ~1979
4.0%
.1989
2.0%
01995
0.0% -2.0% -4.0% AIIS&E
Physical ScienC8$
Mathematical Sciences
Engineering
Biological Sciences
Social Sciences
in whether women hold tenure track positions? The differences by type of institution are shown in Figure 12. Positive differences mean that a greater proportion ofwomen in nonresearch universities hold tenure track positions than in research universities. It is clear that this is the case in all fields except the social sciences, where there are relatively more women. Further, the difference is widening in engineering, the biological sciences and the mathematical sciences, although that may reflect a higher level of tenure track positions for women in specialized institutions. CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this paper has been descriptive. We have found that the number of women scientists and engineers in research universities has been growing steadily over the past twenty years but that the greatest growth has occurred in fields that are already relatively highly populated by women. An analysis of the experience of different cohorts of women Ph.D.s over the period 1979 to 1995 finds that differences of rates of tenure between women and men have shrunk in all fields but the social sciences. Everyone in 1995, male and female, experienced the slowing growth of tenure-track positions in the 1990s and was less likely to become tenured if they were not already. There are now cohorts of Ph.D. women that are considerably larger than at any time in the past, but tenure-track positions are not growing. We also found that, with the exception
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
128
of the social sciences, women are more likely to hold tenure-track positions if they are employed in non-research universities. We have not speculated on the causes of continuing gender differences in status in research universities. These causes may vary from institution to institution and may have roots as diverse as tenure practices a decade ago or childcare and approaches to "two body" hiring decisions in the present. It is heartening to see that research universities are recognizing and addressing these issues. s Iftheir efforts are successful, they will broaden the pool of talent available to science and engineering.
NOTES 1. Prepared for the Harvard Conference on Women in Research Universities: The Next Quarter Century, November 1998. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not represent those of the National Research Council. The author would like to thank James Voytuk and Molla Teclemariam of the National Research Council for assistance in dealing with enormous volumes of data and J. Scott Long of Indiana University for assistance in sorting out the issues and for chairing the study of Gender Differences in Career Outcomes ofScientists and Engineers to which this preliminary study is also a contribution. 2. The total number of records (men and women) for the 4 SDR years considered in the paper (1973,1979,1989, and 1995) is over 30,000, but multiple cross-classifications quickly diminish the number of observations in any particular cell. For example, even the classification by gender (2), broad field (5), and type of institution (9) gives rise to 90 cells. Ifwe add faculty rank (4), the number of cells grows to 360. Fortunately a disproportionate share ofPh.D.s teach in research universities, so small cell sizes are less of a problem than simple enumeration of the number of cells would suggest. 3. Until 1995, respondents were dropped from the sample when they reached age 65, so it is impossible to follow the really late careers of the 1950s and 1960s cohorts. 4. This may also be an artifact of the truncated 1990s cohort. In order to show the latest data (1995), we only have data for 5 years of early career experience for this early cohort, compared to ten years of early career experience for the other cohorts.
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
129
5. For example, "The Study on the Status of Women Faculty at MIT," MIT Faculty Newsletter XI(Mar. 1999), http://web.mit.edu/fnlj women/women.html, and "Leaders of9 Universities and 25 Women Faculty Meet at MIT, Agree to Equity Reviews," MIT News, January 30, 2001, http://web.rnit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/gender.htrnl.
APPENDIX Appendix Table 1 ACADEMICALLY EMPLOYED MEN AND WOMEN PH.D.S IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES BY BROAD FIELD, 1973, 1979, 1989, 1995 1973
1979
1989
1995
Male Female Percent Female
28793 1640 5.4%
33652 3436 9.3%
52845 10254 16.3%
54882 13546 19.8%
Male Female Percent Female
12998 729 5.3%
15759 1558 9.0%
16021 3033 15.9%
13186 3144 19.3%
Male Female Percent Female
41791 2369 5.4%
49411 4994 9.2%
68866 13287 16.2%
68068 16690 19.7%
Male Female Percent Female
5969 194 3.1%
6339 330 4.9%
9722 850 8.0%
10459 1129 9.7%
Male Female Percent Female
2729 55 2.0%
2676 129 4.6%
2331 189 7.5%
1913 276 12.6%
Male Female Percent Female
8698 249 2.8%
9015 459 4.8%
12053 1039 7.9%
12372 1405 10.2%
Male Female Percent Female
2819 99 3.4%
3453 208 5.7%
4957 488 9.0%
5522 694 11.2%
Male Female Percent Female
1272 65 4.9%
1410 101 6.7%
1586 132 7.7%
1355 226 14.3%
All Sf'$"E RUI
RUII
RU Total
PhysieRl &imm RUI
RUII
RU Total
MAthemRtia RUI
RUII
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
130
Appendix Table 1 continued 1973
1979
1989
1995
4091 164 3.9%
4863 309 6.0%
6543 620 8.7%
6877 920 11.8%
Male Female Percent Female
4601 14 0.3%
5953 57 0.9%
9952 328 3.2%
10804 537 4.7%
Male Female Percent Female RU Total Male Female Percent Female
2046 4 0.2%
2424 27 1.1%
3012 71
2.3%
2423 HI 4.4%
6647 18 0.3%
8377 84 1.0%
12964 399 3.0%
13227 648 4.7%
Male Female Percent Female
9241 653 6.6%
8952 1046 10.5%
14952 3952 20.9%
16059 5270 24.7%
Male Female Percent Female RU Total Male Female Percent Female
4109 283 6.4%
4542 432 8.7%
4681 880 15.8%
3995 1031 20.5%
13350 936 6.6%
13494 1478 9.9%
19633 4832 19.8%
20054 6301 23.9%
Male Female Percent Female
6493 690 9.6%
9241 1812 16.4%
13653 4736 25.8%
12464 6086 32.8%
Male Female Percent Female RU Total Male Female Percent Female
2963 333 10.1%
4834 876 15.3%
4702 1768 27.3%
3595 1518 29.7%
9456 1023 9.8%
14075 2688 16.0%
18355 6504 26.2%
16059 7604 32.1%
RU Total
Male Female Percent Female
Engineering RUI
RUn
Biological Scienees RUI
RUn
Social Sciences RUI
RUn
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
Mathematical Sciences
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
Physical Science
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
AIIS&E
Men 2982 455 3946 546 4639 883
Men 4733 1590 6578 2173 7052 3407
Men 28119 5469 40156 8305 42491 12391
Women 143 65 329 123 332 362
RUI
Women 114 212 357 391 575 554
RUI
Women 2214 1178 5911 3539 8296 5250
RUI
Percent Female 4.6% 12.5% 7.7% 18.4% 6.7% 29.1%
Percent Female 2.4% 11.8% 5.1% 15.2% 7.5% 14.0%
Percent Female 7.3% 17.7% 12.8% 29.9% 16.3% 29.8%
Men 1306 104 1373 109 1339 16
Men 2374 302 1879 261 1575 338
Men 13731 1980 13238 1585 11383 1803
Women 66 35 122 9 191 35
RUn
Women 62 65 129 51 151 125
RUn
Women 976 570 2130 723 2271 873
Run
Percent Female 4.8% 25.2% 8.2% 7.6% 12.5% 68.6%
Percent Female 2.5% 17.7% 6.4% 16.3% 8.7% 27.0%
Percent Female 6.6% 22.4% 13.9% 31.3% 16.6% 32.6%
TENURE TRACK STATUS: RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Appendix Table 2
Men 4288 559 5319 655 5978 899
Men 7107 1892 8457 2434 8627 3745
Men 41850 7449 53394 9890 53874 14194
Women 209 100 451 132 523 397
TotalRU
Women 176 277 486 442 726 679
TotalRU
Women 3190 1748 8041 4262 10567 6123
TotalRU
Percent Female 4.6% 15.2% 7.8% 16.8% 8.0% 30.6%
Percent Female 2.4% 12.8% 5.4% 15.4% 7.8% 15.3%
Percent Female 7.1% 19.0% 13.1% 30.1% 16.4% 30.1%
~
...,
EiI'
in·
::J
-
n ii).
V'l
~
0
Q.
0
0
::J
(1)
3
~
::J
0
0I1l S'
;C;
~
()Q
::J
0
,.....
I1l
3(1)
(") 0
ro~
c
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
Scx:ial Sciences
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
Biological Sciences
1979 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1989 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track 1995 Tenure Track Non-Tenure Track
Engineering
Mcn 8145 1085 11096 1751 10116 2348
Mcn 7450 1481 10956 2670 12161 3898
Mcn 5056 897 7967 1169 8905 1899
Women 1325 470 2901 1535 3931 2155
RUI
Women 609 414 2154 1450 3065 2205
RUI
Women 40 17 235 71 431 106
RUI
Percent Female 14.0% 30.2% 20.7% 46.7% 28.0% 47.9%
Percent Fcmale 7.6% 21.8% 16.4% 35.2% 20.1% 36.1%
Pcrcent Fcmalc 0.8% 1.9% 2.9% 5.7% 4.6% 5.3%
Mcn 3983 838 3753 583 3023 572
Mcn 4027 480 3810 522 3404 591
Mcn 2164 260 2674 110 2137 286
Women 609 262 1303 341 1018 500
RUn
Womcn 233 194 527 314 818 213
RUn
Women 13 14 56 8 111 0
Run
Appendix Table 2 continued
Pcrccnt Fcmalc 13.3% 23.8% 25.8% 36.9% 25.2% 46.6%
Pcrccnt Fcmale 5.5% 28.8% 12.2% 37.6% 19.4% 26.5%
Percent Fcmalc 0.6% 5.1% 2.1% 6.8% 4.9% 0.0%
Men 12128 1923 14849 2334 13139 2920
Men 11477 1961 14766 3192 15565 4489
Mcn 7220 1157 10641 1279 11042 2185
Women 1934 732 4204 1876 4949 2655
TotalRU
Women 842 608 2681 1764 3883 24111
TotalRU
Womcn 53 31 291 79 542 106
TotalRU
Pcrcent Fcmalc 13.8% 27.6% 22.1% 44.6% 27.4% 47.6%
Pcrccnt Fcmalc 6.8% 23.7% 15.4% 35.6% 20.0% 35.0%
Pcrcent Fcmalc 0.7% 2.6% 2.7% 5.8% 4.7% 4.6%
\,0>
m
lJ
3
F) 0
c:
0
!:!..
.8c:
::::l
C
ffi'
;;10
c: !:!..
~
N
133
You've Come a Long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
Appendix Table 2b PERCENT OF ACADEMICALLY EMPLOYED WHO ARE IN OFF-TENURE TRACK POSITIONS BY GENDER: RU I Men 1979 1989 1995 Women 1979 1989 1995
All S&B 16.3% 17.1% 22.6% 34.7% 37.4% 38.8%
Physical Mathematical Biological Sciences Sciences Engineering Sciences 25.1% 13.2% 15.1% 16.6% 24.8% 12.2% 12.8% 19.6% 32.6% 16.0% 17.6% 24.3% 65.0% 52.3% 49.1%
31.3% 27.2% 52.2%
29.8% 23.2% 19.7%
40.5% 40.2% 41.8%
Social Sciences 11.8% 13.6% 18.8%
26.2% 34.6% 35.4%
Appendix Table 3 FACULTY RANK RUI 1973 Full Professors Men Women All S&E 14006 328 Physical Science 2767 22 Mathematical Sciences2009 2 Engineering 1943 2 Biological Sciences 4182 112 Social Sciences 4097 174 Associate Professors All S&E 7550 479 Physical Science 1096 39 Mathematical Sciences1400 6 Engineering 1314 4 Biological Sciences 2358 175 Social Sciences 2171 241 Assistant Professors All S&E 6286 654 Physical Science 1014 52 Mathematical Sciences 988 9 Engineering 901 6 Biological Sciences 1927 235 Social Sciences 1620 306 Other All S&E 2471 596 Physical Science 990 156 Mathematical Sciences 380 7 Engineering 350 2 Biological Sciences 681 238 Social Sciences 356 183
Percent Female by Faculty Rank Full Professors All S&E 2.3% Physical Science 0.8%
1989 1979 1995 Men Women Men Women Men Women 16190 487 26050 1632 24920 2665 31 3054 4974 101 4503 153 1504 26 2678 74 2604 85 2983 5 5169 4955 33 51 3892 166 7317 952 6689 506 4824 263 5741 1460 6751 904 7679 1150 864 1637 2202 1939
628 55 48 10 194 325
10531 1387 995 1882 3030 3303
2286 135 170 57 758 1209
12107 1784 1360 2582 3553 2949
2906 162 135 117 1208 1304
6090 943
1417 53
636 1858 1682
32 348 882
8783 1253 830 1834 2715 2231
3055 185 136 167 1338 1247
8424 1325 914 1885 2379 1989
3958 295 262 325 1536 1653
3625 1190 208 497 948 782
857 187 23 10 321 316
7021 1958 418 969 2445 1265
3126 406 107 51 1261 1336
9431 2847 644 1382 2810 1785
4017 519 212 62 1574 1669
877
2.9% 1.0%
III
5.9% 2.0%
9.7% 3.3%
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
134
Appendix Table 3 continued RUI Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences Associate Professors All S&E Physical Science Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences Assistant Professors All S&E Physical Science Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences Others All S&E Physical Science Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences
1973 0.1% 0.1% 2.6% 4.1%
1979 1.7% 0.2% 4.1% 5.2%
1989 2.7% 1.0% 7.0% 11.8%
1995 3.2% 0.7% 11.5% 20.3%
6.0% 3.4% 0.4% 0.3% 6.9% 10.0%
7.6% 4.6% 5.3% 0.6% 8.1% 14.4%
17.8% 8.9% 14.6% 2.9% 20.0% 26.8%
19.4% 8.3% 9.0% 4.3% 25.4% 30.7%
9.4% 4.9% 0.9% 0.7% 10.9% 15.9%
18.9% 5.3% 11.2% 3.7% 15.8% 34.4%
25.8% 12.9% 14.1% 8.3% 33.0% 35.9%
32.0% 18.2% 22.3% 14.7% 39.2% 45.4%
19.5% 13.6% 1.8% 0.6% 25.9% 34.0%
19.1% 13.6% 10.0% 2.0% 25.3% 28.8%
30.8% 17.2% 20.4% 5.0% 34.0% 51.4%
29.9% 15.4% 24.8% 4.3% 35.9% 48.3%
1979 Men Women 7712 212 19 1544 13 502 1249 3 2068 46 2385 131
1989 Men Women 513 8265 1391 45 843 25 1435 6 2460 108 2301 329
1995 Men Women 6859 582 1104 94 4 639 1260 29 2059 216 1870 239
3783 571 585 592 1239 840
372 26 35 12 82 224
4179 422 380 977 1189 1250
947 55 49 21 237 585
3385 357 517 627 860 1027
932 10 76 37 325 502
3379 447 284 476 951 1268
708 37 44 12 210 405
2340 274 325 569 589 670
1046 43 58 35 317 600
1781 165 199 355 706 375
1089 76 120 45 327 521
RUn 1973 Men Women Full Professors 5891 144 All S&E Physical Science 1239 1 Mathematical Sciences 746 4 Engineering 711 Biological Sciences 1866 60 76 Social Sciences 1684 Associate Professors 261 All S&E 4019 14 Physical Science 717 Mathematical Sciences 763 5 Engineering 747 1 70 Biological Sciences 1228 150 Social Sciences 1046 Assistant Professors All S&E 3460 338 Physical Science 576 39 Mathematical Sciences 602 6 Engineering 532 3 Biological Sciences 873 104 Social Sciences 1002 172
135
You've Come a long Way: Data on Women Doctoral Scientists
Appendix Table 3 continued RUII 1973 Men Women
Others All S&E Physical Science Mathematical Sciences Engineering Biological Sciences Social Sciences
422 144 56 56 122 93
175 28
78 61
Percent Female by Faculty Rank Full Professors All S&E 2.4% Physical Science 0.1% Mathematical Sciences 0.5% 0.0% Engineering 3.1% Biological Sciences Social Sciences 4.3% Associate Professors All S&E 6.1% Physical Science 1.9% Mathematical Sciences 0.7% 0.1% Engineering Biological Sciences 5.4% Social Sciences 12.5% Assistant Professors All S&E 8.9% 6.3% Physical Science 1.0% Mathematical Sciences 0.6% Engineering Biological Sciences 10.6% Social Sciences 14.7% Others All S&E 29.3% Physical Science 16.3% Mathematical Sciences 0.0% Engineering 0.0% Biological Sciences 39.0% Social Sciences 39.6%
1979 Men Women 779 82 39 91 239 328
253 45 9 88 111
1989 Men Women
1995 Men Women
1208 224 38 31 434 481
524 46
1161 287
9 218 251
181 370 323
541 96 26 163 256
2.7% 1.2% 2.5% 0.2% 2.2% 5.2%
5.8% 3.1% 2.9% 0.4% 4.2% 12.5%
7.8% 7.8% 0.6% 2.2% 9.5% 11.3%
9.0% 4.4% 5.6% 2.0% 6.2% 21.1%
18.5% 11.5% 11.4% 2.1% 16.6% 31.9%
21.6% 2.7% 12.8% 5.6% 27.4% 32.8%
17.3% 7.6% 13.4% 2.5% 18.1% 24.2%
30.9% 13.6% 15.1% 5.8% 35.0% 47.2%
37.9% 31.5% 37.6% 11.3% 31.7% 58.1%
24.5% 35.4% 18.8% 0.0% 26.9% 25.3%
30.3% 17.0% 0.0% 22.5% 33.4% 34.3%
31.8% 25.1% 100.0% 0.0% 30.6% 44.2%
1979 Men Women 23902 699 4598 50 2006 39 4232 8 212 5960 7209 394
1959 Men Women 34315 2145 6365 146 3521 99 6604 57 9149 614 9052 1233
Total RU 1973 Full Professors Men Women All S&E 19897 472 Physical Science 4006 23 Mathematical Sciences2755 6 Engineering 2654 2 Biological Sciences 6048 172 Social Sciences 5781 250
1995 Men Women 31779 3247 5607 247 3243 89 6215 62 9376 1168 7611 1699
136
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Appendix Table 3 continued 1973 Men Women Associate Professors All S&E 11569 Physical Science 1813 Mathematical Sciences2163 Engineering 2061 Biological Sciences 3586 Social Sciences 3217 Assistant Professors All S&E 9746 Physical Science 1590 Mathematical Sciences1590 Engineering 1433 Biological Sciences 2800 2622 Social Sciences Others All S&E 2893 Physical Science 1134 Mathematical Sciences 436 Engineering 406 Biological Sciences 803 Social Sciences 449
1979 Men Women
1959 Men Women
1995 Men Women
740 53 11 5 245 391
11462 1721 1449 2229 3441 2779
1000 81 83 22 276 549
14710 1809 1375 2859 4219 4553
3233 190 219 78 995 1794
15492 2141 1877 3209 4413 3976
3838 172 211 154 1533 1806
992 91 15 9 339 478
9469 1390 1161 1312 2809 2950
2125 90 155 44 558 1287
11123 1527 1155 2403 3304 2901
4101 228 194 202 1655 1847
10205 1490 1113 2240 3085 2364
5047 371 382 370 1863 2174
773 184 7 2 316 244
4404 1272 247 588 1187 1110
1110 232 32 10 409 427
8229 2182 456 1000 2879 1746
3650 452 107 60 1479 1587
10592 3134 644 1563 3180 2108
4558 615 238 62 1737 1925
Percent Female by Faculty Rank Full Professors All S&E 2.3% 0.6% Physical Science Mathematical Sciences 0.2% 0.1% Engineering Biological Sciences 2.8% 4.1% Social Sciences Associate Professors All S&E 6.0% 2.8% Physical Science 0.5% Mathematical Sciences 0.2% Engineering Biological Sciences 6.4% 10.8% Social Sciences Assistant Professors 9.2% All S&E 5.4% Physical Science Mathematical Sciences 0.9% Engineering 0.6% Biological Sciences 10.8% Social Sciences 15.4% Others 21.1% All S&E Physical Science 14.0% Mathematical Sciences 1.6% Engineering 0.5% 28.2% Biological Sciences 35.2% Social Sciences
2.8% 1.1% 1.9% 0.2% 3.4% 5.2%
5.9% 2.2% 2.7% 0.9% 6.3% 12.0%
9.3% 4.2% 2.7% 1.0% 11.1% 18.2%
8.0% 4.5% 5.4% 1.0% 7.4% 16.5%
18.0% 9.5% 13.7% 2.7% 19.1% 28.3%
19.9% 7.4% 10.1% 4.6% 25.8% 31.2%
18.3% 6.1% 11.8% 3.2% 16.6% 30.4%
26.9% 13.0% 14.4% 7.8% 33.4% 38.9%
33.1% 19.9% 25.6% 14.2% 37.7% 47.9%
20.1% 15.4% 11.5% 1.7% 25.6% 27.8%
30.7% 17.2% 19.0% 5.7% 33.9% 47.6%
30.1% 16.4% 27.0% 3.8% 35.3% 47.7%
Engineering 1979 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ. 1989 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ.
I IT
I IT
Mathematical Science 1979 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT 1959 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT 1995 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT
Physical Science 1979 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT 1989 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT 1995 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. IT
970 236
420 186
1389 549
2
15 7
38 25
972 236
435 193
1427 574
2664 863
1614 490
1393 576
2703 918
2039 1249
10 2674 2 865
11 2540 5 989
69 28
1545 462
2529 984
48 28
108 30
2595 888
1345 548
87 38
1952 1211
187 115
2556 526
3299 821
65 8
44
22
141 8
1530 394
2342 1188
1570 660
169 30
1401 630
3364 829
2386 1210
1671 402
1617 664
2743 641
3300 585
2418 831
138 61
1479 603
276 46
191 58
3024 539
2227 773
3214 1238
1507 502
1499 389
3133 549
2435 551
250 61
293 95
243 64
411 52
434 95
3464 1299
1800 597
1742 453
3544 601
646
2869
RESEARCH UNIVERSITY FACULTY BY COHORT SO-cohort 60-cohort 70-cohort 80-cohort Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total
Appendix Table 4
983 166
1554 160
241 1224 113 279
379 1933 106 266
90-cohort Male Female Total
(§-
3
~
w .....,
[il"
::::l .... in'
iii'
I"l
& ~
0
/tl ::::l
~
::::l
So
~
0
~
~
(JQ
::::l
r0
~
/tl
3
n 0
fD'
c:
Social Sciences 1979 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ. 1989 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ. 1995 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ.
Life Science 1979 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ. 1989 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ. 1995 Survey Research Univ. Research Univ.
I II
I II
I II
I II
I II
I II
1995 Survey Research Univ. I Research Univ. II
2082 862
2038 977
125 60
2207 922
142 2180 44 1021
SO-cohort Male Female Total
3255 1353
2634 1581
3199 1104
2542 1485
2766 1588
378 153
334 192 3633 1506
2968 1773
340 3539 118 1222
224 103
60-cohort Male Female Total
3740 1664
4399 1933
4075 2233
5421 1279
5231 1783
3876 1910
2928 688
6414 1612
6332 2046
4500 2190
2937 700
1572 316
5312 1980
1788 6187 596 2529
1314 5389 601 2834
993 333
1101 263
624 280
9 12
70-cohort Male Female Total
Appendix Table 4 continued
3904 863
6833 1930 6044 1414
2140 551
8180 1730
7272 1771
3645 828
2465 987
2733 447
5447 1283
4368 943
2382 492
254 54
4890 1279
3391 774
80-cohort Male Female Total
1855 434
1852 498
2102 403
1775 3630 591 1025
1221 3073 225 723
274 2376 45 448
90-cohort Male Female Total
w
II>
c: R" 0 3 (1)
0
~
c:
..c
(1)
:::l
C
~
~.
;;lJ
~
c:
m
..c
co
1938 606 1206 3015 2944
3163 1893 3513 4027 4215
3000 2082 3530 5786 6308
Late Stage Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Middle Stage Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Early Stage Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
249 199 66 904 1915
125 76 16 327 526
63 22 2 186 185
Women
1979
Men
2986 1888 4452 6169 5311
3563 2031 4120 7014 6332 529 307 311 2874 3452
1364 2384
73
322 199
138 97 12 458 531
Women
1989 3483 2007 3527 4303 4608
Men
1714 1149 2505 2350 2289
3682 2009 4165 6730 4767
2366
1446
485 354 319
463 388 308 3180 2691
302 149 21 1326 1888
Women
1995 3082 1924 3616 6700 5404
Men
CAREER STAGE IN EACH SURVEY
Appendix Table 5
1989
1995
7.7% 8.7% 1.8% 13.5% 23.3%
3.8% 3.9% 0.5% 7.5% 11.1%
3.1% 3.5% 0.2% 5.8% 5.9%
15.0% 14.0% 6.5% 31.8% 39.4%
8.3% 8.9% 1.7% 16.3% 27.4%
3.8% 4.6% 0.3% 9.6% 10.3%
22.1 23.6% 11.3% 38.1% 50.8%
1.2% 16.2% 6.9% 32.1% 36.1%
8.9% 7.2% 0.6% 6.5% 25.9%
Percent Female
1979
~
0
w
1.0
.....
r;;-
Vi'
ro' ;a
n
Vl
eI.
S
CJ
:J
/1)
3
~
:J
0
~
CJ
';';
~
OQ
:J
0
,.....
III
/1)
3
n 0
/1)
<-
c:
Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Early Career-Men
Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Middle Career-Men
Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Late Career-Men
577 687 1319 2021 2430
2757 1850 3329 3474 4048
1782 598 1175 2901 2860
'50s cohort 56 0 0 14 18 '60s cohort 48 15 0 207 100 '70s cohort 1051 856 1269 2222 2064 526 261 277 693 655
87 28 0 128 27
21 0 0 28 0
409 507 1323 1196 1438
2254 1644 2926 5170 4856
2791 1724 3310 3702 4281
'60s cohort 85 14 0 23 0 '70s cohort 211 44 70 370 184 '80s cohort 1090 863 2372 2550 2256
Non-Tenured Tenure Tenured Track
Non-Tenured Tenure Tenured Track Other
1989 Survey
1979 Survey
40
486 66 178 693 714
329 86 224 379 420
199 26
146 16
Other
TENURE STATUS BY COHORT AND CAREER STAGE
Appendix Table 6
73 120
71
38 84
1677 1497 2861 3391 3242
2225 1584 3259 5647 4476
'70s cohort 25 19 25 101 131 '80s cohort 639 317 721 1485 482 '90s cohort 666 722 1508 1105 1441
592 121 475 791 327
994 112 447 1156 642
547 237 167 625 670
Non-Tenured Tenure Tenured Track Other
1995 Survey
~
m
~
3
0
()
0c
!!:!..
c
..c
(l)
:::J
C
~.
;;lC
!!:!..
c
..c
a
51 21 0 llO 145
34 44 10 141 387
21 28 II III 350
LaR Carcer-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Middle Career-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Early Career-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
'60s cohort 7 14 1 47 21 '70s cohort 43 91 31 388 977
'50s cohort 0 1 0 10 12
37 47 15 142 212
18 8 0 28 31
5 0 2 17 4
396
373
60 68 42
148 137 61 688 1660
10 249 447
72
53
1472
'80s cohort 164 155 178 ll76
'60s cohort 2 0 0 8 5 '70s cohort 22 6 0 llO III 99 14 20 355 522
55 28 7 166 294
25 8 0 51 28
0 0 4 99 78
165 195 162 ll46 1062
179 66 21 873 1460 '80s cohort 53 35 100 925 458 '90s cohort 219 202 255 545 1314
'70s cohort 3 0 0 60 60
175 38 31 459 595
144 70 14 614 646
77 62 0 255 199
<'
-'
~
lil'
iii"
;a
roO
n
V>
~
0
0 0 Q.
:J
~
3
~
:J
0
~
':<: 0
~
OQ
:J
r0
III
~
3
n 0
~
~ c:
95.3% 97.7% 100.0% 91.2% 97.0%
26.8% 38.1% 46.0% 40.9% 47.2%
Early Career-Men Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences 24.4% 14.5% 9.7% 14.0% 12.7%
3.0% 1.5% 0.0% 3.4% 0.6%
'60s cohort 1.7% 0.8% 0.0% 5.4% 2.4%
'705 cohort 48.8% 47.5% 44.3% 45.0% 40.1%
1.1% 0.0% 0.0% 1.0% 0.0%
'50s cohort 3.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.5% 0.6%
95.9% 100.0% 100.0% 98.6% 99.4%
20.6% 35.3% 34.2% 26.9% 32.6%
80.7% 92.7% 90.9% 87.3% 88.9%
92.4% 98.3% 98.8% 94.3% 99.4%
'80s cohort 54.9% 60.1% 61.2% 57.4% 51.2%
'60s cohort 2.8% 0.8% 0.0% 0.6% 0.0% '705 cohort 7.6% 2.5% 2.2% 6.3% 3.4%
Non-Tenured Tenure Tenured Track
Non-Tenured Tenure Track Tenured Other
1989 Survey
1979 Survey
Late Career-Men Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences Middle Career-Men Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Percentages
Appendix Table 6 continued
24.5% 4.6% 4.6% 15.6% 16.2%
11.8% 4.8% 7.0% 6.4% 7.7%
4.8% 0.9% 1.2% 5.1% 0.6%
Other
2.9% 9.1% 3.5% 3.7% 6.4%
50.7% 77.7% 71.0% 56.2% 74.3%
79.5% 86.1% 94.4% 88.6% 84.8%
'90s cohort 51.4% 77.9% 73.4% 56.1% 76.3%
'805 cohort 19.3% 16.5% 17.9% 24.6% 11.0%
'70s cohort 0.9% 1.0% 0.7% 1.6% 2.5%
45.7% 13.1% 23.1% 40.2% 17.3%
30.0% 5.8% 11.1% 19.2% 14.7%
19.6% 12.9% 4.8% 9.8% 12.7%
Non-Tenured Tenure Tenured Other Track
1995 Survey
m
~
3
0
0 c: r;
~
~ c:
::::l
C
~
;;lO
iio
~
c:
.Ll
t..J
.j>.
Middle Career-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences Early Carc:c:r-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
Late Carc:c:r-Women Physical Sciences Mathematical Sciences Engineering Life Sciences Social Sciences
20.8% 16.9% 19.3% 17.3% 22.7%
57.6% 66.7% 90.9% 65.3% 88.2%
91.1% 95.5% 0.0% 80.3% 90.1%
'60s cohort 11.9% 21.2% 9.1% 21.8% 4.8% '70s cohort 42.6% 54.8% 54.4% 60.5% 63.5% 36.6% 28.3% 26.3% 22.2% 13.8%
30.5% 12.1% 0.0% 13.0% 7.1%
'50s cohort 0.0% 8.9% 4.5% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 7.3% 12.4% 7.5% 2.5%
18.6% 28.7% 17.5% 19.6% 16.6%
65.8% 80.1% 89.7% 71.4% 80.4%
66.3% 90.0% 100.0% 80.8% 93.1%
'60s cohort 2.5% 0.0% 0.0% 2.6% 1.0% '70s cohort 9.8% 3.5% 0.0% 11.4% 5.4% '80s cohort 50.8% 65.4% 74.2% 61.8% 61.6% 30.7% 5.9% 8.3% 18.6% 21.8%
24.4% 16.4% 10.3% 17.2% 14.2%
31.3% 10.0% 0.0% 16.6% 5.8%
0.0% 0.0% 1.4% 9.0% 3.9%
45.6% 65.0% 58.7% 42.7% 49.0%
69.1% 51.6% 100.0% 73.5% 84.9% 39.8% 23.3% 5.1% 22.9% 29.8% 44.4% 15.8% 10.7% 41.6% 29.9%
'90s cohort 55.6% 84.2% 87.9% 49.4% 66.1%
29.7% 48.4% 0.0% 21.5% 11.6%
'80s cohort 14.6% 11.7% 36.2% 34.5% 21.1%
'70s cohort 1.2% 0.0% 0.0% 5.1% 3.5%
......
~
i ii·
::J
iii'
-vr
n
V'l
~
0
Q.
0
0
III ::J
3
~
::J
0
-:c; 0 III S"
~
ClQ
::J
0
~
III
III
3
n 0
~
c:: ~'
Chapter Six
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science and Engineering: 1973-1995 1 J.
Scott Long
Thus, within just a few years, starting in 1968 and essentially complete by 1972, there was a legal revolution in women's education and empluyment rights. Itpromised, even seemed toguarantee, broad ramifications for women's careers in science and engineering, but its full implementation would require many battles in the years ahead. One era had ended and a new, more equitable one was beginning. 41argaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America, 1995 2 INTRODUCTION The legal revolution highlighted by the quote from historian Margaret Rossiter grew out of the resurgence of the women's movement in the late 1960s and dramatic changes in our society's view of the role ofwomen at home and in the workplace. The effects of these changes are reflected in the rapid and remarkable increases in the presence and participation of women in academic science and engineering since the early 1970s, changes that are documented in this paper. Our approach is to follow the pipeline, from receipt of degree, to entry into the labor force, to recruitment Eljuld R.ites, Uneljuld Outcomes: Women in American R.esearch Universities Edited by Hornig, K1uwer Acadernic/plenurn Publishers, 2003
145
146
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
into the academic sector, and then through the academic ranks. The full participation ofwomen in the academic sector is critical because it is within academia that future generations of scientists and engineers are trained. Moreover, we give special attention to scientists and engineers working in Research I universities and medical schools. Not only do these locations provide the majority of doctoral and postdoctoral training, but they are also the most conducive organizational contexts for a prestigious research career. For women to have an equal standing with men in science and engineering, it is essential that they gain parity within the most prestigious academic locations (see the Introduction to the current volume for further discussion).
DATA SOURCES3 Our results are for five broad fields of science and engineering: the mathematical sciences, the physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, and the social/behavioral sciences. While our analyses include both science and engineering, we often use the shorter term "science" rather than "science and engineering" to refer to the fields combined. Similarly, the term "scientist" is sometimes used as shorthand for "scientist or engineer." Our primary data are from the 1973, 1979, 1989, and 1995 panels of the Survey ofDoctorate Recipients (SDR), a biennial survey of a sample of doctoral scientists, engineers, and humanists who completed the Survey ofEarned Doctorates (SED). Additional data from the SED were also used. For technical details, see NSF (1920-1995,1973-1995,1997). For the 1979 and 1989 panels of the SDR, data on publications were obtained for 1982 through 1992 from the Institute for Scientific Information. Information on the quality of a scientist's Ph.D. program was obtained from the NRC's 1982 and 1995 studies of research-doctorate programs (Goldberger, Maher, and Flattau 1995; Jones, Lindzey, and Coggeshall 1982). For each panel of the SDR, scientists with degrees from 1949 until the year of the survey were studied. While the same scientists do not respond to each survey, the sample weights for those in each year's sample are adjusted to represent the population as a whole. Accordingly, we interpret the sample data as if they are the same group of scientists as they age. By comparing results of the same Ph.D. cohorts across years of the SDR we gain insights into changes that occur over the course ofthe career. By examining scientists at the same point in their career from different
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
147
SDR surveys, we gain insights into changes that occur historicallyfor events at a given time in the career. Two types of results are presented in the paper. First, we use simple descriptive statistics. For example, we might present the percent of women who are working full-time in each of the four panel years. This type of information does not include controls except for those explicitly included in the table. Second, we use regression models (Long 1997) to compare the predicted career outcomes of men and women after controlling statistically for differences in background characteristics. This becomes particularly important for understanding gender differences in tenure and academic rank since these are so dependent on the age of the scientist.
THE PIPELINE TO THE PH.D. Figure 1 shows that while traditionally half of the high school diplomas have been awarded to women, until recently women have been substantially less likely to extend their education with a baccalaureate or doctoral degree, especially in S&E fields. Since 1960 there have been steady gains by women in the receipt of all types of advanced degrees, with increasing improvements beginning in 1970. By 1985, women received half of the bachelor's degrees among all fields and by 1990 they represented 40 percent of undergraduate degrees in S&E. The growth in the Figure 1
PERCENT OF DEGREE RECIPIENTS WHO ARE WOMEN BY YEARS High School -e-Ph.D. 60
-a- Bachelor's
-0- S&E Bachelor's
-0- S&E Ph.D.
~==========================~
O+---,...----r--....---,...----,--....---,...--j 1958 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 1993 1998
Source: Barber (1995) and NSF (2000)
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
148
number ofwomen with baccalaureate degrees in S&E was essential for the later growth in doctorates earned by women, and since 1960 the percent of doctoral degrees to women has increased steadily. Even with the significant gains that have been made, women continue to lag behind men, especially in science and engineering fields where the percent of degrees awarded to women remains substantially below 50 percent. See Solomon (1985) and Rossiter (1982, 1995) for detailed histories of the treatment of women in the pursuit of the doctorate. Information on the number and percent of women with Ph.D.s by field and year is summarized in Figures 2 and 3. 4 There are several important differences across fields. Engineering is the most male-dominated of Figure 2
PERCENT OF PH.D.s AWARDED TO WOMEN, BY FIELD AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1.1973
1979 [J 1989 019951
r----~~~~=~~---___, 5O+---------------;"'l-I 55
J:~ + - - - - - - - - - - - = 1
+-------------1 +-------------1 Q 25 + - - - - - - - - - - - . . l ~ 20 +-------.:::nr-----;;:::l ~ 15 g 10 . 1 - - _ " - -__ ,." o 35 ;; 30
..
5
o.......__
......J-J...,..J
.L-J..~
Eng~
Malhematlcs
LIe ScIences
PIlyslcel Sdences
SoeI.V Bahavl
ScIences
Figure 3
NUMBER OF PH.D.S AWARDED TO WOMEN, BY FIElD AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1.1973
1979 [J1ge9 [J19951
§ 40r---~======~----, :; 3 5 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - = - 1
J: + - - - - - - - - - - - : : : : 1 ~ 20+-------------1 ~ 15+-------------1 'l5 10+--------"f""l"-=1R
I
5
:i 0+-.......................- -...............- -.............. Engtleerng
Mathematics
Physlcel Sdences
LIe Sdences
SoeIeV BeI1avb'al Sdences
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
149
all professions (McIlwee and Robinson 1992:2) and the number and percentage ofwomen with Ph.D.s is smallest in engineering, while mathematics has the slowest growth in the participation of women. Since 1973, the physical sciences saw a tripling in the number ofPh.D.s earned by women, although women still make up less than 25 percent of the total degrees. In 1973, 17 percent ofthe degrees in the life sciences were awarded to women, doubling to over 40 percent by 1995. The representation of women is greatest in the social/behavioral sciences, with 20 percent ofthe degrees in 1973, and by 1995 the proportion ofwomen was just over 50 percent. Overall, from 1970 to 1995, there were significant advances in the entry of women into science and engineering. Combining our five fields, there were 350 percent more women among new Ph.D.s in 1995 than in 1973. The progress toward gender equity in the receipt of science and engineering doctorates seems to have resulted from general social trends in women's advancement in higher education, the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws (including equalization offinancial aid), falling interest in science and engineering among men, and a more rapid increase for women in degrees in scientific compared to non-scientific fields. Still, as the proportion of doctoral degrees to women in the social/behavioral and life sciences approaches parity, women remain but a small fraction of doctorates in engineering and mathematics. LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION Increases in the number of women among new Ph.D.s do not translate directly into increases in the proportion of women in the S&E labor force. Each new cohort of Ph.D.s is only a small fraction of the total number of scientists in the labor force. This is shown in Figure 4 which compares the growth in the percent of women among new Ph.D.s to increases in the labor force and in those employed full-time in S&E. The proportion of women among new Ph.D.s, shown by the darkest bars, increased by 20 percentage points from 13 percent in 1973 to 33 percent in 1995, while the proportion of women in the labor force increased by 13 points from 8 percent in 1973 to 21 percent in 1995. Importantly, women are more likely to be less than fully employed. This is shown by the lightest bars, which show that the percent offull-time workers in S&E who are women increased from 6.5 percent to 20 percent. Figure 5 shows that the proportion of female Ph.D.s differs widely by field. While there
150
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 4 THE PERCENT OF WOMEN AMONG NEW PH.D.s, AMONG ALL SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS AVAILABLE TO WORK IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, AND AMONG THOSE WORKING FULL-TIME, BY YEAR OF SURVEY
I_New Ph.D.s DLabor Faroe DFull Time In S&E 1 35 30
., 25
iii
~20
!., ll.
15 10 5
0 1973
1979
1989
1995
Figure 5 THE PERCENTAGE OF THE FULL-TIME SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING LABOR FORCE THAT IS FEMALE, BY FIELD AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1_1973 _1979 01989019951
35.----~=======------__, 30+------------------1 ~ 25-+----------------l E
of 2 0 - + - - . . , . . , . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - n
~ £
15 10 5
o+-LooL..L-L._oooI...J'--l....r__llL..J.....l..r-.lL.L............._...L...1........__...I....L.l Combined Engineering Mathematics Phys~1 Fields Sciences
L~e
Sciences
SociaV Behavioral Sciences
has been substantial movement towards parity, the full-time participation of women remains far below 50 percent in all fields. Female scientists are much more likely than men to be less than fully employed, as shown by Figure 6. The total height of each bar shows the percent of scientists and engineers who are not working full-time, with the divisions within each bar indicating the specific labor force status. In 1973 women were 20 percentage points more likely to be less than fully employed, decreasing to an 11 point difference in 1995. Still, 17 percent of
151
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
Figure 6
EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF THOSE NOT WORKING FULL-TIME FOR COMBINED FIELDS, BY SEX AND YEAR OF SURVEY
25
II Part TIme Seeking Wofk 0 Not See~ing Work I ~---===========~------.
2O~---------____l
1': 15 +----------~
~
10 + - - - - - - - - - - - - 5+----------I,......j.---
o ..j....I-----I-----I--1973
1979
1989 Men
1995
1973
1979
1989
1995
Women
the female doctorates do not have full-time employment compared to only 6 percent ofthe male doctorates. Part-time employment for women (shown by the black region) decreased between 1973 and 1979, leveling offaround 12 percent. Since 1973, there was a steady decrease in the percent ofwomen who were seeking work, from 4 percent in 1973 to just over 1 percent in 1995. By 1995, the difference between male and female Ph.D.s in the percent seeking work was reduced to less than 1/2 point from a difference of 3 points in 1973. There are much larger differences between male and female doctorates in the percent who are out of the labor force (i.e., not employed and not seeking work), represented by the lightest regions. These individuals are fully trained scientists and engineers who have not retired but who are no longer pursuing jobs in their field of training. Overall, differences between men and women in full-time labor force participation add up to less accumulated work experience and less valuable experience for women over the course of their careers, a factor that is important for understanding the gender differences in career outcomes that are described below. While there has been improvement since 1973,
ftmale Ph.D.s continue to be substantially less likely than men to be fully employed in scientific and engineering occupations, with roughly 10 percent ofthe potential proftssional work offtmale doctorates being lost. It is important to keep in mind that the analyses that follow consider only scientists and engineers who are fully employed. Thus, even if the results presented below found no gender differences in the career
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
152
outcomes of scientists who are fully employed (which we do not find), there would still be important differences between male and female scientists and engineers in their success in moving into full-time employment.
ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT From 1973 to 1995 the percent of the combined male and female doctoral labor force that worked in academia decreased from 51 percent of all scientists to 40 percent. In 1973, 5 percentage points more men than women were working full-time in academia, as shown by the two sets of bars on the left hand side of Figure 7. The relative decline in academic employment that occurred after 1973 was more rapid for men than for women, so that by 1995 three percentage points more women than men held full-time academic jobs. While our findings appear to contradict past research that found women to be over-represented in academia (Zuckerman and Cole 1975 and the literature cited therein), we are considering men and women as a percent of the entire labor force, not as a percent of those working full-time. If we consider only those in the fulltime labor force (i.e., excluding those who are part-time, unemployed, retired, or out of the labor force), women are substantially more likely to be in academic positions, as shown by the bar graphs on the right of Figure 7. In 1973,68 percent of women in the full-time labor force held Figure 7
PERCENT OF THE DOCTORAL LABOR FORCE THAT IS WORKING FULL-TIME IN ACADEMIA AND PERCENT OF THE FULL-TIME LABOR FORCE THAT IS WORKING IN ACADEMIA, BY SEX AND YEAR OF SURVEY 80
21 o
70
:;:; 60 E ~ 50
~
40
.!:::
30
Ii: C
~
20
10
o
r-----
r-
" Fit
-
-
.,
-~ Men
I--
r--
Women All Ph.D••
•
Men
-
-
Women
Ph.D.• Worlling Full Time
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
153
academic jobs, compared to only 56 percent of the men. By 1995, this 12 point difference decreased to 7 points. The net effect of the increasing proportion ofPh.D.s who are women and the greater proportion ofwomen than men in academic jobs is a steady increase in the percent of all fulltime academic jobs that are held by women. Figure 8 shows that women are proportionally more likely than men to be in academic jobs in all but one field. Even though the largest proportion of female Ph.D.s are found in the social and behavioral sciences, this is the only field with a greater proportion of men than women in academia. Women with Ph.D.s in engineering and the life sciences are the most likely to be academic, with little change over time. In mathematics and the physical sciences, gender differences in full-time academic employment have nearly disappeared by 1995. While there is an increasing representation of women in each field, substantial variation exists across fields in the proportions, numbers, and rates of increase of female academics, as shown by Figure 9. In the life and social/behavioral sciences, the percent of full-time academics who are women increased by nearly 20 percentage points from 1973 to 1995. As a result of the greater overall increase in the number of life scientists during this period, by 1995 there were more women in the life sciences than in the social and behavioral sciences. In other fields, the increase in the percent of women was only between 6 and 7 points. Even by 1995, women were only 6 percent ofthe Figure 8
GENDER DIFFERENCE IN THE PERCENT OF PH.D.S WORKING FULL-TIME WHO HAVE ACADEMIC JOBS, BY YEAR OF SURVEY j.1973 .1979 01989019951
~~
i
20 ~-----===============------, 15 + - - - - - - - - _ I - - - - - - - - - - - i
10~f_--__._..__--_III_-----____i
Q.
~
:t
'5
5 0
+--................-.L.L..L.rJ--6~I.:II:: ............-.L.L.........,..."'T"T"i
J~.L.------_t=-----_:!i"_------' c1'1i ~<JJ
Note: Positive values indicate women are proportionally more likely to have academic positions
154
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Figure 9 PERCENT OF THE FULL-TIME ACADEMIC LABOR FORCE THAT IS FEMALE, BY FIELD AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1.1973.197901989019951 35,----------------,
3Ot------------=---flH ~ 25 ;;: 20
+------------1 +------------1 10 +-------,...1 1-----1l---1....,
~ 15
l
5J..-_
o +--Engineering
~
..,.... Malhemalics
-.....L.J Physical Sdences
ufe Sdences
....L.JL...l SodaV Behavio
S<:Iences
full-time academic work force in engineering, with less than 2,000 fulltime female engineers. In mathematics and the physical sciences women's representation exceeded 10 percent by 1995, but in mathematics the number reached only 2,000 and in the physical sciences just over 4,000. In the life sciences, the proportion of women approached 30 percent by 1995.
THE AGE STRUCTURE IN ACADEMIA The rapid change in the percent ofacademic positions held by women is largely the result of increases in the proportion of new Ph.D.s who are women, which has important implications for the age structure in academia. The average academic woman received her degree more recently than the average academic man, and the difference between the average career age (i.e., years since the Ph.D.) for men and women is increasing. In 1973, the mean career age for women was 9.5 years and 11.1 years for men; in 1979,8.9 for women and 12.7 for men; in 1989, 10.6 for women and 15.9 for men; and in 1995, 11.2 and 17.0. The effects of changes in the growth of academia and the increased entry of women can be seen with a population pyramid (see Shyrock and Siegel 1973:236-245 for details), which is a pair of horizontal histograms, one for men and one for women. Each bar represents the percent in an age-sex group (e.g., women between 1 and 3 years from the Ph.D.) relative to the size of the total population. The shape of a pyramid reflects the number of each sex entering the population (e.g., new Ph.D.s) and the number leaving through
155
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
death or retirement. For example, if the same number ofnew Ph.D.s were hired each year and there was no attrition until the age of retirement, the pyramid would be a rectangle. Or, if the size of new cohorts is increasing with increasing attrition among older members of the population, the pyramid would be triangular. Figure 10 shows how the more rapid increase in the number ofwomen with Ph.D.s and their increasing entrance into academia has affected the age structure. In 1973, men represented a much larger proportion of all academics, as indicated by the greater area of the left hand side ofthe pyramid. The longer bars for young scientists, those with career ages of 1-3 and 4-6, show that incoming cohorts were larger than prior cohorts. By 1995, things had changed substantially. First, the proportion of men overall is reduced, as indicated by the lesser difference in the areas of the two halves of the pyramid. Second, the size of incoming cohorts of men has stabilized, as reflected by the similar sizes ofthe bars for men between age categories 1-3 and 25-27. For women, in contrast, each younger cohort is larger than older cohorts. For example, in Panel A we see that in 1973 the youngest group of men represented nearly 20 percent of all academics, while the youngest group of women represented less than 3 percent. By 1995, new Figure 10 DISTRIBUTION OF CAREER AGES OF SCIENTISTS IN THE FULL-TIME ACADEMIC LABOR FORCE P4nel A: 1973-pc:rcent of total population.
P4nel B: 1995-percent of total population.
AGE
AGE
-
'3<
43'
~
41)..12
31-38
31-38
31-33
31-33
2S-3O
2S-3O
~21
~21
22·24
22·24
1a.21
'0.21 111·11
15-\1!I
13-\'
,3-"
\1).,2
20
15
10
"olT'"
5
11).12
~Il
4-t
1-3
1-3
lot
1-11"'-l_-+---+----l 10
15
_"ofT'"
20
20
15
10
Mtn:%ofTOlai
~
,
0
l'
_"ofTOlai
Note: Bars show the percent of the total population in a given category. For example, in 1973 18 percent of 4/J scientists were men 1-3 years from the Ph.D.; 2.5 percent of 4/J scientists were women 1-3 years from the Ph.D.
20
156
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
female Ph.D.s grew to 4 percent of academics, while new men dropped to less than 8 percent. Overall, the slowed growth of academia is shown by young Ph.D.s dropping from over 20 percent of all academics in 1973 to 12 percent in 1995. Even with the rapid increase in the percent ofwomen receiving Ph.D.s and entering academia, women are far from being half of the academic labor force, as shown by the much smaller area of the light gray bars compared to the dark gray bars. While new cohorts ofPh.D.s entering the academic marketplace are increasingly female, each new cohort is only a small proportion of those currently employed. Consequently, the move towards parity in the representation of women must occur slowly as a result of demographic constraints (see Hargens and Long 2000 for a detailed discussion). Further, while there has been a substantial increase in the percent of women with academic jobs, the question remains whether there is a correspondingly large increase in the presence ofwomen among all types of positions and institutions. To address this issue, we begin by examining variations in the types of institutions in which men and women are employed. We then extend these analyses to consider variation in the types of jobs held by men and women in academia.
TYPES OF ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS The over 3,000 institutions of higher education in the United States vary greatly in their prestige, facilities, resources, job expectations, and salaries. The Carnegie Classification, described in the Introduction to this volume, is the standard way to classify institutions to reflect these differences (Carnegie Commission 1994). Table 1 presents the distribution of academics among types of institutions, over time, and by gender. While Research I universities are by far the largest employer, their share of fulltime academics has decreased from 46 percent in 1973 to 39 percent in 1995, with the percent of men dropping by 7 points, while the percent of women dropped only 1 point. As a result, the over-representation of men in this important class of institutions has declined from an 11 point differential in 1973 to 5 points in 1995. Women are found proportionally more often in medical schools, which have shown the largest growth in employment since 1973. Among Research I and Medical institutions combined, the 5 point over-representation of men in 1973 turned into a 3 point under-representation in 1995. Among research institutions (which include Research I, Research II, Doctoral, and Medical institutions), the
157
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
Table 1 DISTRIBUTION OF FULL-TIME ACADEMIC POSITIONS AMONG CARNEGIE TYPES OF INSTITUTIONS, BY SEX AND YEAR OF SURVEY
1973
RaearchI
Medical
RararchII
Doetol'al
Master's
Baa:alaureate
N
TotRl 46.0 46.8 Men 362 Women Difference 10.6 TotRl 5.6 Men 5.1 Women ILl -6.0 Difference 10.4 TotRl 10.8 Men Women 6.3 Difference 4.5 122 TotRl 12.4 Men Women 10.3 Difference 2.1 TotRl 18.1 17.5 Men Women 25.0 Difference -7.6 TotRl 7.8 Men 7.5 Women 112 Difference -3.7 Men 100,284 Women 8,557
1979
1989
1995
42.2 42.9 36.9 6.0 11.2 10.5 16.9 -6.4 9.3 9.7 5.9 3.8 11.8 11.9
40.8 41.5 37.4 4.1 12.6 11.3 18.8 -7.6 9.2 9.6 7.4 2.2 11.2 11.6 9.6 2.0 18.4 18.5 18.1 0.4 7.8 7.6 8.8 -1.2 158,800 34,267
38.5 39.6 34.8 4.9 14.4 12.6 20.4 -7.8 8.6 9.1 7.0 2.1 11.7 12.1 10.2 1.9 19.0 19.0 19.0 0.0 7.8 7.5 8.6 -1.1 153,593 45,324
ILl
0.8 17.8 17.6 19.3 -1.7 7.8 7.5 10.0 -2.5 123,796 15,957
Change from 1973 to 1995 -7.5 -7.2 -1.4 -5.7 8.8 7.5 9.3 -1.8 -1.8 -1.7 0.8 -2.4 -0.6 -0.3 -0.1 -0.2 0.9 1.6 -6.1 7.6 0.0 0.0 -2.5 2.6
Note: Total is percent of all academics who work in given type of institution in given year Men is percent of male academics who work in given type of institution in given year Female is percent of female academics who work in given type of institution in given year Difference is difference in percent of men and percent of women
11 point advantage for men in 1973 is reduced to a single point advantage in 1995. The net effect ofthese changes is that men and women have become increasingly similar in their distribution among types of institutions. Keep in mind, however, that this does not imply that men and women had the same types of positions within these institutions.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
158
There are, however, important differences among fields in the percent who are employed in research institutions. Engineers, who require extensive research funding and sophisticated laboratories to do their research, are much more likely to work at research institutions than are Ph.D.s in other fields. In 1973,90 percent of all academic engineers worked in research institutions (almost all engineering schools are in research universities), declining only slightly to 86 percent in 1995. Employment in research institutions is next most common in the life sciences, where the percent has increased slightly to just over 80 percent. Employment in research institutions is least common in mathematics and the social/behavioral sciences, fields where research facilities are less critical, where there has been a steady decline to 62 percent in 1995. While there are differences among fields in the representation of women among research institutions, there are increasing similarities since 1973. The largest changes occurred in the social and behavioral sciences. From 1973 to 1995, women went from being 10 points under-represented to 5 points over-represented in research institutions; in Research I and Medical institutions, the change was from women being 5 points under-represented to 9 points over-represented relative to the rates for men. In other fields, while the changes generally lead to increased similarities, the convergence is less dramatic. As a result ofthe increasing proportion ofnew Ph.D.s who are women and the greater tendency of women to enter academia, the percentage of full-time, doctoral employees who are women has increased steadily in all types of institutions, as shown by Figure 11. By 1995, women were most Figure 11
PERCENT OF FULL-TIME ACADEMICS WHO ARE WOMEN, BY CARNEGIE TYPE AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1.,973 .1979
1989 019951
..
35
..-----------=======~------
30
+----------1 1-----------------1
25 t - - - - - - - - - - l CD
~ of
20 t - - - - l 1---"""---1
j 15
... 10
5
O+--...'-L........... Combined Types
Research I
Medical
Research II
Doe1or8I
Masler's
Baocalaureale
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
159
represented in Medical schools, with a large increase between 1979 and 1989. Smaller increases were found in Baccalaureate and Master's institutions. The smallest representation ofwomen was in institutions that award the Ph.D.: Research I, Research II, and Doctoral institutions. The increase in the percentage ofwomen occurred in all fields, with engineering, mathematics, and the physical sciences showing the least growth. Among these fields, the only increase greater than 10 percentage points in the proportion of women was in the very small number of engineers at Baccalaureate institutions. By 1995, the proportion of women in engineering was just above 5 percent, while women's representation in mathematics and the physical sciences was just over 10 percent. The largest increases were in the life and social/behavioral sciences, where women increased their proportion by nearly 20 points. Within the social and behavioral sciences, the greatest proportions ofwomen are found in Research I and Baccalaureate institutions. In the life sciences, women are working most often in Medical, Doctoral, Master's, and Baccalaureate institutions, where in 1995 they were nearly one third of the full-time academics. Still, even with the rapid increase, women do not make up 40 percent ofthe doctoral scientists and engineers in any field or type ofinstitution. While the number and proportion of women has increased steadily in all fields and types of institutions, it is also critical that women hold positions of similar status to those of men within these institutions. In the following sections we examine gender differences at each rung of the academic ladder, beginning with differences in having tenure track positions compared to less prestigious and less secure off-track positions. For those who are faculty, we consider who has tenure and who does not. Finally, we consider advancement to the highest rank, that of full professor. While there has been improvement in the success of women in obtaining positions comparable to those of men, women continue to be less successful in advancing up the ladder of academic success.
TENURE TRACK AND OFF-TRACK POSITIONS5 The most fundamental distinction among academic positions is between tenure track positions and off-track positions. Scientists with tenure track positions have the possibility of advancing through the faculty ranks and attaining the job security provided by tenure. In comparison, offtrack positions have lower pay, fewer resources, and less security. They include temporary teaching positions, research positions funded by soft
160
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
money, visiting scholars, adjunct faculty without tenure track appointments elsewhere, postdoctoral fellows, and lower level administrative positions. The greater likelihood of women being in off-track positions is well known (Ahern and Scott 1981; Haley-Oliphant 1985; Reskin 1978:1239; Zuckerman 1987:133) and is confirmed by our data. From 1979 to 1995, the percent of all full-time academic jobs that were on-track decreased from 84 percent to 79 percent. As shown by the dark bars in Figure 12, throughout this period men had a 14 percentage point advantage over women in obtaining tenure track positions. While this suggests that there has been little progress for women in becoming members of the facu1ty, these overall figures mask broad differences in the availability of faculty positions by field, type of institution, and at different stages of the career. To adjust for age differences we estimated logit models that predict being in a faculty position after statistically controlling for career age. Differences in the adjusted proportions of men and women in their fifteenth career year are shown by the lighter bars. In 1979 there was only a small decrease from the observed to the adjusted difference. That is, the observed gender difference in the percent with tenure track positions cannot be explained by the younger age of female Figure 12
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN THE OBSERVED PROPORTIONS WITH FACULTY POSITIONS AND THE ADJUSTED PREDICTIONS AFTER CONTROLLING ONLY FOR YEARS SINCE THE PH.D.
I_
15
Obsetved
0 Adjusted
I
~---_--':==========----------,
c:
QJ
E 12
~
'0 C
~
~ ~
QJ
9
6
~
'0
c
~
3
QJ
a.
o 1979
1989
Note: Predictions are for the 15th year of the career
1995
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
161
academics. By 1989, however, the observed difference was substantially reduced by adjusting for age, with a somewhat smaller reduction in 1995. Our results suggest that much, but not all, ofthe difference between men and women in their success in becoming faculty is due to differences in the stage of the career. The recent entry of women into science and engineering has contributed to the smaller percent of women who are faculty. If current trends in Ph.D. production and the job market for faculty continue, we expect that there will be increases in the percent of women with faculty positions in the next decade. While the most important factor affecting gender differences in faculty status is the age of a scientist or engineer, there are also important differences related to field, type of institution, and other variables. Figure 13 shows that the over-representation of men on the faculty differs substantially by type of institution, even after adjusting for differences in age and other variables. Further, this figure shows that women have made significant improvements in becoming faculty in all types of institutions. Gender differences are largest in Medical, Research I, and Research II institutions, but these institutions also showed the greatest improvement since 1979. By 1995, differences were reduced to 6 points or less in all except Medical institutions. Figure 13
GENDER DIFFERENCE IN ADJUSTED PROPORTIONS WITH TENURE TRACK POSITIONS, BY CARNEGIE TYPE OF INSTITUTION AND YEAR OF SURVEY
~
~
25.,---------=======--------, 1_197901989 019951
'6 2 0 + - - - 1:
a;2l 15 ,
Q.
~
10
'6
5
:::i:
1:
8 a; 0 Q.
w0
,;;,&'"
#~
<0'6
Note: Predictions are for career year 15 with other variables held at their means
162
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
TENURE While the process of granting tenure has varied over time and there are some differences across types of institutions, the process normally occurs as follows. A person enters academia upon completion ofthe doctorate or a postdoctoral fellowship with the initial rank of assistant professor without tenure. During the sixth year as an assistant professor, faculty are reviewed for tenure based on criteria established by the college or university. In research universities, research productivity is the main criterion, while in Baccalaureate institutions teaching is normally the most important activity. While a tenure review usually occurs in the sixth year, there is variation among institutions, with private universities and medical schools often having longer probationary periods. From 1979 to 1995 there was little change in the percent of tenure track faculty who had received tenure. For men roughly 80 percent had tenure in each year, while for women the number increased slightly from 56 percent in 1979 to 62 percent in 1989, dropping to 60 percent in 1995. Throughout this period, a nearly constant 20 percentage points more men than women were tenured, as shown by the dark bars in Figure 14. This appearance of a lack of progress for women is due largely to the shifting Figure 14 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN THE OBSERVED PROPORTION WITH TENURE AND THE ADJUSTED PREDICTION AFTER CONTROLLING FOR FiElD, CAREER AGE, AND CARNEGIE TYPE OF EMPLOYER, BY YEAR OF SURVEY ,_ Observed D Adjusted
..
25
~
20
c:
E
I
(;
c:
. 15 ~
11.
~
10
(;
c: 5
~
11.
0
1979
1989
Note: Predictions are for the lOth year after the Ph.D.
1995
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
163
age structure for women. The increasing entry of women into academia means that they are younger compared to men, which makes the average female faculty member less likely to be tenured compared to the average male faculty member. Further, there are differences in tenure rates across types of institutions, with tenure being least likely in Medical institutions, followed by Doctoral, Baccalaureate, Research I, Master's, and finally Research II institutions. Since men and women have different proportional representation by Carnegie type of institution, it is important to take this into account when examining gender differences in receiving tenure. Adding statistical controls for professional age, type of institution, field, and other variables substantially reduces gender differences in the predicted proportion ofscientists and engineers with tenure, as shown by the light bars in Figure 14. In 1979 the observed difference was reduced from 24 points to an adjusted difference of 17 points; in 1989 the observed difference of 19 points was reduced to 6 points, dropping to 4 points in 1995. Overall, by 1995 gender differences in being tenured are largely the result of differences in career age and to a lesser extent to differences in types of employing institutions. HoweTJer, eTJen after these
controls, men continue to be more likely to be tenured.
TENURE IN RESEARCH I UNIVERSITIES AND MEDICAL SCHOOLS Research I universities employ the largest number of faculty, conduct the most influential research, and train the majority ofPh.D.s. Medical schools have an equally central and prestigious position for research and postdoctoral training in the life sciences. Accordingly, it is important to understand the success of women in obtaining tenure in these locations. The three sets of bars on the left of Figure 15 plot the observed differences between men and women in the percent who are tenured. In 1979 the largest over-representation of men was over 30 points in Research I institutions, with advantages of about 20 points in both Medical institutions and all other Carnegie types combined. In 1989 there was a 10 point improvement in Research I schools with only small changes in other types of institutions; there were similar results for 1995. The right hand set of bars show gender differences in proportions after controlling for age and field; the differences for other types of institutions also control for the Carnegie type of institution in which a person was working. The adjusted differences are substantially smaller than the observed differences. In Research I institutions there was a drop
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
164
Figure 15 DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCENT OF MEN AND THE PERCENT OF WOMEN WITH TENURE, USING OBSERVED PROPORTIONS AND ADJUSTED PROPORTIONS, CONTROLLING FOR PROFESSIONAL AGE, FIELD, AND TYPE OF INSTITUTION 1.197901989019951
35,---------------------, 3~
30 25
'0 20
~.,
Q.
15 10
Observed Difference
Note: "Other types" combines all Carnegie types except Research I and Medical institutions
from 13 points in 1979 to 3 points in 1989, with an increase to a 10 point advantage for men in 1995. In institutions other than Medical and Research I, the difference was nearly eliminated by 1995. In Medical schools an advantage for women of over 10 points emerged by 1995. Overall, the under-representation ofwomen among the tenuredfaculty is lar.gest in Research I universities, even after controllingfor differences in age andfield.
THE RANK OF FUll PROFESSOR£> Progress in the academic career is marked by advancement in rank, culminating in promotion to full professor, and it is in this outcome that past research has provided the strongest evidence for the unequal treatment of women in academia (Ahern and Scott 1981; Astin and Bayer 1979; Cole 1979; Hurlbert and Rosenfeld 1992; Long, Allison and McGinnis 1993; Permcci, O'Flaherty and Marshall 1983; Rosenfeld and Jones 1986, 1987; Sonnert 1990; Szafran 1984). This is a central problem since with rank advancement come the prestige, resources, and authority that are critical for a successful career in science. The dark bars in Figure 16 show nearly constant observed differences of27 points in the percent of men and percent of women who are
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
165
Figure 16 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN THE OBSERVED PROPORTION OF FULL PROFESSORS AND THE ADJUSTED PROPORTIONS CONTROLLING FOR FIELD, CAREER AGE, AND CARNEGIE TYPE OF INSTITUTION, BY YEAR OF SURVEY
I_ Observed
c:
0 Adjusted
I
30 -r------~=======::::::...-----___,
Gl
E ~ 25
'0
C 20
~
Gl
C1; 15 c:
~ '0 10 C
~
Gl
5
'0.
o 1979 1989 1995 Note: Adjusted proportions are for 20 years after the Ph.D. Data were not available in 1973
full professors. Before concluding that there has been no progress in promotion to full professor for women during the past 18 years, it is essential to keep in mind that academic rank, like tenure, is highly dependent upon career age. The light bars show the effects of statistically controlling for differences in the age structures for male and female faculty, as well as differences in field and Carnegie type. The age-adjusted differences show a decrease in the over-representation of men from 20 points in 1979 to under 10 points in 1995. Still, even after controlling for gender differences in career age, field of employment, and type of institution, men
continue to have an almost 10 percentage point advantage in being full professors. The improved representation of women occurred in most types of institutions, as shown in Figure 17. Most importantly, the 25 point over-representation of men among full professors in Research I institutions in 1979 was reduced to 8 points by 1995, and the 35 point advantage in Medical institutions in 1979 was eliminated. Surprisingly, given the historical presence of women in undergraduate institutions, the overrepresentation of men in Baccalaureate institutions returned to 15 points after dropping in 1989.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
166 Figure 17
DIFFERENCES BElWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN THE ADJUSTED PROPORTION WHO ARE FULL PROFESSORS, BY CARNEGIE TYPE OF INSTITUTION AND YEAR OF SURVEY 1_1979 01989 019951 40 c
~ 35
~
'0
30
C 25
~
Cl.
.,
20
c 15 :::l!
'0
C 10
~
~
5 0
f-_
-
1Research I
r-
~ I-I--
Medical
-
-
Research II
r-
-
~ Doctoral
--
1=1 Master's
-
--
Baccalaureate
Note: The difference was 0 in Medical institutions in 1995
While overall percentages that do not control for any variables affecting rank show no improvement since 1979, controlling for age and other factors provides evidence of substantial improvement. However, gender differences still persist in this critical outcome for the academic career. A possible explanation for the remaining gender differences in rank attainment is that our analyses do not include controls for other variables that past research has shown to affect rank. Most importantly, we do not include measures of productivity, since the measures of productivity that we have are too aggregated over time to be used in predicting promotion. However, past research suggests that productivity differences do not explain gender differences in promotion. Based on his own results and a review of the literature, Cole (1979:246) concluded: "Historically, productivity patterns simply will not explain the gender differences in academic rank. Other social and economic variables might explain these associations, of course, but in the absence of adequate data to test alternative hypotheses I tentatively conclude that there has been extensive sex discrimination in promotion opportunities over the past forty years." Later analyses by Long et al. (1993) included detailed, over time data on productivity and found that gender differences persisted after controls for productivity and many other variables.
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
167
RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY In a review article on gender differences in scientific productivity, Cole and Zuckerman (1984) estimated that men published 40 to 50 percent more than women. While our data are inadequate for a full analysis of factors determining gender differences in scientific productivity, we can provide some information that helps us to explain why the overall rate of productivity is greater for men than women. The key to understanding the large observed gender differences in productivity is to control for the many differences between men and women in the types of positions and resources that they have. This approach was taken recently by Xie and Shauman (1998; see also Shauman and Xie, this volume) who analyzed scientific productivity using national surveys from 1969, 1973, 1988, and 1993. Their first conclusion was that gender differences in productivity have declined. Second, they conclude that "gender differences in research productivity stem from gender differences in structural locations and as such respond to the secular improvement of women's position in science." That is, gender differences in productivity reflect differences in positions women have held, rather than differences in abilities or motivation. Given evidence of the larger effect of work context on productivity than of productivity on attaining a given position (see Allison and Long 1990 and the literature cited therein), the increasing entry ofwomen into faculty positions in all types of institutions should lead to future decreases in gender differences in scientific productivity. Still, to the extent that differences in employment persist, differences in productivity can be expected to continue, albeit to a lesser degree. Figure 18 illustrates the degree to which gender differences in scientific productivity are associated with differences in the positions held by male and female scientists. Each bar indicates the percent more publications by the average male academic than the average female academic. The first bar considers all academic scientists in 1995 and shows that men have about 30 percent more publications than women. As we move to the right, we increasingly restrict the group of academics to make their characteristics more similar. Among those in Research I institutions, men are just under 25 percent more productive. However, earlier we showed that women were much more likely to have off-track positions which we would expect to be associated with lesser productivity. Restricting our comparison to only faculty we find that men are 13 percent more productive; among tenured faculty in Research I institutions, 8 percent more productive, and
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
168
Figure 18
PERCENT MORE PUBLICATIONS BY THE AVERAGE MAN COMPARED TO THE AVERAGE WOMEN IN INCREASINGLY SIMILAR GROUPS OF ACADEMIC SCIENTISTS IN 1995 35 c: ::::;;
30
.c
25
'">CIl
c:
.2
-~j;
20
Q.
15
:::l
~ ::::;; 0
C 10
~
'"
Q.
5 D Full Time Academics
Research I Tenure Track Academics Faculty
Tenured Faculty
Full Professors
Full Professors: Life Sciences
Note: Moving from left to right, each group is a subset of the prior group. For example, "Tenure Track Faculty" are full-time in Research I institutions
when comparing full professors in the life sciences, men are less than 5 percent more productive. Even with the limitations of our data, it seems clear that differences in structural position are a key factor in the lesser productivity of women in science and engineering.
THE PRESENCE OF WOMEN IN ACADEMIC POSITIONS In prior sections we focused on changes in the relative proportions of men and women who have advanced to more secure and prestigious positions. By comparing the percent of all women who obtained a given status to the corresponding percent of all men, we are able to determine whether men and women have equal success in attaining each type of position. To the degree that such equity occurs, differences in the representation of men and women are a function of the smaller number of women in academia. As a way to summarize our findings, as well as to show the growing presence of women in the academy, we consider the changing percent of academics who are women. Figure 19 shows the percent of academic scientists and engineers who are women for various employment statuses within academia.
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
169
Figure 19
PERCENT OF ACADEMIC SCIENTISTS WHO ARE WOMEN, BY TYPE OF INSTITUTIONS, TYPE OF JOBS, AND YEAR OF SURVEY Panel A: Percent women in Research I institutions 1.1919 01989019951
50 .S1 45
~40
u. 35 C
po
r-
~ 25 ;':20
1!
-
110 15
II:
5
o
-
1
-
FT Academic
OtfTreck
i~= On Tracll
~
UOlanured
Tanured
-
:J
~~
Asslslanl
Associale
FuU
Professor
Professor
Professor
Panel B: Percent women in non-Research I institutions 50 .S1 45
.
~
I
40
35 30 Q. 25 ti 20 15 10 z 5 0
.
~
!8
I
r-r--
~
r-
r-r-r-I---
FT Academic
e I---
Off Track
r-I--I---
00 Track
~
Untenured
-
Tenured
I--I---
~ ~
Asslslanl
Professor
Associale
Professor
Full
Professor
Panel C: Difference between percent women in non-Research I and Research I institutions
8~
1.197901989019951
m~ i~
!lill
Cl II:
0
FT Academic
OffTrack
On Track
Uotenured
Tenured
AssIS18nl
Associate
FuU
PfOfesso<
Profasso<
Professor
Note: Positive values indicate a greater presence of women in institutions other than Research I
170
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Panel A shows the results for those employed in Research I universities; Panel B presents the results for all non- Research I institutions combined; and Panel C plots the difference in the percent female in non- Research I universities compared to Research I institutions, where positive values indicate a greater presence of women in non- Research institutions. There has been an increase in the percent ofwomen in all categories ofacademic employment, ranging from off-track positions to being full professors. This trend is driven by the increasing number of women with Ph.D.s and the corresponding increase in the number of women in academia. This is shown by the left most set of bars which gives the percent of all full-time academic scientists and engineers who are women, combining all types of full-time employment. In 1995 women were nearly 20 percent of all academics in Research I universities and nearly 25 percent of those in all other types of institutions. As we move to the right, we see that women are found in varying proportions among different types of academic positions. Women are found most often in the least prestigious, least secure, and most poorly paid off-track positions, such as research associates and temporary instructors. Among tenure track faculty, women are found most often among assistant professors. At the critical rank of full professor, women in 1995 are still less than 10 percent of the full professors in Research I universities and just 12 percent in other types ofschools. Panel C shows that the advance in the representation ofwomen in academia has occurred more slowly in Research I universities than in other types of institutions. Overall, there has been substantial improvement in the presence of women in academia. In all fields, women made up a substantially larger proportion of the academic labor force in 1995 than in 1973. Large field differences persist, with women found least frequently in engineering and most often in the life sciences and the social/behavioral sciences. Still, at most, women make up only about 33 percent of the academic labor force in any field. With the proportionally greater entry of women than men into academia in recent years, the average career age ofwomen is less than that of men. This accounts for a substantial amount of the greater representation of men among those with tenure and those with the rank of full professor. However, controls for gender differences in age and field do not eliminate the greater presence of men among those on the tenure track, with tenure, or promoted to full professor. While the presence of women in academia has shown notable improvements, women remain underrepresented in academic science and engineering.
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
171
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has documented the truly remarkable changes that have occurred in the representation of women in science and engineering. In all aspects of the career, from the receipt of the Ph.D. to entry into the labor force to attaining the rank of full professor, women are an increasing presence, both in absolute number and as a proportion of all scientists and engineers. As positive and encouraging as these changes are, it is equally clear that substantial differences remain. Women as a group remain less well represented and less successful than men in every dimension of the career that we have examined. For example, women remain below 50 percent ofnew Ph.D.s, are proportionally less likely to enter the full-time scientific and engineering labor force, are less likely to hold more advanced positions in industry or academia, and receive lower salaries even after adjusting for differences in age, field, and type of work. But while women have clearly made enormous gains in their participation in science and engineering, it is also clear that these advances represent neither unconditional success in overcominggender inequalities nor assurance ofcontinuing progress in the future.
NOTES
1. This paper is based on the larger study From Scarcity to Visibility: A Study of Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers, Report of the Panel for the Study of Gender Differences in the Career Outcomes of Science and Engineering Ph.D.s, J. Scott Long, Chair. 2. Rossiter (1995:382). 3. Detailed descriptions are found in Long (2001). 4. The years 1973, 1979, 1989, and 1995 correspond to the years of the SDR that are used throughout the paper. In assessing these graphs and those that follow, keep in mind that the survey years are not evenly spaced. All else being equal, we would expect larger changes from 1979 to 1989 than from 1973 to 1979 or from 1989 to 1995. 5. The 1973 SDR did not collect information on whether a position was on a tenure track. Accordingly, analysis of tenure track status, tenure, and rank did not include data from 1973.
172
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
6. Our focus is on the rank of full professor since advancement to associate professor is most often accompanied by the receipt oftenure, which was discussed earlier.
REFERENCES Ahern, Nancy C., and Elizabeth L. Scott. 1981. Career outcomes in a matched sample ofmen and women Ph.D.s: An anayltical report. Washington' D.C.: National Academy Press. Allison, Paul D., and J. Scott Long. 1990. Departmental effects on scientific productivity. American Sociological RC'Piew 55:469-478. Astin, Helen S., and Alan E. Bayer. 1979. Pervasive gender differences in the academic reward system: Scholarship, marriage and what else? In Academic rewards in higher education, ed. D. R. Lewis and W. E. Becker. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co. Barber, Leslie A. 1995. U.S. women in science and engineering, 19601990: Progress toward equity? Journal of Higher Education 66(2): 213-234. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. 1994. A classification of institutions of higher education: A technical report. Berkeley: The Carnegie Commission. Cole, Jonathan R. 1979. Fair science. New York: Free Press. _ _ _" and Harriet Zuckerman. 1984. The productivity puzzle: Persistence and change in patterns of publication among men and women scientists. In Advances in motivation and achiC'Pement, vol. 2, ed. P. Maehr and M. W. Steinkamp. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. Goldberger, Marvin L., Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela Ebert Flattau.
1995. Research-doctorate programs in the United States: Continuity and change. Washington: National Academy Press. Haley-Oliphant, Ann E. 1985. International perspectives on the status and role of women in science. In Women in science: A report from the field, ed. J. B. Kahle. Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Hargens, Lowell, and J. S. Long. Forthcoming. Demographic inertia and the representation of women and minorities on higher-education faculties. Journal of Higher Education.
The Presence and Participation of Women in Academic Science
173
Hurlbert, Jeanne, and Rachel A. Rosenfeld. 1992. Getting a good job: Rank and institutional prestige in academic psychologists' careers. Sociology ofEducation 65:188-207. Jones, Lyle V., Gardner Lindzey, and Porter E. Coggeshall. 1982. An assessment ofresearch doctorate programs in the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Long, J. Scott. 1997. Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Press. _ _ _, ed. 2001. From scarcity to visibility: A study ofgender differences in the careers ofdoctoral scientists and engineers. Report ofthe panel for the study of gender differences in the career outcomes of science and engineering Ph.D.s. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. _ _ _, Paul D. Allison, and Robert McGinnis. 1993. Rank advancement in academic careers: Gender differences and the effects of productivity. American Sociological Review 58:703-722. McIlwee, Judith Samsom, and J. Gregg Robinson. 1992. Women in engineering: Gender, power, and workplace culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. NSF (National Science Foundation). 1920-1995. Survey ofEarned Doctorates. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation. _ _ _. 1973-1995. Survey ofDoctorate Recipients. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation. _ _ _. 1997. Characteristics ofDoctoral Scientists and Engineers in the United States: 1995. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Studies. _ _ _. 2000. Tabulations from data from Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Completion Survey; and NSF Survey ofEarned Doctorates. Permcci, Robert, Kathleen O'Flaherty, and Harvey Marshall. 1983. Market conditions, productivity, and promotion among university faculty. Research in Higher Education 19:431-449. &eskin, Barbara F. 1978. Scientific productivity, sex, and location in the institution of science. American Journal of Sociology 83:1235-1243. Rosenfeld, Rachel A., and Jo Ann Jones. 1986. Institutional mobility among academics. Sociology ofEducation 59:212-226.
174
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Rosenfeld, Rachel A., and Jo Ann Jones. 1987. Patterns and effects of geographic mobility for academic women and men. Journal ofHigher
Education 58:493-515. Rossiter, Margaret W. 1982. Women scientists in America: Struggles and strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. _ _ _. 1995. Women scientists in America: Before affirmative action 1940-1972. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Shyrock, Henry S., Jacob S. Siegel, and associates. 1973. The methods and materials of demography, vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce. Solomon, Barbara Miller. 1985. In the company ofeducated women. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sonnert, Gerhard. 1990. Careers of Women and Men Postdoctoral Fellows in the Sciences. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meetings. Szafran, Robert F. 1984. Universities and women faculty: Why some or,ganizations discriminate more than others. New York: Praeger. Xie, Yu, and Kimberlee A. Shauman. 1998. Sex differences in research productivity: New evidence about an old puzzle. American Sociologi-
cal Re1Jiew 63:847-870. Zuckerman, Harriet. 1987. Persistence and change in the careers of men and women scientists and engineers. In Women: Their underrepresentation and career differentials in science and engineering, ed. L. S. Dix. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. ____" and Jonathan R. Cole. 1975. Women in American science.
MinerlJa 13:82-102.
Chapter Seven
Explaining Sex Differences in Publ ication Productivity among Postsecondary Facu Ity Kimberlee A. Shauman Yu Xie
In all academic disciplines, scholarly productivity is a primary marker of career success. Productive scholars are rewarded with promotions in rank, favorable job mobility, and pay raises. Likewise, unproductive scholars are considered "unsuccessful" and are sometimes pushed out of their own institutions or out of the academy altogether. While publication rate of scholarly work per se may not be an accurate measure of scholarly contribution in all disciplines, the adage "publish or perish" portrays the pressure that pervades the postsecondary community. This adage emphasizes the weight placed on quantifiable measures of productivity in the assessment of scholarly contribution, and it reflects the important role of publication in determining career success among faculty in the academy. Given the strong link between publication productivity and career advancement, explaining sex differences in publication rates dearly advances our understanding of sex differences in the career progress and outcomes of postsecondary faculty. The large volume of research aimed at explaining sex differences in scholarly productivity attests to the importance of this effort (for reviews see Zuckerman 1991; Long and Fox 1995; Ward and Grant 1995). Until very recently (Xie and Shauman 1998), however, EfJUlJ1 Rites, UnefJulJl Outcomes: Women in AmericlJn ReselJych Universities
Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
1 75
176
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
research was unsuccessful at explaining the reasons for sex differences in research productivity, and indeed such sex differences among scientists were labeled a "productivity puzzle" by Cole and Zuckerman (1984:218) and accepted as such by many other scholars. In examining publication rates among scientists and engineers, Xie and Shauman (1998) show that the productivity puzzle can be solved by accounting for sex differences in personal characteristics, experiences, and structural positions that are related to publication. According to Xie and Shauman's results, if men and women are located in the same positions within the structure of the academy and if they have equal access to the resources that facilitate publication, sex differences in research productivity are nil. Xie and Shauman's results imply that the persistence of the gender gap in scholarly publication rates is symptomatic of continuing structural inequality between men and women among postsecondary faculty. As long as male academic scientists occupy better positions and have easier access to resources than do female academic scientists, the gender gap in research productivity will persist. Although there exists a large body of research on sex differences in publication output, the overwhelming majority has focussed on the productivity puzzle among scientists. In fact, most studies typically focus on small samples of scientists from specific fields. The generalizability of the results from this literature to non-science academic disciplines has not been adequately investigated. It remains an open question whether the explanatory framework employed by Xie and Shauman (1998) applies to and helps explain sex differences in publication productivity among postsecondary faculty in other academic disciplines. In this paper, we attempt to generalize the findings ofXie and Shauman (1998) by applying the same explanatory model to a broader range of academic disciplines in a comparative analysis. In this paper, we present the results of an empirical examination of sex differences in publication productivity among all full-time postsecondary faculty in four general academic disciplines: the social sciences and education, the arts and humanities, the natural sciences and engineering, and the medical and professional fields. The analysis is based on data from four large, nationally representative surveys of postsecondary faculty in 1969, 1973, 1988, and 1993. We first compare the level of publication productivity and the degree of sex differences that characterize each discipline and examine changes in measured sex differences in publication productivity over the 24-year period for which we have data. We then examine trends in sex differences in the personal and career characteristics
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
177
that are believed to influence the publication productivity ofpostsecondary faculty. Finally, we present the results of a multivariate analysis aimed at explaining sex differences in publication productivity among faculty in each academic discipline. There are three main findings from our research. First, sex differences in research productivity have generally decreased since 1969 among faculty in all academic disciplines, except among medical and professional school faculty. Second, over the 24-year period from 1969 to 1993, male and female postsecondary faculty have become increasingly similar in terms of the individual and career characteristics that are widely accepted as determinants of publication productivity. Third, in each academic discipline, a significant portion of the measured sex differences in publication productivity can be attributed to sex differences in the individual and career characteristics examined.
EXPLAINING SEX DIFFERENCES IN PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY Our attempt to explain sex differences in publication productivity rests on the logic of indirect multivariate relationships. It has long been recognized that sex differences in publication productivity are at least partially accounted for by sex differences in social factors that are related to productivity. That is, sex differences in publication productivity may be mediated by intervening factors in a recursive causal model. This causal logic is illustrated in Figure 1. Based on this logic, researchers have attempted to explain the bivariate relationship between sex and publication by accounting for factors that intervene in the bivariate relationship. In this multivariate framework, the direct relationship between sex and publication productivity, denoted by A, is expected to be reduced to insignificance when all the relevant intervening variables are accounted for. Figure 1
EXPLAINING SEX DIFFERENCES IN PRODUCTIVITY Sex
c Intervening Variables
Publication Productivity
178
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Prior research has identified many intervening factors that help explain sex differences in publication productivity. The list of relevant factors includes both personal characteristics, such as age, prestige of Ph.D. program, field of research, and family status, as well as career characteristics, such as institutional type, rank, teaching hours, level of research funding, and access to research assistance. Few of the extant studies, however, have been successful in explaining gender differences in publication productivity because they fail to adequately account for intervening variables. Recent research by Xie and Shauman (1998) shows that, when a large number of relevant intervening factors are controlled, the relationship between sex and publication productivity is indeed reduced to insignificance among scientists and engineers. Following Xie and Shauman (1998), we set out to explain sex differences in publication productivity by accounting for three sets of intervening explanatory variables: background characteristics, career characteristics and resources, and family status. The background characteristics we include in this analysis are a detailed measure of the field of specialization within each of the four broad academic disciplines, the time taken to complete the doctoral degree, and years of experience as a postsecondary faculty member. We measure career characteristics and resources by the type of institution at which individuals are employed, academic rank, number of teaching hours, research funding, and access to research assistance. Family status is measured by a single indicator ofmarital status. We conduct separate multivariate analyses incorporating the explanatory variables for each ofthe four groups ofacademic disciplines we examine. For this analysis, we are comfortable in assuming that the background characteristics are antecedent to the measure of publication, making it possible to identify the extent to which publication productivity is dependent upon their causal influence. Beyond this, the cross-sectional nature of our data does not permit further ordering of the causal factors. Specifically, we are unable to identify the causal direction of the relationship between publication productivity and the career and resource variables, represented in Figure 1 by the arrow labeled B. Structural and resource variables such as institutional affiliation, rank, funding, and teaching hours may affect the rate at which an academic publishes, but these career characteristics also may be consequences of productivity. The causality between research productivity and resource variables is clearly reciprocal. Without experimental or longitudinal data, we are not in a position to identify the reciprocal causality. We therefore present our multivariate results as descriptive rather than causal, and we interpret the results accordingly.
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
179
DATA AND MEASURES For this study, we use data from four sources: the National Survey of Higher Education conducted by the Carnegie Commission in 1969 (hereafter Carnegie-69), the Teaching Faculty in Academy study conducted by the American Council of Education in 1972-1973 (hereafter ACE-73), and the 1987-1988 and 1992-1993 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty (hereafter NSPF-88 and NSPF-93) conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. Each of these data sets includes detailed information about the personal characteristics, education background, and career characteristics of nationally representative samples of postsecondary faculty. Faculty in different academic fields were included in each study. In addition, the similarity of the sampling designs and survey instruments of these four data sets allows us to describe changes in sex differences in publication productivity over a 24-year period. We define postsecondary faculty as individuals who hold a doctoral degree, are appointed at a postsecondary institution, and are responsible for teaching at least one college-level course. Our definition encompasses teaching staff at all academic ranks, including lecturers/ instructors who are regularly employed but excluding graduate student instructors. To reduce the number of fields to a manageable size, we first collapsed the many detailed academic fields into 19 major fields and then grouped them into four general disciplinary areas: (1) social sciences and education, (2) arts and humanities, (3) science and engineering, and (4) medical and professional fields. Appendix Table 1 presents the distribution of male and female postsecondary faculty by field, disciplinary group, and data source. The social sciences and education group includes education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, and other social science fields. The arts and humanities disciplinary category encompasses the arts, English, foreign languages and literature, history, philosophy, religion, and other humanities fields. The science and engineering group includes the fields of engineering, mathematics, computer science, any of the physical sciences, and any of the biological sciences. The medical and professional group includes subcategories of medical fields, nursing, other medical sciences such as veterinary medicine, business, and other professional fields such as journalism and law. Using the definition of postsecondary faculty detailed above and excluding respondents with invalid or missing information for all the measures used in our analysis, our samples consist of 21,413
180
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
postsecondary faculty from Carnegie-69, 15,240 from ACE-73, 3,589 from NSPF-88, and 6,510 from NSPF-93. We measure publication productivity as the count of all publications reported by postsecondary faculty for the two years prior to the date of the survey. Our definition of publications includes articles published in refereed and nonrefereed journals, chapters in edited volumes, books, and monographs. I This definition applies to all the data sources with one exception: for the NSPF-88, "creative works" were included with articles and books in the publication count. This discrepancy between the data sources inflates the average publication count for the NSPF-88 sample, although it should not result in a bias for our study if the publication of "creative works" is unrelated to sex.
RESULTS SEX DIFFERENCES IN PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY: TRENDS AND DISCIPLINARY DIFFERENCES
We describe trends in sex differences in publication productivity among postsecondary faculty from two perspectives: sex differences in the average number of publications during the two years prior to the survey date, and sex differences in the proportion of faculty accomplishing no publications during the two year period. The top panel ofFigure 2 presents the average 2-year publication rate for all postsecondary faculty by disciplinary group and data source. Given that the publication count for the NSPF-88 data is inflated due to the inclusion of "creative works," the average 2-year rate of publication is highly stable in each discipline across the 24-year period covered by the data. A clear hierarchy among the disciplines is also evident, with postsecondary faculty in the natural sciences and engineering fields publishing at the highest rates and those in the arts and humanities at the lowest rates. In 1969, academics in the natural sciences and engineering published at an average 2-year rate of 3.7. This rate increased only slightly to 4.2 in 1993. The average publication rate among faculty in the medical and professional fields was only slightly lower than the rate for the natural sciences and engineering in 1969 and 1973 but dropped slightly to 3.4 in 1993. The 2-year publication rates among faculty in the social sciences and education averaged about 3.0 between 1969 and 1993, and those among faculty in the arts and humanities hovered just over 2. The average publication rates establish the inter-disciplinary differences in the level of publication productivity, but they do not describe sex
181
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
differences in publication productivity. We measure sex differences with the female-to-male ratio in average 2-year publication rates. The value of the female-to-male ratio indicates the magnitude of the sex differences in publication productivity. A ratio of one indicates gender equity, while values less than one reveal male advantage. The female-to-male ratio of publication rates for each academic discipline and data source is presented in the bottom panel of Figure 2. The figure shows that women publish at lower rates than men in all four broad disciplinary categories and throughout the 24-year period. The data also show a general trend toward gender Figure 2 lWO-YEAR PUBLICATION RATE AND FEMALE-MALE RATIO OF PUBLICATION RATE BY ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 2-Year PublicatIon Rate 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 0.00 Camegie-69
ACE-73
NSPF·88
NSPF-93
Female-Male RatIo of Publication 1.00 0.90 0.80 0.70 0.60 0.50 Camegle-69
ACE-73
NSPF-8S
NSPF-93
-+- Social Sciences & Education
~ Humanities
-.... Natural Sciences & Engineering
....... Medical & Professional Fields
and Arts
182
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
equity in the rate of publication productivity for all academic disciplines. The smallest sex differences in publication productivity are found among academics in the social sciences and education and in the arts and humanities. In both of these broad disciplinary groups, the publication ratio increased from about 70 percent in the late 1960s to 85 percent in the early 1990s. This indicates that the gender gap in publication productivity has declined by half over the 24-year period. That is, women's publication rate was 30% lower than men's in 1969, but women were publishing at a rate only 15% lower than their male colleagues by 1993. Sex differences in publication productivity were relatively greater in the natural sciences and engineering and in the medical and professional fields than in other disciplines at both the start and end ofthe 24-year period. In the natural sciences and engineering and the medical and professional fields, the female-tomale ratio ofpublication rates was at 0.60 in 1969. By the early 1990s, the ratio for both disciplines had increased by 10 points to 0.70. Although the trend is toward equity, the data clearly show significant and persistent sex differences in publication productivity at the end of the period. Sex differences in publication rates may be largely due to gender differences in the proportion of postsecondary faculty who do not publish (Long 1992). We therefore measured both the proportion ofall faculty who reported no publication during the two years prior to the survey date and the female-to-male ratio of faculty with zero publications for each discipline and data source. These statistics are presented in Figure 3. The top panel of Figure 3 shows that the proportion of faculty with a zero 2-year publication rate increased between the late 1960s and the early 1990s in all disciplines. The rise in the prevalence of zero publication has been accompanied, however, by dramatic declines in sex differences in zero publication. The bottom panel of Figure 3 shows that the femaleto- male ratio of postsecondary faculty with zero publication rates declined to near equity in all academic disciplines. In 1969, rates of zero publication were very high among women relative to men. For example, in the natural sciences and engineering women were more than twice as likely as men to be among faculty with zero publication rates; in the other disciplinary groups, women were between 50 and 70 percent more likely to be non-publishers. By 1993, the female-to-male ratio of non-publication had declined to slightly over one in the social sciences and education, the natural science and engineering, and the arts and humanities. Although the trend for the medical and professional fields appears non-monotonic, the female-to-male ratio declined from 1.7 in 1969 to 1.3 in 1993.
183
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
Figure 3 PROPORTION OF POSTSECONDARY FACULTY WITH ZERO 2-YEAR PUBLICATION RATE AND FEMALE-MALE RATIO OF POSTSECONDARY FACULTY WITH ZERO PUBLICATION RATE BY ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 Proportion of Academics with Zero 2·Vear Publication Rate 0.5 0.4
0.3
02 0.1
.. ..
---=-----~ =---
--...
. - -&
0.0 Carnegle-69
ACE·73
NSPF·88
NSPF·93
Female-Male Ratio ofAcademics with Zero Publication Rate 22
~---------------------~
2.0
+-----'~..-._=;;;;;:::~-------------_____;
1.8
+-------------"o,~---~-------
1.6
-1-----~~~===:::::t~~~-----:~=---=::::::,__=_-----___.j
1.4
L-~==~s:;::=~~~~---~~~--J
1.0 12
!=======~~==:=~~!;~=~~;jL==
0.8 + - - - - - - - - , r - - - - - - - - - - , . - - - - - - - - . , . . - - - - - Camegie-69 ACE·73 NSPF-88 NSPF·93
- . - Social Sciences & Education - . - Natural Sciences & Engineering
Humanities and Arts ...... Medical & Professional Fields
This decline in the rate of zero publication among female faculty must account for some of the increase in the female-to-male ratio in publication rates over the observed time period. Figure 4 illustrates the extent to which the trend toward sex equity in average publication rates is explained by the increased participation ofwomen in the "publish or perish" culture of the postsecondary academy. This figure presents the female to-male ratio ofpublication rates excluding non-publishing postsecondary faculty. Compared to the female-to-male ratios presented in Figure 2, the exclusion of non-publishers raises the female-to-male publication ratio
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
184
Figure 4 FEMALE-MALE RATIO OF PUBLICATION RATE BY ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE EXCLUDING NON-PUBLISHERS: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 FemeleoMele ReUo of PubllceUon Retet Excluding Non-Publl8hers 1.0 0.9 0.8
0.7
.....-
---
-"
...~-
-
-
~
0.6 0.5 Camegle-69
ACE·73
-+- Social Sciences & Education ......- Natural Sciences & Engineering
NSPF-88
NSPF·93
Humanities and Arts
-+- Medical & Professional Fields
towards one (equity level) at all points of observation for all disciplines, but the increase is especially dramatic for the Carnegie-69 and ACE-73, in which large proportions of female faculty had zero publication rates. The relative flatness of the trend lines over the 24-year period reflect only very small decreases in sex differences in publication productivity among those who do publish. These results indicate that much of the observed sex differences in publication productivity, especially in the past, are attributable to the differential proportion ofmen and women postsecondary faculty who publish at all. However, sex differences in the rate of publication among publishing faculty, though smaller in magnitude than those among all faculty, nonetheless exist and indeed persisted throughout the period.
SEX DIFFERENCES IN FACTORS RELATED TO PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY In this section, we describe sex differences in the background characteristics, career characteristics, and resources that are related to publication productivity. We describe trends in sex differences in each explanatory factor across the 24-year period covered by the data. Although the explanatory variables we include in our analysis are not strictly parallel
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
185
across the data sets, they are very similar. In the descriptions of individual variables we note and describe any measurement differences that exist. Background Characteristics
The representation ofwomen varies significantly across the disciplinary groups that we compare. Figure 5 presents the percent distribution of men and women at the four points of observation separately for each broad disciplinary group. Although there are disciplinary differences in the level ofrepresentation at each point in time and in the speed at which equal representation is approached, a clear trend toward more equal representation of men and women in all four disciplinary categories is illustrated by this figure. For all disciplinary groups, each successive survey reveals an increase in the proportionate participation of women. This figure also clearly shows that by 1993 women had not yet achieved equal Figure 5
PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF MALE AND FEMALE POSTSECONDARY FACULTY BY ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 Art. and Hurrenltle.
Social Science. and Education 100% , -
---,
100% , -
---,
80%
Medical and Profe••lonal Field.
Science and Engineering 100% , -
C...egIo-69
--,
"'0;.73
NSW-68
NSW-93
I
[J
Male
100% , -
--,
ComOlJie-69
.Female
I
"'0;.13
NSW-68
NSfI'.93
186
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
representation in any ofthe disciplinary groups. Women have achieved the highest level of relative representation in the social sciences and education and in the medical and professional fields, where women comprise about 40 percent of all postsecondary faculty in 1993, up from about 8 percent in 1969. A similar degree of equal representation has been achieved in the arts and humanities, where in 1993 about 38 percent of all postsecondary faculty were women. The postsecondary faculty in the natural sciences and engineering, however, continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by men. In 1993, only 19 percent of all postsecondary faculty in these fields were women. These figures are highly aggregated, and they obscure patterns of sex differences in representation in the detailed academic fields that comprise each of these four broad categories. The percent distribution of men and women in the detailed fields is presented in Appendix Table 1. Although our analysis focuses on inter-disciplinary comparisons at the aggregate level, we recognize significant differences in the determinants of sex differences in publication productivity across detailed fields. We therefore control for detailed fields in the multivariate analysis. The time a graduate student takes to complete his/her graduate degree has been shown to be correlated with publication productivity (Clemente 1973). The time between bachelor's and doctoral degrees may influence later scholarly productivity through a number of indirect causal routes. First, delayed attainment of a doctoral degree may be seen by hiring institutions as an indicator of low levels of drive or commitment and hence may handicap an individual in the competition for positions in resource-rich institutions. Second, a long period between bachelor's and doctoral degree may lead to delays of first publications. Since early publication is correlated with higher rates of publication over the course of a scholar's career (Reskin 1978), delayed first publication inhibits the early establishment of a publication record. Sex differences in the time between bachelor's and doctoral degree are presented in the top panel of Figure 6. The figure shows that at each point of observation during the 24-years, women are significantly more likely than men to take eleven or more years to complete a doctoral degree. In 1969, women were over 1.8 times as likely as men to earn their Ph.D. eleven years after earning their bachelor's degree. By 1993 the female-to-male ratio declined only slightly to 1.6. Women and men are about equally likely to spend 8-10 years between undergraduate and graduate degree, but women are less likely than men to earn their doctoral degree in under seven years. Some women may take more time to complete their doctoral degree because their family
187
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
responsibilities interfere with their graduate studies. For example, they may temporarily withdraw from school to support their husbands' education or to bear and raise children. The final background characteristic that we consider in our analysis is years of experience in a faculty position. Publication productivity displays a distinct pattern over the life course: It sharply increases to a peak early in the Figure 6 SEX DIFFERENCES IN EXPLANATORY VARIABLES MEASURING BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, NSPF-93 2.0 .2 1.6
i
.. 1.2
:,
.. 0.8
e
-
---
Time Between BSlBAand Ph.D.
--
-....
If 0.4 0.0 Camegie-69
ACE-73
I ~1-4yrs
.....-5-7yrs
.
i
.e
:,
~8-10yrs
NSPF-93
....__11+ yrs
Years of Experience
2.5 .2
NSPF-88
2.0 1.5 1.0
If 0.5 0.0 Camegie-69 ~O-5~rs ....__21- yrs
ACE-73
NSPF-88
.....-6-10yrs _31+yrs
NSPF-93 ~11-20yrs
I
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
188
career and then gradually declines (Long 1992; Levin and Stephan 1991). Because women have begun to join the ranks of postsecondary faculty in significant numbers only during the past two decades, they tend to have fewer years of experience on average than do male postsecondary faculty. The implication of the relatively recent entry of women into faculty positions for sex differences in years ofexperience is evident in the bottom panel of Figure 6. The female-to-male ratio of the proportion of postsecondary faculty who have 0-5 years ofexperience increased from 1.2 in 1969 to 2.2 in 1988 and then declined to 1.8 in 1993. The female-to-male ratio of the proportion of faculty with 6-10 years of experience increased from one in 1969 and 1973 to 1.6 in 1993. Conversely, the data show that women are much less likely than men to have a great many years of experience: for example, the female-to-male ratio of the proportion of faculty with 21-30 years of experience declined from one in 1969 to 0.3 in 1988. The data clearly show that women have become overrepresented among postsecondary faculty whose careers are still young and underrepresented among faculty with extensive years of experience. Given the life-course profile of publication rates, it is necessary to control for professional experience in our multivariate models explaining sex differences in publication productivity. Career Characteristics and Resources
Distinct types of postsecondary institutions differ in the demands and expectations placed on the faculty who staff them. Institutions vary Figure 7 SEX DIFFERENCES IN TYPE OF CURRENT INSTITUTION: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, NSPF-93 Carnegle-69 3.5
-
3.0
'". 0
It:
;";
.
~
.! E ~
2.5
-
2.0 1,5 1,0 0,5 0,0
-n-n-n-
.----
-
Figure 7 continued ACE·73 3.5 3.0 0
1;
2.5
• 'iii
2.0
a: ~
'"
;;; E
:.
..--
1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0
......-
"n-nnn-
-
1..--
-
-
3.5 3.0 0 ;;
" .! " i"
a:
.
2.5 2.0
~
1.5
...
1.0 0.5 0.0
3.5 3.0 0
2.5
•
2.0
'i a: iii
.
~
'iii
E
.•..
1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0
Wl-
" I
-
r--
roo-
...r--
r-
...-
190
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
significantly in the level of publication productivity that is expected of faculty and in the structural resources that support faculty's scholarly publication. The demand and support for publication is greatest at public and private research and doctoral granting universities. At other types of universities and colleges, teaching tends to be either emphasized or the sole expectation of faculty. Previous research has shown that the type of institution of faculty employment is significantly related to publication productivity (Allison and Long 1990; Blackburn, Behymer, and Hall 1978; Clemente 1973; Long 1978; Reskin 1978). Research has also shown that women are underrepresented in the types of institutions where publication is expected and supported and overrepresented in institutions where teaching is the primary duty of faculty (Bentley and Blackburn 1992; Reskin 1978; Long and Fox 1995). Figure 7 presents the pattern of sex differences in type of employing institution at the time of each survey. Although the measures of institutional type used for each survey are comparable, they differ slightly in classification scheme. 2 The female-to-male ratio of proportionate representation in research and doctoral granting universities is less than one for all data sources, indicating that women are less likely than men to be employed in such institutions. Conversely, the female-to-male ratio is almost uniformly greater than one for teaching-oriented types ofinstitutions such as 4-year, comprehensive, and liberal arts colleges. The data, however, reveal a marked decrease in the segregation of women in 4-year, comprehensive, and liberal arts colleges. The results from the Carnegie-69 data show that women were 1.5 to 2.8 times as likely as men to be employed in 4-year colleges, and the ACE-73 data show that women were 2.2 to 3 times as likely as men to be employed in liberal arts colleges. According to the NSPF-1988 and NSPF-1993 data, however, the concentration of women had declined significantly. In 1988, the female-to-male ratio for employment in a liberal arts college was about 1.4, and in 1993 it stood at 1.2. The data for type of employing institution therefore appear to show movement toward a more equitable distribution of male and female postsecondary faculty. The persistent underrepresentation of women in research and doctoral granting universities and slight overrepresentation of women in liberal arts colleges should contribute to sex differences in publication productivity. Sex differences in publication productivity may also be partly explained by sex differences in other career characteristics such as the academic rank and teaching hours of postsecondary faculty. A comparison of the
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
191
proportionate distribution of male and female postsecondary faculty across four levels of academic rank is presented in the top panel of Figure 8. The data confirm the pattern of female overrepresentation among low ranks and female underrepresentation among advanced ranks of the academic ladder, as reported in previous research (Ahern and Scott 1981; Bentley and Blackburn 1992). There has been a significant decline since the early 1970s in the female-to-male ratio of the proportion of postsecondary faculty in "other" academic ranks. Other ranks are non-tenure-track, including instructorships and lectureships. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, women were 3.3 to 4 times as likely as men to be employed in these non-tenuretrack ranks. By 1993 the female-to-male ratio had dropped significantly but still stood at lA, indicating that women were still 40 percent more likely than men to be employed in non-tenure-track positions. Women also continue to be overrepresented among assistant professors. The increase in the female-to-male ratio for assistant professors from 1.4 in 1973 to 1.9 in 1988 may be attributable to the relative youth of female postsecondary faculty, as well as to sex differences in promotion rates. Throughout the 24-year period, women and men have been about equally represented at the associate professor rank, but women are about half as likely as men to be among the ranks of full professors at every point of observation. The teaching load carried by a postsecondary academic can have a significant impact on publication productivity through its effect on the time available for research. The inverse relationship between teaching load and publication productivity may have a disproportionate effect on the average publication rates among female faculty, for women report spending more hours at teaching and carrying heavier course loads than male faculty (Xie and Shauman 1998). Sex differences in teaching load are partly explained by the overrepresentation of women in postsecondary institutions that emphasize teaching over research such as liberal arts colleges. However, even within the same institutional type, women tend to spend more time teaching than do men. We measure teaching load with the number of hours per week that postsecondary faculty report devoting to classroom teaching. The coding scheme for the teaching hours variable is identical for the Carnegie-69, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 data. Because a slightly different classification of teaching hours was used for the ACE-73 data, descriptive results for this survey are not presented here. The variable, however, is included in the multivariate analysis for all the surveys.3 The female-to-male ratio of self-reported faculty teaching hours is presented in the bottom panel of Figure 8. The convergence of the
192
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 8 SEX DIFFERENCES IN EXPLANATORY VARIABLES MEASURING CAREER CHARACTERISTICS: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, NSPF-93 Academic Rank 5.0 .5! 4.0
;I
J! 3.0 :I
•
i
E
..------- ~ ...
2.0
If 1.0 0.0
~
....
""'lloL
....
-y
•--
•
•
i
Carnegie-59
ACE·73
NSPF-88
NSPF-93
-+- Assistant professor __ Full professor
........ Associate professor -+-Other
Teaching Hours 2.0 - , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ,
j I
1.5 + - - -
:I 1.0
i
-...=...0;;;;::--------------------1
t---11~:::::::;;;:;~~:e~~~§3t_-__l
~ 0.5 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 0.0 + - - - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - - , - - - - - - - - 1 Camegie-69 NSPF-88 NSPF·93 -+-1-4 hours ........ 7·8 hours -If-11 hours and above
......... 5-6 hours _9-10 hours
female-to-male ratio for each teaching hours category between 1969 and 1988 is the most striking aspect of this graph. In 1969, women were much more likely than men to devote more than 11 hours per week to classroom teaching and much less likely than men to be among those who spend only 1-4 hours in the classroom each week. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the distributions ofwomen and men across all the teaching hours categories were about equal: in 1993 the female-to-male ratio
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
193
ranged from 0.9 for 1-4 teaching hours to 1.1 for the 11+ hours category. These results clearly show that sex differences in teaching responsibilities have largely disappeared. Publication productivity is also affected by access to resources that facilitate research and its dissemination. Two very important resources from which faculty may benefit are research funding and research assistance. The importance and availability of research funding varies significantly across academic disciplines, but the extent to which access to research funding differs for men and women within the same discipline may help explain sex differences in publication productivity. All of the four data sets included questions about funding resources. We measure research funding with a set of dichotomous variables that indicate whether or not a faculty member received funding from each of five sources: federal, state, private, industrial, and the respondent's own institution. The statistics describing sex differences in research funding from each data source are presented in the top panel of Figure 9. The upward slope of each of the lines in this graph reflects increasing gender equality in access to each funding source, but apparent sex differences remain. For example, throughout the 24-year period, women have been much less likely than men to have their scholarship funded by industrial sources. This disparity is likely a result of the underrepresentation of women in the natural sciences and engineering, since industry is a major source of funding for research in these fields. Women are also significantly less likely than men to receive funding from federal sources: In 1993, women were 40 percent less likely than men to report having received funding from the federal government. According to the NSPF-93, men and women are about equally likely to have funding from their own institution, and they appear to have nearly equal access to funding from private foundations (female-to-male ratio = 0.9). Access to research assistance in the form ofa graduate student assistant is another resource that can greatly facilitate the publication process. Having the aid of one or more research assistants can expedite the conduct and completion of research that result in scholarly publications. Each of the four data sets collected information on whether or not respondents had at least one graduate student research assistant. The data show a significant decrease in the gender gap in access to research assistance. In 1969, female postsecondary faculty were 70 percent less likely than their male colleagues to report having a research assistant. By 1988, the gap had declined to the extent that women were only 10 percent less likely than men to have a research assistant. Although the gap did not decline further between 1988
194
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Figure 9 SEX DIFFERENCES IN EXPLANATORY VARIABLES MEASURING RESOURCES: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, NSPF-93
i J!
• :, .!!
1.2
Research Funding .---------------------~
1.0
0.8 I---...==::::::;;~~........--"""=------___=:;:;;i&-_____j
........,s::::;;......---"--___j
0.6 t-~~===::::::a=~~;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
E 0.4 +----.;~_~::::::~...--"==~~==""""'~---___1
If 0.2 +--_ _.........= - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 0.0 + - - - - - - - . . - - - - - , - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - - - l Camegie-69 ACE-73 NSPF-88 NSPF·93 -+-Federal
~ nctustrtal
- . - StatellocaJ
-+- ON n nstitutlon
-+- R'lvate foundation
Research Assistance 1.2 - , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , o 1.0 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ - - - - - 1
i
0.8 + - - - - - - - -.___--,;;;;>""' - =--... ..........- - - - - - - - - 1 ~ ~ :I 0.6 + - - - - ----:::::;;;;;o...,::.--------------l
.iE 0.4 + - - -...-------"'-------------------------l If 0.2 +--
-----j
0.0 + - - - - - - - , - - - - - - - , , . - - - - - - - - r - - - - - - - - l Camegie-69 ACE·73 NSPF-88 NSPF·93
I-+- Graduate assistant I
and 1993, the trend toward gender equity during the 1970s and 1980s was significant. Taken together, the results on sex differences in research funding and research assistance indicate increased equality in access to resources that facilitate publication. This convergence toward equality undoubtedly has had a positive effect on declining sex differences in publication productivity. Because significant disparities by sex in access to resources remain, we
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
195
are interested in knowing the extent to which controlling for resources helps explain sex differences in publication rates.
Family Status Marriage and parenthood are hypothesized to have differential effects on the publication productivity of male and female faculty because of significant sex differences in the time and emotional demands of marital and familial roles. It is commonly assumed that women's careers slow after marriage and childbearing, whereas men's careers are bolstered, especially by marriage. Although previous research has found childbearing to negatively affect productivity for both men and women scientists (Hargens, McCann, and Reskin 1978), there is reason to hypothesize that marriage may be a positive influence. A postsecondary academic's work may benefit from the additional economic resources of marriage and the support of a spouse. Research has shown a positive effect of marriage on the publication productivity of postsecondary faculty in the sciences. Cole and Zuckerman (1987:125) find that "Women scientists who marry and have families publish as many papers per year, on the average, as single women." Xie and Shauman (1998) report that married scientists have significantly higher rates of productivity than unmarried scientists, and they find no evidence that the effect of marital status on publication productivity differs between men and women. To measure marital status, we use a dichotomous indicator that contrasts postsecondary faculty who reported being married to those who reported being unmarried (either single, divorced, widowed or separated) at the time of the survey. Figure 10 presents the female-to-male ratio in the proportion of postsecondary faculty who are married at each point of observation between 1969 and 1993. The data reveal a persistent sex difference in marriage rates among postsecondary faculty. Throughout the 24-year period, significantly lower proportions of female academics are married than are male academics. Although the data show that the ratio increased from 0.56 to 0.73 between 1973 and 1988, the upward trend did not continue into the early 1990s. The female-to-male ratio in 1993 indicates that women faculty are 25 percent less likely than men to be married. Given women faculty's lower likelihood of being married, they are less likely, on average, to benefit from marriage. If being married benefits the publication productivity of male and female postsecondary faculty equally, then controlling for marital status will help explain sex differences in publication rates.
196
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
MULTIVARIATE RESULTS: EXPLAINING SEX DIFFERENCES IN PUBLICATION PRODUCTIVITY We use negative binomial models to estimate the effects of sex and the other explanatory variables on the number of publications during the two years prior to the date ofthe survey as reported by each postsecondary faculty respondent. See Long (1997) for an explanation of this statistical method and Xie and Shauman (1998) for a discussion of the suitability of this method for modeling publication rates. For each disciplinary group, we build a series of hierarchical models with the number of publications as the dependent variable. We estimate four models for each data set. We begin with the bivariate model including sex as the sole independent variable. The second model incorporates background characteristics. The third model adds career characteristics and resources, and the final model includes marital status. These models are hierarchical in that as variables are added, the simpler model is nested within the more complicated model. As variables are added, we track variations in the estimated coefficient of sex. Given the hypothesis that sex differences in productivity are due to sex differences in intervening variables, we are interested in whether the magnitude of the sex coefficient shrinks towards zero as we gradually Figure 10 SEX DIFFERENCES IN MARITAL STATUS OF POSTSECONDARY FACULTY: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, NSPF-93 Marital Status
i
~
!
1.00
~-----------------------,
0.80
+-------------------~----t
~
0.60 + - - - - - - - - - . _ - = - " ' = - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - t
' i 0.40 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1
~
0.20 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 0.00 + - - - - - - - , - - - - - - - - r - - - - - - , - - - - - _ _ t Carnegie-69
ACE-73
NSPF-88
I-+- Married I
NSPF-93
197
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
account for the intervening explanatory variables. Appendix Tables 2a-d present the estimated coefficient of sex and model fit statistics for the four negative binomial models of publication productivity among postsecondary faculty in each of the four disciplinary groups. The results of our multivariate analysis are summarized in Figure 11. This figure presents, separately for each of the four disciplinary groups, the estimated female-to-male ratios ofpublication rates for the four hierarchical models by data source. These figures show that the female-to-male ratio in publication productivity increases toward one as the intervening explanatory variables are added to the statistical model. The results indicate that Figure 11 ESTIMATED FEMALE-MALE RATIO OF PUBLICATION RATES ADJUSTING FOR BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS, CAREER CHARACTERISTICS, AND MARITAL STATUS FOR EACH ACADEMIC FIELD: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93
1::
Social Sclencea and Educetlon
I.. ' .. ..JD'
t::
1.2
1
1.1
1.0
1 0.9
J
~
0.8
~
t
, 0.7
.. o.
Science end Engineering
, 1.1 1.0
-J
0.9
.0.8 , 0.7
1
08 . .. 0.5
----
...---""
~
"""
.-.
~
~
.. 0.5
1.2
1
0.8
Arts and Humanitle.
h
i!
~
--
-
~
~
--Y
~11
J!6 I -+-
Camegie-69
1.1 1.0
1
1 0.9 .0.8 , 0.7
II 1 j~61 Ii
l
j
8
___ ACE-73
Medical end ProlelllONlI Field.
12
1
08 . .. 0.5
--~
~
~
~H
U In u
......-NSPF-88
.......
...... .....
fW iil~ ~6~ ,J
-+- NSPF-93I
~I
198
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
sex differences in publication productivity are largely accounted for by sex differences in background characteristics, career characteristics and resources, and marital status. In fact, after controlling for the intervening variables, we generally observe negligible difference in the publication rates between male and female postsecondary faculty. For postsecondary faculty in the social sciences and education, accounting for sex differences in background characteristics, career characteristics and resources, and marital status increases the female-tomale ratio to between 0.93 and 0.97 for all the data sets. Note that for the social sciences and education, the coefficient of sex is not statistically significant from zero in the final model for any ofthe data sets. Furthermore, for data from the Carnegie-69, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93, the coefficient of sex becomes insignificant after the career and resource variables are included in the model (see Appendix Table 2a). These results indicate that sex differences in publication productivity among postsecondary faculty in the social sciences and education are accounted for by sex differences in background and career characteristics, and that marital status does not help explain sex differences in publication rates. A similar explanatory pattern emerges for the arts and humanities. For faculty in the arts and humanities, sex differences in publication productivity decline to insignificance for all data sets after controlling for background and career and resource variables (see Appendix Table 2b). After adjusting for all the intervening factors, the female-to-male ratio of publication rates ranges from 0.94 to 1.12. We thus find that female and male faculty in the arts and humanities would have the same publication rates if they had the same background characteristics and were located in the same structural positions with equal resources. Controlling for the three groups of intervening variables has a similar effect on sex differences in publication productivity among faculty in the sciences and engineering fields. For faculty in these fields, the estimated effect of sex is reduced to insignificance after adjusting for career and resource variables for the ACE-73 and NSPF-88 data. For the Camegie69 data set, the effect of sex becomes insignificant after marital status is controlled in the fourth model. And for the most recent data, the NSPF93, the female-to-male ratio of publication remains significantly different from one, at 0.84, after controlling for all the intervening variables (see Appendix Table 2c). It is unclear whether the deviation of the NSPF-93 results represents a real departure from the patterns observed from earlier surveys or measurement problems in the 1993 data set unknown to us.
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
199
Overall, however, it is safe to say that our final multivariate model is still quite powerful in explaining sex differences in publication productivity among science and engineering faculty, although it is slightly less so than it is for faculty in the social sciences and education and in the arts and humanities. The multivariate model of publication productivity successfully accounts for sex differences in publication rates among faculty in the medical and professional fields for only two of the four data sources. Although the results for the medical and professional fields exhibit the same general pattern ofincreasing female-to-male ratio of publication rates as intervening variables are added to the model, the pattern is not as clear as it is for the other disciplines. The estimated sex difference is reduced to insignificance for the ACE-73 and the NSPF-93 data sets, but it remains statistically significant (at a=0.05 significance level) for Carnegie-69 and NSPF-88 even after controlling for all the background, career, and resource variables, as well as marital status (see Appendix Table 2d). In addition, the adjusted female-to-male ratio of publication rates from the final model is much lower for the medical and professional fields than for the other disciplinary groups. For the medical and professional fields, the ratio ranges from 0.66 to 0.92. For the other three disciplinary groups, the final model yields adjusted female-to-male ratio values much closer to unity. These results indicate that our multivariate model is less successful in accounting for sex differences in publication productivity among faculty in the medical and professional fields than among the other disciplines. One possible explanation for the discrepancy is that the category of medical and professional fields is too heterogeneous to allow meaningful comparisons between male and female faculty within the category. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The results of this research support three main findings. First, with trend data covering the 24-year period from 1969 to 1993, we show that sex differences in research productivity have generally declined among faculty in all academic disciplines. The overall male-female gap in average publication rates of postsecondary faculty has been narrowing, as has the male-female difference in the proportion of academics who publish. The trend toward increasing gender equality in publication productivity is clearly evident among faculty in the social sciences and education, the arts and humanities, and the sciences and engineering. The trend among faculty in
200
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
the medical and professional fields, however, does not follow the same orderly pattern of increasing equality observed in the other disciplines. Second, in concert with the declining trend in the overall sex differences in publication productivity, male and female postsecondary faculty have become increasingly similar in terms of individual and career characteristics that are conducive to publication productivity. The representation of women in all the four major disciplinary groups increased significantly between 1969 and 1993, and women have increasingly occupied similar positions within the postsecondary community and had similar access to facilitating resources as men. As of 1993, however, significant differences between the sexes remain. Women have consistently taken more time to complete their doctoral degrees, and this gender gap puts women in a disadvantaged position as compared to men. The more recent influx of women into postsecondary careers means that women have fewer years ofexperience than men on average, and this difference in professional experience may explain the continued overrepresentation of women in the lower ranks of the academic career ladder. Women are no longer as heavily segregated, as they were in the 1960s and 1970s, in postsecondary institutions that tend to emphasize teaching rather than research, although sex segregation by institution has persisted to some extent. Sex differences in teaching hours have declined dramatically, but on average women continue to report devoting more of their work time to teaching than do men. Women also continue to report having fewer resources such as research funding and research assistance than do men, although the gap in access to facilitating resources has narrowed somewhat. Finally, women postsecondary faculty are less likely than men to be married and thus are less likely to benefit from marriage. The third major finding of this research is that accounting for sex differences in relevant individual and career characteristics explains a significant portion of the raw sex differences in publication productivity for four different data sets during the 24-year period examined. Especially for the social sciences and education, the arts and humanities, and science and engineering, we have successfully identified differences between men and women postsecondary faculty in personal characteristics, structural positions, and facilitating resources that account for women's lower publication productivity. In other words, we found that women publish fewer articles and books than men because women are less likely than men to have the background characteristics, the structural positions, and the resources that are conducive to publication productivity. We conclude that the direct effect of sex on productivity is extremely small, if it exists at all.
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
201
With the exception of postsecondary faculty in medical and other professional fields, the empirical results presented in this paper are very similar to those ofXie and Shauman (1998). The congruency in results suggests that similar processes underlie sex differences in scholarly productivity among academic scientists and engineers as among academics in the other fields. We have shown, for example, the secular trend ofwomen's increasing role in all the disciplines: Women have not only increased their representation in all the disciplines in the academy but have also positioned their activities away from teaching toward research in significant ways. Although true gender equality in postsecondary education is still to be achieved, the gap in structural positions between men and women faculty is much narrower now than two decades ago. Parallel to Xie and Shauman's results, the results of our preceding analyses also point to the crucial role of certain individual and career characteristics in determining publication productivity. The unequal distribution of these characteristics by gender (in disfavor of women faculty) has been the main reason for women's lower productivity rates. However, we still do not know why men and women differ systematically on these important dimensions. In some sense, we are merely replacing the "productivity puzzle" by a "career puzzle." This summary statement suggests that the focus of future research should be shifted away from the connection between sex and publication productivity and into the connection between sex and those individual and career characteristics that facilitate scholarly productivity. In other words, our findings should lead to a renewed interest in the long-standing social problem of sex differences in the career trajectories of male and female academics (Bernard 1964).
NOTES 1. For both the Carnegie-69 and ACE-73 surveys, the publication count was measured in categorical intervals through a closed-ended question. For these data sets, we use the midpoint of the response categories as an approximation of publication counts. The coding scheme used was: none = 0,1-2 = 1.5, 3-4 = 3.5, 5-10 = 7.5, and more than 10 = 12.5. The NSPF-88 and NSPF-93 is coded as a detailed count of publications for each respondent. 2. For the Carnegie-69 data, the classification ofinstitutional type is based on the Gourman Report of 1967 (Trow et al. 1975). The ACE-73
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
202
survey instrument rated institutions according to what became known as the Carnegie Classification scheme. In NSPF-88 and NSPF-93, institutions were rated according to a modified Carnegie Classification that is very comparable to that used for the ACE-n. 3. The ACE-73 classification scheme and female-to-male ratio of selfreported teaching hours is as follows: the female-to-male ratio of respondents reporting 1-4 hours of teaching per week is 0.770; the female-to-male ratio of respondents reporting 5-8 hours of teaching per week is 0.767; the female-to-male ratio for 9-12 teaching hours per week is 1.360; and female-to-male ratio for 13-16 weekly teaching hours is 1.291.
REFERENCES Ahern, Nancy C., and Elizabeth L. Scott. 1981. Career outcomes in a matched sample ofmen and women Ph.D.s: An analytical report. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Allison, Paul D., and J. Scott Long. 1990. Departmental effects on scientific productivity. American Sociological Review 55:469-478. Bentley, Richard J., and Robert T. Blackburn. 1992. Two decades ofgains for female faculty? Teachers College Record 93:697-709. Bernard, Jessie. 1964. Academic women. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Blackburn, Robert T., Charles E. Behymer, and David E. Hall. 1978. Research note: Correlates of faculty publications. Sociology of Education 51:132-141. Clemente, Frank. 1973. Early career determinants of research productivity. American Journal of Sociology 83:409-419. Cole, Jonathan R., and Harriet Zuckerman. 1984. The productivity puzzle: Persistence and change in patterns ofpublication among men and women scientists. In Advances in motivation and achievement, vol. 2, ed. P. Maehr and M. W. Steinkamp. Greenwich, Conn.: JAl Press. _ _ _, and Harriet Zuckerman. 1987. Marriage, motherhood and research performance in science. Scientific American 25:119-125.
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
203
Fox, Mary F. 1981. Patterns and determinants of research productivity. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Hargens, Lowell L., James C. McCann, and Barbara F. Reskin. 1978. Productivity and reproductivity: Fertility and professional achievement among research scientists. Social Forces 57: 154-163. Levin, Sharon G., and Paula E. Stephan. 1991. Research productivity over the life cycle: Evidence for academic scientists. American Economic
Review 81:114-132. Long, J. Scott. 1978. Productivity and academic position in the scientific career. American Sociological Review 43:889-908. _ _ _. 1992. Measures of sex differences in scientific productivity.
Social Forces 71:159-178. _ _ _. 1997. Regression models for categorical and limited dependent pariables. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. _ _ _, and Mary F. Fox. 1995. Scientific careers: Universalism and particularism. Annual Review of Sociology 21:45-71. Reskin, Barbara F. 1978. Scientific productivity, sex, and location in the institution ofscience. AmericanJournal ofSociology 83: 1235-1243. Ward, Kathryn B., and Linda Grant. 1995. Gender and academic publishing. In Higher education: Handbook oftheory and research, pol. ii, ed. A. E. Bayer and J. C. Smart. New York: Agathon. Xie, Yu, and Kimberlee A. Shauman. 1998. Sex differences in research productivity: New evidence about an old puzzle. American Sociologi-
cal Review 63:847-870. Zuckerman, Harriet. 1991. The careers of men and women scientists: A review of current research. In The outer circle: Women in the scientific community, ed. Harriet Zuckerman, Jonathan R. Cole, and John T. Bruer. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Social Sciences and Education Education Psychology Sociology/Anthropology Economics Political Science Other Social Sciences Total n Arts and Humanities Arts English Foreign languages and literature History Philosophy, Religion, and other Total n Science and Engineering Engineering Mathematics and Computer Science Physical Sciences Biological Sciences Total n Medical and Professional Fields Medical Fields Nursing, and other medical sciences Business Other professional schools Total n
Academic Discipline
7.89 17.16 64.93 11.19 6.72 (134)
91.87 21.04 13.85 56.35 8.75 (960)
8.13 15.29 60.00 21.18 3.53 (85)
3.44 1.25 20.00 24.58 54.17 (240)
92.11 18.47 24.03 50.48 7.03 (1,565)
96.56 21.82 16.54 30.91 30.73 (6,740)
11.35 12.05 32.05 34.22 13.25 8.43 (415)
88.65 14.59 25.51 20.64 23.60 15.67 (3,242)
11.28 13.74 31.30 33.74 10.43 10.78 (575) 3.58 2.23 19.55 25.42 52.79 (358)
88.72 14.00 26.73 21.60 22.93 14.75 (4,523) 96.42 23.60 14.20 30.75 31.45 (9,633)
11.27 39.15 29.93 13.97 5.49 7.98 3.49 (401)
88.73 20.75 27.02 15.77 13.40 13.43 9.63 (3,157)
ACE-73 Male Female
Carnegie-69 Female Male 91.18 8.82 29.17 15.75 25.71 30.15 17.22 18.14 17.05 6.86 14.75 8.33 9.53 7.35 (4,217) (408)
72.24 18.34 15.28 56.77 9.61 (229)
88.25 19.29 19.29 29.76 31.66 (736)
73.85 9.94 17.06 15.04 29.83 28.13 (1,237)
27.76 4.55 64.77 26.14 4.55 (88)
11.75 6.12 19.39 26.53 47.96 (98)
26.15 11.42 29.91 29.68 16.67 12.33 (438)
NSPF-88 Female Male 69.59 30.41 43.50 60.78 15.63 15.52 10.36 11.21 11.30 3.45 2.16 6.97 12.24 6.90 (232) (531)
59.38 11.40 10.40 69.00 9.20 (500)
81.30 19.53 25.56 27.00 27.92 (1,526)
31.60 13.61 22.94 17.31 (1,190)
14.54
62.43
40.62 6.43 52.05 33.92 7.60 (342)
37.57 15.36 44.13 21.09 12.01 7.40 (716) 18.70 9.69 24.22 19.37 46.72 (351)
NSPF-93 Female Male 41.01 58.99 29.05 46.96 18.26 21.22 15.38 11.25 5.43 13.58 11.24 5.30 12.50 9.83 (1,112) (773)
PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF POSTSECONDARY FACULTY BY DETAILED ACADEMIC FIELDS: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93
Appendix Table 1
/tl
c: ri 0 3
11>
-0
..c c:
/tl
::::l
C
~
~.
;;oc
~
m
..c c:
~
0
N
205
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
Appendix Table 2a ESTIMATED PARAMETER FOR SEX AND MODEL FIT STATISTICS FOR FOUR NEGATIVE BINOMIAL MODELS OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG POSTSECONDARY FACULTY IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND EDUCATION: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93
1
Model Specification"
Panel A: Carnegie-69 (n-4,625) bScx -0.320*** (SE) 0.051 Exp(b ) 0.726 ModerChi-square 37.88 DF 1 Panel B: ACE-73 (n-3,558) -0.330*** bs.. (SE) 0.056 0.719 exp(bs.x) 34.03 Model Chi-square DF 1 Panel C: NSPF-88 (n-763) bScx -0.163 (SE) 0.105 0.850 exp(bs..) 2.35 Model Chi-square DF 1 Panel D: NSPF-93 (n-l,885) -0.159* bs.. (SE) 0.066 0.853 exp(bs.x) Model Chi-square 5.66 DF 1
*pe:.05
**p<.OI
***pe:.001 (two-tailed test)
"Model Specification: (1) Sex only (2) (1) + Field + Time between BA/BS and Ph.D. + Years of Experience (3) (2) + Type of Current Institution
+ Rank + Teaching Hours + Research Funding + Research Assistance (4) (3) + Marital Status
2
-0.268*** 0.051 0.765 324.07 13 -0.292*** 0.055 0.747 291.32 13
3
-0.058 0.048 0.943 1221.84 32
4
-0.027 0.050 0.974 1228.05 33
-0.114* 0.052 0.892 895.52 33
-0.038 0.055 0.963 912.51 34
-0.069 0.110 0.933 39.09 13
-0.086 0.102 0.918 183.91 33
-0.074 0.104 0.928 184.24 34
-0.056 0.069 0.945 54.45 13
-0.043 0.064 0.958 394.67 33
-0.045 0.065 0.956 394.69 34
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
206
Appendix Table 2b ESTIMATED PARAMETER FOR SEX AND MODEL FIT STATISTICS FOR FOUR NEGATIVE BINOMIAL MODELS OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG POSTSECONDARY FACULTY IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 1
Model Specification-
Panel A: Carnegie-69 (n-5,098) bs.,x -0.363*** (SE) 0.052 Exp(bs<» 0.696 Model Chi-square 48.25 DF 1 Panel B: ACE-73 (n-3,657) -0.279*** bScx 0.062 (SE) 0.756 exp(bs<» 20.16 Model Chi-square DF 1 Panel C: NSPF-88 (n-l,675) -0.085 bs<> (SE) 0.071 0.918 exp(bs<» 1.44 Model Chi-square 1 DF Panel D: NSPF-93 (n-l,906) -0.167* bs<> 0.069 (SE) 0.846 exp(bs.,.) 5.76 Model Chi-square 1 DF *p<.05
**p<.01
***p<.001 (two-tailed test)
'Model Specification: (1) Sex only (2) (1) + Field + Time between BAIBS and Ph.D. + Years of Experience (3) (2)+ Type of Current Institution +
Rank
+ Teaching Hours + Research Funding
+ Research Assistance (4) (3) + Marital Status
2
3
4
-0.346*** 0.051 0.707 288.29 12
-0.077 0.050 0.926 1040.79 31
-0.062 0.051 0.940 1042.05 32
-0.256*** 0.062 0.774 155.42 12
-0.079 0.059 0.924 686.76 32
-0.049 0.061 0.953 690.92 33
-0.007 0.075 0.993 110.78 12
0.083 0.073 1.086 272.04 32
0.114 0.074 1.121 278.17 33
-0.087 0.073 0.917 81.03 12
-0.089 0.068 0.915 351.55 32
-0.029 0.069 0.972 372.65 33
207
Explaining Sex Differences in Publication Productivity
Appendix Table 2c ESTIMATED PARAMETER FOR SEX AND MODEL FIT STATISTICS FOR FOUR NEGATIVE BINOMIAL MODELS OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG POSTSECONDARY FACULTY IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 1
Model Specification'
Panel A: Carnegie-69 (n=9,991) bs.. -0.468"· (SE) 0.053 Exp(b ) 0.626 Moder'Chi-square 74.25 DF 1 Panel B: ACE-73 (n-6,980) -0.413"· bs.. (SE) 0.067 0.661 exp(bs..) 36.95 Model Chi-square DF 1 Panel C: NSPF-88 (n-834) -0.237 bs.. (SE) 0.138 0.789 exp(bs..) Model Chi-square 2.80 DF 1 Panel D: NSPF-93 (n-l,877) bs.. -0.356"· (SE) 0.079 exp(bs..) 0.700 Model Chi-square 19.26 DF 1
·jJ<.05
"p<.OI
2
4
-0.424·" 0.052 0.655 1005.05 11
-0.104· 0.048 0.901 3581.45 30
-0.089 0.049 0.915 3583.33 31
-0.367·" 0.065 0.693 665.63 11
-0.082 0.059 0.921 2695.51 31
-0.075 0.060 0.928 2695.78 32
-0.032 0.113 0.969 446.51 31
-0.023 0.115 0.977 446.74 32
-0.194" 0.068 0.824 807.14 31
-0.179· 0.069 0.837 809.17 32
·"jJ<.001 (two-tailed test)
'Model Specification: (1) Sex only (2) (1) + Field + Time between BA/BS and Ph.D. + Years of Experience (3) (2) + Type of Current Institution + Rank + Teaching Hours + Research Funding + Research Assistance (4) (3) + Marital Status
3
-0.128 0.137 0.880 86.35 11 -0.323·" 0.080 0.724 151.66 11
208
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Appendix Table 2d ESTIMATED PARAMETER FOR SEX AND MODEL FIT STATISTICS FOR FOUR NEGATIVE BINOMIAL MODELS OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG POSTSECONDARY FACULTY IN MEDICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS: Carnegie-69, ACE-73, NSPF-88, and NSPF-93 1
Model Specification" 2
Panel A: Carnegie-69 (n=1,699) bs.x -0.510*** (SE) 0.092 Exp(b ) 0.601 Modef'Chi-square 29.72 DF I Panel B: ACE-73 (n-l,045) -0.286* bScx (SE) O.lli 0.751 exp(bs.x) 6.44 Model Chi-square I DF Panel C: NSPF-88 (n=317) -0.413** bs.x (SE) 0.148 0.662 exp(bs.x) Model Chi-square 7.34 I DF Panel D: NSPF-93 (n-842) -0.378*** bScx (SE) 0.092 0.685 exp(bs.x) Model Chi-square 16.36 DF I *p<.05
**p<.OI
***p<.OOI (two-tailed test)
'Model Specification: (I) Sex only (2) (I) + Field + Time between BA/BS and Ph.D. + Years of Experience (3) (2) + Type of Current Institution + Rank + Teaching Hours + Research Funding
+ Research Assistance (4) (3) + Marital Status
3
4
-0.498*** 0.091 0.608 210.32 II
-0.296** 0.087 0.744 477.20 30
-0.257** 0.096 0.774 478.17 31
-0.340** 0.1l3 0.712 123.87 II
-0.179 0.105 0.836 328.29 31
-0.150 0.1l6 0.860 328.62 32
-0.424** 0.161 0.654 73.44 II
-0.452** 0.164 0.636 120.59 31
-0.410* 0.166 0.663 122.47 32
-0.335** 0.102 0.715 51.49 II
-0.1l4 0.097 0.892 233.17 31
-0.083 0.098 0.920 236.60 32
Chapter Eight
Women in the Academy Confronting Barriers to Equality Carol Hollenshead
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT In the hallway of the Center for the Education ofWomen hangs a picture of a University of Michigan science class in the 1880s. The students wear somber, formal clothes. The men wear ties; the women, hats. They are separated from one another-the women sit on one side of the aisle, the men on the other. In the picture are 26 men, two of whom are African American, and 11 women, one of whom is Mrican American. As the picture reveals, Michigan was a progressive place in the 1880s. The irony is that, more than 100 years later, in terms ofdemographics, many science classrooms at most major research universities are likely to look much the same as the one in our picture. Why have women made so much progress in some areas of academe but so little in others? Understanding our history is fundamental to our collective comprehension of the challenges we confront and the solutions we must find to the issues we currently face in the academy. In the pages that follow, I will discuss the history of the University of Michigan as an example both of the progress women have made in research universities and of the barriers they continue to confront. While EqUid Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, K1uwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
211
212
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
each institution's history is unique, the Michigan experience serves to illustrate national trends and cultural attitudes that have had deep and lasting effects on women's access to, roles in, and continued affiliation with the academy. Nationally, as well as at Michigan, women made great gains in higher education in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Women were first admitted to the University of Michigan in 1870 and by 1880, 55 women had graduated from the Literature Department; 86 had received degrees in medicine; 10 in law; and 8 in pharmacy. By 1900, the majority of the graduates of Michigan's Literature Department were women (Bordin 1999). The proportion ofbachelor's and professional degrees awarded to women increased from 19 percent in 1900 to 40 percent in 1930 (Chamberlain 1988). By the 1920s, 15 percent of all Ph.D.s went to women (Lomperis 1990). But early national gains receded when the academy, concerned with the "feminization" of higher education (Lomperis 1990), put caps on female enrollments. The situation for women worsened as the twentieth century advanced (Hollenshead et al. 1996). During the Depression, the proportion of doctorates awarded to women declined slightly, to 13 percent in 1940 (Chamberlain 1988). Between 1945 and 1956, the GI Bill and the influx of men returning from World War II and the Korean War restricted opportunities for women in higher education. While the GI Bill made higher degrees possible for many people who could not have afforded to attend college before the wars, with few exceptions women did not benefit from the financial aid ofthe GI Bill. Only 3% of the millions ofveterans who enrolled in colleges and universities under the bill in the 1940s were women (Clifford 1993). Moreover, preferential treatment in admissions and financial assistance, while not limited to GI's, generally benefited men. For the first time in its history, the University of Michigan Regents placed an official cap on the enrollment of women during World War II (Bordin 1999). Women's enrollments were capped at the level of housing availability-which itself was limited due to the fact that the army had taken over a number of UM residence facilities for military training programs. After the war, Michigan, like other institutions, continued to curtail women's enrollments. During the post-war period, institutions admitted fewer women to undergraduate programs (Chamberlain 1988). Graduate programs also became increasingly competitive for women, not only because the number of applicants grew but also because veterans received preference in admission. In order to study at the graduate level, women had to be far
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
213
better qualified than men (Hornig 1984). In effect, admission policies of the post-World War II and post-Korean War periods constituted the largest affirmative action program this nation has yet experienced-far more effective in bringing men into higher education than the more recent efforts to bring white women and people of color into the mainstream of education and professional preparation. Starting in the 1960s, a few pioneering institutions-including the University of Michigan-responded to women's efforts to open the doors of the academy wider, particularly to women whose education had been interrupted for family and other reasons. In 1963, the University approved a proposal by a coalition of forward-thinking community and university women to establish a Center for the Continuing Education of Women (now the Center for the Education of Women). With $15,000 raised in donations from alumnae and matched by the UM president's office, the Center opened its doors in 1964. The Center helped women enter the academic mainstream in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs, worked to eliminate institutional barriers to women's enrollment and fostered new research about women's lives. WOMEN FACULTY
The University ofMichigan and other research universities can be proud of their success, since the 1960s, ofincreasing women's access to education. While women's enrollments in some fields still lag behind those of men, the changes in women's participation in higher education--especially graduate and professional preparation-have been remarkable. Our record of including women in the professoriate, however, is far less positive, and the problems we face today are deeply embedded in a history of resistance to women's full participation in academe. As early as 1899, a group of influential Detroit women, led by Catherine Kellogg, offered to make a significant gift to the University of Michigan to endow a chair for a woman who would teach what we now call women's studies. The UM Regents permanently tabled the offer. A quarter of a century later, in 1924, George Palmer donated funds to establish the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History and stipulated that "the holder...shall always be a woman." Due to continuing resistance by male faculty, administrators and Regents the first recipient of the chair was not appointed until 1957, three decades after Palmer's gift (Bordin 1999).
214
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
One hundred years after women were first admitted to Michigan, 76 years after Catherine Kellogg first challenged the university to hire faculty women, women's opportunities remained limited. In 1970, the Ann Arbor chapter of FOCUS, a politically savvy group of university and community women, filed a comprehensive complaint of sex discrimination with the federal government under Executive Order 11246. The Michigan complaint was the first such complaint filed against a university to be investigated by the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It ultimately resulted in the temporary suspension of federal research funds to Michigan. In response, the University appointed a Commission for Women to investigate and recommend reforms in policy and practice. The complaint and the appointment of the Commission inaugurated a period of intensive efforts to advance equality for women on the University of Michigan campus. During this period, as Michigan and other research universities opened their doors more widely to women in graduate and professional programs, most people believed that providing equal access to educational opportunities would set in motion a natural progression from achievement of advanced degrees to equal representation among the faculty to an increase in top leadership positions for women. However, the data ofthe last thirty years tell a different and more disappointing story. With regard to the current status of women, we at Michigan look very similar to other research universities. Although half our undergraduates, 43% ofour masters and professional students and 40% ofour doctoral students are women, women still represent only 26% of the tenured and tenure-track faculty. Women of color comprise 6% of the tenured and tenure-track faculty. For many years, research universities justified the low numbers ofwomen in the faculty ranks by pointing to the lack of available pools of qualified women. The facts, however, simply do not support this rationale. With few exceptions, the proportion of women on the Michigan faculty is roughly equal to the level of women in the Ph.D. pool that existed nationally in 1979 and substantially below today's Ph.D. pool (Hollenshead et al. 1996). To explain our lack of progress in increasing women's representation and success in the professoriate, research universities have for too long used an individual rather than an institutional model. We have all too often failed to recognize that we are enmeshed in institutions whose practices of hiring, rewarding and promoting faculty are embedded in assumptions that originated in the 19th century. For example, the standards that we use
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
215
to judge faculty too often assume that those we hire should move through the educational and professional pipeline in the same way, at the same speed. The standard model is one that best fits white males from privileged backgrounds, assuming a smooth trajectory from high-quality high schools to elite colleges to distinguished research universities to post-doctorate and faculty positions. Moreover, the model assumes that the institutional demands placed on faculty for research, teaching and service are unaffected by the dynamics of race and gender. This is a model we must change. In seeking to bring about institutional reforms in higher education generally, and research universities in particular, we must use our research skills to examine who feels welcome and who feels unwelcome in our institutions; who stays and who leaves; who succeeds and who fails; who is rewarded and who is not. Given how much we in academe value research, we know shockingly little about our own students, faculty and staff. The data we generate about women's experiences can identify and support the need for new or amended policies and practices.
AN INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE Over the past ten years, Michigan has begun to try to understand the institutional dynamics that affect women's success and retention to learn more about the experiences of faculty, and to use this knowledge to build new policies and improve practice. Certainly, we at Michigan do not have all of the answers, nor will our programs fit all research universities, but we have made progress. Twelve years ago, as we sought to resurrect an institutional commitment to the advancement of women and to build a new action agenda, we compiled data that surprised many at the university. These data showed that despite nearly two decades ofincreasing pools ofwomen Ph.D.s, the increase in the proportion of women faculty in the previous twelve years had been negligible. Between 1978 and 1989, the proportion of women in tenured and tenure track ranks had increased only 0.25% per yea~from 14% to 17%. In response to these data, Michigan's newly appointed President James Duderstadt committed to addressing the University's dismal record of faculty hiring, retention and promotion as well as to advancing women's participation and success more generally. To help meet this goal, in 1989 Duderstadt appointed the President's Advisory Commission on Women's Issues, which for the past eleven years has fostered needed research and pressed for improved policies and practices.
216
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
As one of its first actions, the Commission conducted focus groups with randomly selected women faculty in their third and fourth years of the pre-tenure probationary period, in order to obtain their views about those aspects of institutional life which fostered their success or hindered it. One issue the women discussed at length in these focus groups was the struggle of junior faculty who are also mothers. Women told stories of writing lectures while in labor and returning to the classroom two days after giving birth. Fearing repercussions, junior faculty were reluctant to negotiate leaves for childbirth, and departments placed the burden on faculty women to cover their classes when they were unable to teach. In 1991 these findings led directly to the adoption of a new policy on Childbearing and Dependent Care, which provides a year off the tenure clock for childbirth and dependent care responsibilities. This policy does not benefit only women, but is also available to (and has been used by) men with significant dependent care responsibilities. The following year, the Modified Duties Policy was enacted, enabling women faculty who give birth to take a term off from formal teaching responsibilities and putting the burden on the departments, not the faculty members, to make appropriate arrangements for course coverage. Faculty continue to receive their normal salaries while on modified duty status. In 1994 the University established the Family Care Resources Program to provide child care and elder care referrals and to help faculty, staff and students manage family care needs. The Commission also conducted focus groups of senior women faculty and of women of color faculty. From these discussions we learned much about the culture in which women faculty work. Senior women reported that, in order to succeed, they had to play by the rules that had been set up by the men in their fields. According to faculty women, the men they worked with felt it to be important to develop tough reputations, to minimize time spent with students, and to maximize research. The women who resisted playing by these rules paid a price for doing so. One such "rule" was that salaries are driven by outside offers. Several women indicated that, since it takes time to pursue outside offers, they didn't have the inclination or time to "play the game" if they weren't serious about leaving. Moreover, they felt the game was dishonest and unfair to their colleagues at other institutions. Another issue that emerged from the focus groups was the question of workload. Senior faculty women consistently revealed that they felt overburdened. Characteristically, these women were concerned not only about balancing their own workloads but also about being poor role
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
217
models, discouraging women students from the academic profession when they were unable to conceal their exhaustion or distress. Other data reinforced these women's perceptions of their demanding workloads. We determined that, while the ratio of male faculty to male students was 1:8 in 1990, the ratio of female faculty to students was 1:22. While for African-American men it was 1:12, for African-American women it was 1:32. Given these ratios, no wonder the women spoke of being overwhelmed by students seeking role models and mentors (HoUenshead et al. 1992). In order to recognize the burdens that arise from women being scarce commodities sought after for committee service, advising and teaching, the University in 1994 created the Career Development Fund for Women Faculty. This competitive program provides $5,000 awards to faculty members whose professional activities other than classroom teaching draw them away from their scholarship. Women may use the funds any way they see fit-for example, fund for graduate student support, travel, computers or other needs related to scholarship and research. In 2000, the program became available to male as well as female faculty and became the Faculty Career Development Fund. Criteria for awards continues to emphasize service, advising and mentoring. To date, 202 awards have been made. BUILDING THE CASE WITH DATA
To complement the focus groups, we determined that we also needed comprehensive baseline data against which we could measure our progress. Toward this end, the President appointed a committee to oversee the generation of a report on the status of women at the University. The first such report was published in 1992. Subsequent reports appeared in 1993 and 1996 and another will be released in 2001. An important aspect of these reports was the in-depth data by school and college; and, for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and the Medical School, by department. These data looked at the participation of women along the pipeline from bachelors to doctoral degrees and from assistant professors to executive administrators. The data allowed us to determine, by discipline, how precipitous the declines are at each level of the pipeline and which areas of the University need the most attention. The reports also examined tenure track hiring and compared the proportion of women in the national pool to the proportion of women hired in each discipline over a four year period. These reports have allowed us to track progress over time, pinpointing where we have been successful and where we have
218
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
failed. They have been widely distributed, and the findings publicized nationally as well as locally. These analyses consistently revealed that the University had made scant progress in hiring tenured women or in increasing the proportion ofsenior women faculty. We concluded that the presence ofsenior women in a department or college could help to increase the possibility of success in retaining and promoting junior women. Subsequent discussion with the provost and deans led to the Special Hiring and Recruitment Effort for Senior Women Faculty or SHARE program. Under the SHARE program, units in which senior women were underrepresented could apply for funds to upgrade a junior faculty position to a senior position in order to hire a women at the associate professor or professor rank. In addition, the President later committed to providing new faculty lines for the hiring of senior women in selected areas. Fifty-two appointments benefited from the SHARE program, and fifteen new lines were added in a wide range of fields. These two programs have now been incorporated into a larger system of provost-level assistance for faculty hiring and retention. In the final analysis, the issue most critical to increasing women's presence in the senior ranks is the tenure process. We asked ourselves, "How do women fare in the tenure process? Are they being tenured and promoted commensurately with their representation on the faculty? Is there a revolving door that spins faster for women than for men?" To answer these questions, a number of years ago we began a longitudinal study of tenure outcomes-a labor intensive research project. Faculty members' histories literally needed to be tracked by hand, since our personnel databases were designed to produce current snapshots, not historical analyses. Initially, we followed all faculty members hired as instructors or assistant professors between 1982 and 1988. Based on this analysis, we learned that, while 53% of the male assistant professors and 24% of male instructors received tenure, only 43% of the women assistant professors and 10% of the instructors were tenured. While 53% of men of color received tenure during this period, a rate comparable to that oftheir white male colleagues, only 39% ofwomen ofcolor received tenure (Hollenshead et al. 1996). More recently, we analyzed data on tenure achievement for the cohort offaculty hired between 1988 and 1993 and were encouraged by the results. While the tenure attainment rates fluctuated from year to year, on average an equal proportion of men and women in this group-49%achieved tenure. An average of 49% of men of color assistant professors
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
219
hired between 1988 and 1993 received tenure, compared to 46% ofwomen of color, a difference that was not statistically significant.
OTHER RESEARCH EFFORTS Other research efforts at Michigan have involved in-depth interviews ofwomen faculty who left the institution "voluntarily", conducted by the Center for the Education of Women. The most striking finding of the exit interview study was the extent to which the women who were interviewed cited lack ofrespect by their colleagues as figuring in their decision to leave the institution (Wenzel and Hollenshead, 1994). A university-wide survey of over 1,000 faculty respondents designed to assess faculty satisfaction and explore gender and race differences in faculty perceptions and experiences was undertaken by the Center for the Education ofWomen and the Center for Higher and Post Secondary Education with support ofthe Office ofthe Provost. The faculty survey results echoed some of the themes of the exit interviews. Women were less likely than men to feel that their research or creative interests were valued by their colleagues, were less satisfied with their "opportunity to collaborate with other faculty," and were more likely to feel they were "constantly under scrutiny." Men were significantly more likely to feel that "resources and support services were distributed equitably among faculty in their units" (Hollenshead et al. 1999). Many of the survey findings concerning workload and productivity parallel those of the Astin and Cress national study (Astin and Cress, 1998). In general, women reported spending more time on service and advising students while men spent more time on research and creative work. Women found the institutional climate to be less supportive than did men and women of color found the climate less hospitable than white women. With regard to work and family issues, one finding was striking: men at all ranks were significantly more likely to have partners/spouses who were not employed outside the home or who work part-time. While 90% of the spouses/partners of women assistant professors worked full-time, only 37% of the spouses/partners of men did so. Fully 34% of the spouses/ partners of male assistant professors were not employed as compared to only 6% of the spouses/partners of women assistant professors. In terms of faculty hiring and retention, dual career issues have been particularly vexing for the University of Michigan. Because Ann Arbor is not a major
220
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
metropolitan area with multiple institutions of higher education, finding positions for spouses/partners seeking academic positions is particularly difficult.
PROGRAMS In response to the data from these recent research efforts, we have initiated a number of specific programs. For example, since 1988, the Office of the Provost has provided financial assistance to UM schools and colleges to help create opportunities for dual-career couples. The partners/spouses of both men and women faculty have benefited from this program. However, many of these opportunities have been temporary or non-tenure track positions, thus providing short-term rather than long term solutions to the problem. In 1994 the Center for the Education of Women and the Women's Studies Program, with support from the Office of the Provost and the Office ofthe Vice President for Research, inaugurated the Women ofColor in the Academy Project. It is designed to build networks among women of color faculty who often feel isolated in their own units; to inform administrators and influence policy; to bring to the fore issues of concern to women of color faculty; and to highlight the contributions of women of color to higher education. Since the Project's inception, we have created and sustained a campus-wide network of women of color faculty; showcased the scholarly work of women of color from the University and elsewhere nationally through a speakers series; held a research conference on "Women of Color in the University and the Community it Serves;" and held workshops for faculty on a range of topics from tenure to stress. Faculty and project staff also worked to document the experiences of women of color faculty. Through My Lens, a 26-minute video designed to increase understanding of the challenges women of color face in the academy, was produced from more than 30 hours of taped interviews. A powerful documentary intended for audiences of faculty, academic administrators and graduate students is now available for national distribution to other institutions of higher education. Building on the success of the Women of Color in the Academy Project, the Junior Women Faculty Network was launched by the Center for the Education ofWomen in 1998. The Network brings together tenure-track assistant professors for workshops and network events and provides a clearinghouse of information about policies, procedures and resources.
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
221
BEYOND THE TENURE TRACK While much ofour attention at Michigan over the past decade has necessarily been devoted to advancing women faculty on the tenure track, what progress have we made in efforts toward equality, success and recognition for non-tenure track faculty and for staff. Research universities are markedly classbound (some would say caste-bound) institutions and, in general, the lower the class status ofthe group, the higher the proportion ofwomen. At Michigan, for example, women represent only 26% ofthe tenured and tenure track faculty but 45% of clinical faculty, and 57% of the lecturers. At Michigan, as elsewhere, lecturers carry heavy teaching loads and have little or no job security. In addition, lecturers have limited opportunities for professional development. In order to acknowledge the instructional and scholarly contributions of lecturers, the university created the Lecturers' Professional Development Grants program in 1996. Under the program, grants of up to $2,000 are awarded to lecturers on a competitive basis for travel or other purposes. Sixty-four percent ofthe University's 12,165 staffmembers are women; 12% are women ofcolor. While women's participation in the professional/ administrative positions and in middle management has increased markedly in the past thirty years, in other areas occupational segregation is still in force. For example, 3% of skilled trades staff are women, while women hold 93% of all office staff positions. Occupational segregation is also apparent in the non-instructional faculty ranks. Sixty-four percent of archivists, librarians and curators are women, while women represent only 33% of the University's research scientists. Although the staff ranks vary widely in job responsibilities, autonomy, prestige and pay, some concerns are shared across job families. Dependent care needs represent one such concern. Another is the lack of recognition for the role that staff members play in the institution and their lack of involvement in institutional decision-making. Yet another issue concerns the lack ofopportunity for staffdevelopment and further education. Women's groups have been active in repeatedly giving voice to these concerns, and in recent years the institution has responded-albeit in modest ways. In 1989, the University was persuaded to change its sick time policy to allow staff members to use their own sick time to care for ill dependents. However, the policy allowed only three days a year, an amount seen by staff as entirely inadequate. In 1999 the policy was revised to allow staffmembers to use up to six days of their existing sick time.
222
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
A few staff awards have been created, both at the unit and central levels, to address the need for greater staff recognition and involvement, and recendy staffhave been included on a few key committees. With regard to career development, Michigan recendy revised its tuition reimbursement policy, at the behest of women's groups, to be somewhat more generous in providing support for formal education. In terms of staff salaries, Michigan has made efforts over the years to ensure gender equity. The first effort to identify and remedy sex discrimination in salaries came in the wake of the 1970 HEW complaint. Since that time intermittent equity studies have resulted in salary adjustments for some staff women. Today, the challenges lie in the lack of cross-institutional equity, occupational segregation, and the undervaluing of "women's work." While Michigan has addressed gender equity in the more narrow sense, it has not come to terms with comparable worth. In an effort to improve some staff salaries, Michigan's President's Advisory Commission on Women's Issues, with strong support ofits faculty members, argued for several years for a special program to increase the salaries of the lowest paid non-unionized staff, most of whom are women in clerical jobs. They pointed out that many staff employees would be considered "very low income" under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Guidelines for Ann Arbor. In 1998, Michigan's new leadership responded to the Commission's recommendation and implemented a three-year program designed to increase the salaries of many of the UM staff earning less than $25,000 per year.
LEADERSHIP For decades women at Michigan argued for increased representation of women in leadership positions. It was not until 151 years after the founding of the institution and nearly 100 years after the admission of women that Michigan appointed its first woman executive officer in 1968. However, while Barbara Newell served capably as Acting Vice President of Student Mfairs from 1968 to 1971, "Acting" was never removed from her tide. It took another 17 years before Linda Wilson became the first woman appointed in a regular vice presidential position. She served as Vice President for Research from 1984 to 1989. Progress in advancing women's leadership remained halting until the appointment of Lee Bollinger as UM president in 1997. By fall of 2000 the proportion of women executive officers jumped to 55%, a first for Michigan and virtually unheard of among major research universities nationwide.
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
223
COMPONENTS OF SUCCESS While the University ofMichigan does not claim complete success in confronting barriers to gender equity, our efforts do suggest what elements are necessary to achieve this goal. Research and data collection are essential in any effort to bring about institutional reforms and to establish the connections between research, improving practice, and innovative policy development. Adf10cacy and coalition building, crossing class and race as well as gender lines, is critical to our success. All of the institutional reforms that have benefited women at Michigan-from women's admission in 1870 to salary improvements for staff in 1998-have come about as a result of women's advocacy and sustained effort. Coalitions have included community as well as university women, activists as well as academics. We have been most effective when faculty, staff and students have worked together (often with the support and involvement of alumnae and community women) to support one another's efforts across the potentially deep divides of class and status when each group has been attuned to the struggles ofthe others. Leadership and support from the top is essential. Those at the highest levels of the institution need to articulate a vision of a more inclusive university and a university that is made better through diversity. Deep and long lasting change will be elusive unless we incorporate gender equity into the strategic goals of the university and allocate resources to accomplish this goal. It is also essential to set up systems ofaccountability for schools and colleges, units and departments, individual faculty and administrators. This allows us to compare the track records of the various units in hiring and retaining women of all racial and ethnic groups as well as men of color, illustrates how financial and other resources or faculty lines relate to the achievement of greater equity in any given field, and ensures that words are matched by actions. Reward systems and support structures are needed to recognize the work of individuals and organizations that advance institutional goals of equity and diversity. In addition, workloads and reward systems need to be amended to reflect the added burdens of under-representation experienced by both white women and faculty of color. Collegial action also plays a critical role in achieving institutional progress. The most important element in faculty success is departmental and collegial support. If senior male colleagues provide information,
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
224
advice and feedback to junior women, this can go a long way toward warming up the climate for success. If male colleagues make it clear that they do not approve of inappropriate comments by their peers or stand up for women who are being unfairly judged, they can contribute immeasurably to bringing about a supportive milieu. CONCLUSION
Transforming our institutions to become more diverse, more flexible and less static is a challenge for all of us. However, if we fail to meet the challenge, our research universities may instead be facing the challenges ofsocietal irrelevance and institutional mediocrity. We should instead be continuing the academic tradition of contributing to greater knowledge and understanding for the good of society as a whole. The need for multiple points ofview is essential to solving the myriad problems our society faces and to provide intellectual richness in our institutions. As Homer Neal, University of Michigan Professor of Physics and Vice President for Research Emeritus has written: Finding solutions to certain [scientific] problems may be regarded as being akin to finding the narrow path through a labyrinth leading to a chamber within one of the ancient pyramids; one's hunch as to where the path begins can be pivotal to the discovery. Many solutions to key science problems turn out to have beautiful symmetry. Indeed, tremendous progress can be made in identifying solutions by simply demanding that the solutions be beautifuL.But what is beautiful to members of one culture may even be ugly to members of another....[This raises] the prospect of the increase in the sheer depth of understanding to be gained by tapping various cultures. By so doing, we draw upon the wealth of human experiences accumulated over the centuries in the development of numerous distinct cultures. That just has to be a powerful weapon against the unknown. Faced with a changing world, and a new millennium, research universities will be challenged to transform themselves. Women must secure a full partnership in all aspects ofthe academy, as students or staff, as faculty or administrators, as leaders as well as followers. The benefits will acctue to all.
Women in the Academy: Confronting Barriers to Equality
225
REFERENCES Astin, H. S., and C. M. Cress. 1998. A national profile ofacademic women in research universities. Paper presented at the Women in Research Universities: The Next Quarter Century Conference, Cambridge, Mass. Bordin, R. 1999. Women at Michigan: The «dangerous experiment,» 1870s to the present. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Chamberlain, M. K., ed. 1988. Women in academe: Progress and prospects. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Clifford, G. J. 1993. Shaking dangerous questions from the crease: Gender and American higher education. In Women in higher education: A feminist perspective, ed. U.S. Glazer, E. M. Bensimon, and B.K. Townsend. W. Needham Heights, Mass.: Ginn Press. Hollenshead, C. 1992. Women at the University ofMichigan: A statistical
report on the status of women students, faculty and staff on the Ann Arbor campus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. _ _ _. 1996. The graduate experience in the sciences and engineering: Rethinking a gendered institution. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement ofwomen in science, mathematics and engineering, ed. C-S Davis. New York: Jossey-Bass, Inc. _ _ _. 1996. Women at the University ofMichigan: A statistical report on
the status ofwomen students, faculty and staffon the Ann Arbor campus, Volume III. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. _ _ _, et aI. 1999. Faculty work-life study report, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Center for the Education of Women. Hornig, Lilli S. 1984. Women in science and engineering: Why so few? Technology Review 87, 30-41. Lomperis, A. M. T. 1990. Are women changing the nature of the Academic profession? The Journal ofHigher Education 61, 644-66. Wenzel, S. A., and C. Hollenshead. 1994. Tenured women faculty: Reasons for leaving one research university. Paper presented at annual meeting of ASHE. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 375 713.
Chapter Nine
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women A Model and Its Lessons Linda P. Fried Coauthors:
Emma Stokes Susan MacDonald Cynthia Rand Joan Bathon
INTRODUCTION It has been well documented that women in academic medicine experience gender-based obstacles to their career success and satisfaction, and that the manifestations of these obstacles are similar to those reported in other disciplines of academia as well as other professions. Nationally, women faculty in academic medicine experience, to the present, lower salaries than male colleagues at comparable ranks and level of expertise, slower rates ofpromotion, lesser access to the resources essential to career success such as mentoring, career development information, space and personnel, and lower likelihood of professional recognition for their accomplishments and contributions (Conley 1993; DeAngelis 1995; ACP 1991; Carr 1992 and 1993; Tesch 1995; Etzkowitz 1994; Bickel 1988). Women are underrepresented in leadership roles and have a profound experience of isolation from colleagues and information. These ElJuld R.ites, UnelJual Outcomes: Women in American R.esearch Universities
Edited by Hornig, Kluwer AcadernicjPlenum Publishers, 2003
227
228
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
observations have been reported at every academic medical institution that has evaluated them (Carr 1993, Grosz 1991, Boyer et al. 1988, Dean's Office 1993, Committee on Work 1989), have been quantified in my own institution (Provost's Committee 1989), and have been confirmed in national analyses performed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (Bickel 1988, 1994, and 1995). In fact, in 1990, the Association ofAmerican Medical Colleges Project Committee on Increasing Women's Leadership in Academic Medicine published a repon which said the following: "Even when they are as academically productive, women remain significantly less likely than men to climb the academic ladder. The reasons women in academic medicine are not succeeding at the same pace as men involve a complex combination of isolation, cultural stereotypes and sexism, and difficulties of combining family responsibilities with professional demands. Academic medicine and the public would benefit from increasing women's leadership shares at all levels. Far-reaching systemic initiatives are needed to ensure these increases" (Bickel 1990). Such a systemic initiative was implemented in 1990 in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine, after an extensive analysis of whether there were gender-based obstacles to the careers of women faculty, and what was the nature of these obstacles. Significant and broad based problems were identified; they were complex and multifactorial. Interventions were subsequently designed to match the identified problems, and were initiated, embedded within an institutional commitment to a long-term, IS-year intervention and to cultural change that would positively correct the societal bases for obstacles to women's careers. Short-term results of the first five years of intervention were published in 1996 in the Joumal of the American Medical Association, in an article entitled "Career Development for Women in Academic Medicine: Multiple Interventions in a Department ofMedicine" (Fried 1996). The intervention continues to the present, and has, in the past two years, been expanded by the University's President, Dr. William Brody, to all Divisions of the University. The discussion that follows describes the successes and persisting challenges, and summarizes the institutional and systemic lessons from this experience. We focus broadly on 1) results of interventions to date, 2) the factors that created institutional interest in change, 3) the nature of the gender-based obstacles in our institution, and 4) the elements of successful change. This report is provided by the women leaders ofthis institutional
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
229
change (LPF, ES, SM, CR, JB), who have led this change since 1990 in close collaboration with the Chairmen of the Department of Medicine: Drs. John Stobo, David Hellman and Edward Benz, Jr. (in sequence).
SHORT-TERM RESULTS OF DEPARTMENTAL INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE GENDER-BASED OBSTACLES FOR WOMEN FACULTY In 1990, the Department ofMedicine had 4 women Associate Professors and 4 women Professors, out of188 faculty (ofwhom 48 were women). The same women had been in these senior ranks for well over 10 years. After a process of problem analysis solicited by the department chair and conducted by a working group of junior women faculty, described below, women in the department proposed to the Chairman, and they agreed on, 5-year goals to address the substantive gender-based career obstacles we identified (see below). These goals were, broadly, to a) retain excellent women faculty, and b) to promote deserving women faculty. The specific 5-year goals, which we thought would indicate meaningful improvements in these areas, were to increase the number ofwomen Associate Professors by 50% over a three-year period (Le., from 4 to 6), and in five years to have an equal proportion of women and men at the Associate Professor rank. Three years later, after having put in place 30 different interventions designed to match the problems identified, the number of women Associate Professors in the department had increased from 4 to 20. By 1995, there were 26 women at this rank, and the proportion of women who were Associate Professors was larger than the proportion of men who were Associate Professors, although the absolute number of women was substantially smaller. These short-term outcomes reflect a dramatic change in retention and promotion of women to mid-level ranks at a rate higher than ever before, with no change in promotional criteria. Overall, it appears that we stopped losing women faculty-as a result ofthe interventions implemented-through both increased rates of appropriate promotion and fewer women leaving the institution. In 1990, 81% of the women Assistant Professors were "seriously considering leaving academic medicine." In 1993, only 40% reported these plans. The proportions of the women faculty altogether, who were considering leaving academic medicine declined from 63% in 1990 to 28% in 1993. In parallel with this, the proportion of women faculty, who thought they would still be in academic medicine in 10 years almost tripled, going from 23% in 1990 to
230
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
65% in 1993. Overall, it appears that an improvement in the optimism of the women faculty about their careers underlay these changes in career plans. These changes were perceived, in large part, to be a result of the interventions put in place. Beyond these broad outcomes, there was meaningful change reported by faculty in other areas related to the interventions. In 1990, 52% of women faculty who responded to a departmental questionnaire (Fried 1990) stated that there were gender-based obstacles to their careers. In 1993, in a follow-up questionnaire, 84% of our faculty, both women and men, said that they had observed a decrease in gender bias over the previous 3 years. Sixty-five percent of our women faculty said that manifestations of gender bias had decreased substantially. Seventy percent of our women faculty said that the timeliness of promotions had increased, along with 20% of our male faculty, and 50% of the female faculty said that salary equity had improved substantially. Sixtyfive percent of our women faculty and 30% of our men faculty said that their access to information essential for their careers had increased substantially (Fried and Francomano 1990). It appeared that men, as well as women, benefitted from the interventions that were implemented for women faculty. Greater detail on the outcomes of the interventions can be found in Fried and Francomano 1990. The consensus among women faculty was that important changes had occurred in decreasing gender based obstacles to careers, and that this is ongoing. However, many concerns remain to be solved, and appear to require longer term interventions for definitive change than the now 10 years of intervention that has been in progress. FACTORS THAT CREATED INSTITUTIONAL INTEREST IN PROBLEM RECOGNITION AND CHANGE
The culture and climate of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine was similar in the late 1980s to that of many of the institutions represented in this volume, and not-at that point-the apparent site for cultural change. However, there was a stepwise occurrence of a number of quiet events that, cumulatively, provided the evidence for the need for change, and on which action could be built. We describe these-briefly-to suggest the type ofground work that may provide useful bases for organizational change. These events included two occurrences external to the department, the role of leadership in building toward
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
231
change, and the role of even junior women faculty in creating a climate for change. One external occurrence was that, in 1989, Dr. Arnold Relman published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Relman 1989) on "The changing demography of the medical profession," in which he described the increasing proportion of women in medical schools-at that time approaching 50%. He suggested that changes in the culture of medicine would be needed in order to ensure contributions from these new members of the medical community. Second, in 1989 the University issued the first report ofthe Provost's Committee on the Status of Women (Provost's Committee 1989). This in-depth evaluation of every one of the Divisions of the University found that there were substantial, adverse disparities in both salary and promotion rates for women, compared to men, on the faculty in every school and department. Evidence was provided indicating that the disparity for women in terms of promotion did not occur at the promotions committee level. Rather, they appeared to result from women not being nominated for promotion by their own chiefs at the rate that their male colleagues were put up for promotion. Once nominated for promotion, there were no differences in rates of actually being promoted. Third, from 1988-9, Dr. John D. Stobo, then Director of the Department of Medicine, took four notable actions which provided initial discussion and evidence for need for change: 1) he appointed three junior faculty women to membership in the departmental promotions committee, the first women to serve on this committee. After a year on the committee, these women began to raise concerns that they were observing a pattern in which women who were being presented to the committee as nominees for promotion were much more likely to be at the end of their time at rank in our system, and much more likely to be nominated with promotion packages that suggested lack of commitment by the nominator and lack of understanding by the candidate of the criteria for promotion, than were men. This engendered discussion on this topic within the Promotions Committee for the first time, and such discussion ultimately included Dr. Stobo. 2) After the publication of the Reiman article, above, Dr. Stobo began raising concerns about the appearance of institutional difficulty in retaining women faculty. He asked at a number offaculty meetings whether cultural changes were needed in his department to ensure the department's ability to recruit the most outstanding faculty, women as well as men, in the future-and thus ensure the future excellence ofthe department. Prior to this
232
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
time, this issue had never been raised for discussion at a departmental level, and the department's culture dictated against such discussion occurring among the few women on the faculty. 3) Two women faculty suggested to Dr. Stobo that answers to this could be actively sought. He responded proactively to this by appointing a Task Force in 1990 to evaluate whether there were problems that could be solved. The charge was to tell him whether there were any opportunities to improve the retention and recruitment of women in the Department of Medicine; 4) The Chair of this Task Force (LPF) and the 3 other women who participated were selected from the Promotions Committee and the standing Affirmative Action Committee, providing reference committees that could report out the evaluation. 5) The women serving on the committee made an explicit judgment that there was substantial potential that the departmental leadership would ethically support and follow through on the results of a report (and not "kill the messenger"), and that this positive potential outweighed the career risk the individuals on the Task Force might incur by taking on this issue. The women faculty therefore accepted the charge ofassessing the status ofwomen faculty and trainees in the department and developed a report that was issued in 1990 (see below). Thus, prior to the report issued by the Task Force in 1990, there had already been investment by a number of individuals and groups that led to cumulative concern that there were important obstacles to the careers of women in the Department of Medicine. These events laid the basis for an "actable moment." The Task Force Report that was issued (Task Force 1991-1995) stated that there were significant gender based obstacles to women's academic careers in the department. The obstacles identified are described below. Prior to discussing them, it is worth noting that the processes that were employed to identify and communicate these obstacles were effective in developing buy-in by both the department Director, other leadership and the departmental faculty-including women. The essential part of this process was that, as scientists and clinical diagnosticians, we conducted analyses using the scientific method, in a stepwise process and language that was consistent with the culture in which we worked. Specifically, we implemented a systematic approach, beginning with hypothesis development based on an accumulation of case histories and assessment ofwhether there were recurrent aspects to these histories that suggested generic gender-based obstacles to careers. We then conducted semi-structured interviews of women faculty and trainees, especially the senior women, to provide preliminary validation of these hypotheses in
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
233
other individuals, and to explore in more depth the nature of individual's experiences. Finally, the findings from these interviews were culled and developed into a formal questionnaire (Fried and Francomano 1990) which probed perceptions as to the gender based obstacles that our hypotheses suggested. This questionnaire was ultimately administered in 1990, and then in 1993 and 1997, to the faculty of the department. The goal of this questionnaire was to obtain quantitative information on the frequency of perception of a variety of hypothesized gender-based obstacles, as well as to begin to make these issues explicit. The results legitimized the perceptions ofthe women faculty, and served as a basis for communicating results quantitatively, addressing the culture's need for analysis and formal findings, and for identifying areas for interventions. This process permitted analysis to go to a number of levels of depth, beyond that which can be analyzed by administrative data-such as salary and promotion rates. While not always received smoothly, the process and resulting findings were respected for the scientific, and objective, approach used. Finally, the findings by the Task Force were presented by the Chair to the full Promotions Committee along with the department Director in 1990, and the Promotions Committee endorsed them; this provided support to the department Director from senior men in his department, beyond the voice of the junior women who developed the report. The report, with endorsement by all ofthese faculty, was then presented to a full faculty meeting by the Task Force Chair and the department Director, and circulated throughout the department in written form, in 1990. This served to inform, provide the department Director's legitimization of the issue, and open the topic of gender-based obstacles to careers for discussion for the first time. Overall, the "rate limiting step" in the beginning of this process of organizational change was the integrity of the commitment of the departmental leadership to the identification and solving of problems that were perceived as undermining the future excellence of the department. This integrity was recognized and respected by the women faculty and provided a basis for deciding to take the personal risks inherent in addressing a problem deeply embedded in our culture. GENDER-BASED OBSTACLES THAT WERE IDENTIFIED
Overall, in 1990,52% of the women faculty reported gender-based obstacles to the careers of women faculty in their Division (Fried and Francomano 1990). The qualitative and quantitative processes described
234
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
above, along with others initiated as a result of the Task Force report, have identified a number of these gender-based obstacles. The Task Force reported strong perceptions by women faculty ofinequities in salary based on gender; this was substantiated in a subsequent 1991 departmental analysis of faculty salaries, and was consistent with the initial 1989 report by the Provost's Committee (Provost's Committee 1989). The Task Force identified a number of concerns beyond salaries and the inequity in promotions already reported by the University for every department and Division. They are described here in rank order from the most readily quantitated to the most subtle and difficult to assess: a) Few women in leadership positions: there were no women leaders in the department in 1990, and only two women in leadership roles in the School of Medicine. b) Few women role models, as a function of the very small proportion of women who were Associate Professors or Professors. c) There were some institutional or formal obstacles for women that were identified, including strict time limits at rank, which appeared to contribute to a lower likelihood of promotion for faculty with primary child rearing responsibilities; a culture that frequently held meetings in evenings and weekends (including a 100-year tradition of Departmental Grand Rounds being held on Saturday mornings from 9 until noon), limiting participation of faculty with primary childcare responsibilities; and lack of childcare at the institution. d) There were a number ofsignificant, informal gender-based obstacles. By informal, we mean that they were not institutionally mandated, but stemmed from the academic and societal culture. These included: (a) Mentoring: There were no differences in the proportion of women and men who reported having a mentor. It was, to quote Dr. Stobo, "the same pathetic rate in both genders"--one-third. But, confirming additional hypotheses, there were substantial qualitative differences in the type ofmentoring that women reported receiving, compared to the mentoring men received. This ranged from providing the basic information on criteria for promotion, to a mentor's facilitation of external visibility and productivity-essential to promotion, and whether the mentor used the mentee's work to benefit the mentor's career rather than the mentee's. It also appears possible that a lower proportion of women than men may have previously had mentors over their careers, with the likelihood of having had a mentor increasing the career survival of the few women who made it to senior positions. (b) Isolation: We noted substantial concerns in terms of isolation ofwomen faculty. Isolation was experienced in terms of day-to-day interactions with colleagues, isolation from collaboration
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
235
and from the information essential to career success, and decreased access to the informal networks of decision makers in the institution. (c) Women had many more demands on their time outside of work, compared to men. Women faculty with children reported a significantly higher likelihood of putting 20-40 hours per week in childcare than did men; the time period for these demands was reported to be 10-15 years, out of a total career. (d) Resources: There was, and is, a perception of decreased, and inequitable, access to resources for women, compared to men. This included lower likelihood of receiving the space, personnel, and financial support critical to career success, and women being more likely than men to receive space distanced from their male colleagues and the central Divisional activities. (e) Decreased valuation of women and their careers, compared to those of men, was reported frequently in case histories and in aggregate perception by the women faculty. Many of the other "informal" factors reported here may well result from this. (f) RecognitionjInvisibility: Decreased likelihood ofreceiving recognition for scientific or institutional contributions, whether through salary, promotion, or being invited to present at conferences, nominations to organizations, or through other forms of peer recognition. Women were rarely invited speakers at our (or other) institutions, thus limiting the likelihood ofwomen within the department seeing successful role models. (g) Boundary Intrusions: There was a substantially greater likelihood of women being asked to take on roles that were not consonant with their own career goals, and a substantially greater likelihood ofwomen accepting those roles in the name of the common good, compared to men (Fried et al. 1996). The more subtle, informal obstacles reported by women faculty were important in their career decisions, according to our data. For example, sense of isolation was reported by 80% of women faculty seriously considering leaving academic medicine, compared to 20% of men faculty considering leaving, and was the major factor that differed by gender. This same sense of isolation independently predicted considering leaving academic medicine, adjusting for gender and rank. Thus, perceptions and experiences were important determinants of expected career outcomes, and therefore appeared important to understand and address. In the instances where we could validate perceptions, in terms oflower likelihood of promotion and lower salaries for women, self reported perceptions were well correlated with objective data. While we do not have data to validate all other perceptions, they appear to describe a cumulative experience of an adverse environment in which women experienced a low
236
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
likelihood of career success regardless of their own true potential. Overall, while the first four gender-based differences above were relatively easier to quantify objectively, it appears that it is the informal obstacles that have the most serious impact and are most difficult to correct. Notably, the questionnaire administered to all faculty in 1990 (Fried and Francomano 1990) indicated substantial and consistent differences in the experiences and perceptions of female and male faculty in the areas described above, and in their perceptions of whether there were gender based obstacles (Fried et al. 1996). This questionnaire therefore provided the first data for male leaders that could assist them in understanding the presence of factors they might not otherwise have been aware o£
INTERVENTIONS IMPLEMENTED Based on the findings above, the department's Chairman mandated the development ofinterventions to improve the career success and satisfaction ofwomen faculty, and thus enhance the department's ability to recruit and retain women. He charged the original Task Force with designing these interventions. This mandate was solidified through negotiations between the Task Force and the department Director in which it was agreed that long term interventions (for at least 15 years) were needed, that they had to be multifactorial to address the complexity of the problems identified, that they would be implemented in a meticulous, constructive manner in joint actions between the Task Force and department Director, and that they would emanate from the office ofthe department Director in order to confer the necessary legitimacy and weight. The Task Force received an operating budget and was subsequently named one of the few standing committees of the department. We are currently in year 10 of these interventions. Short term results have been reported, as above (Fried et al. 1996), and mid-intervention results are now under analysis. A brief summary of interventions initiated is in Table 1. They included the setting of 5 year goals that appeared to be important but challenging to reach; in 1990, those goals, which appeared challenging at the time, were to retain and promote deserving women faculty with the target of increasing the current 4 women Associate Professors by 50% (to 6) after 3 years, and that in 5 years we would seek to have an equal proportion of women and men at the Associate Professor rank. As described above, those goals were more than reached. By 1993, we had put in place 30 different interventions which were designed to match the problems
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
237
Table 1 INTERVENTIONS TO DECREASE GENDER-BASED OBSTACLES TO CAREERS IN AN ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE Leadership Guiding Coalition Task Force a Standing Committee in Department with Budget Analysis that is hypothesis based and draws on a wide range of evidence, including case histories and qualitative and quantitative data Leadership establishes commitments to: • Long-term interventions; • Sequential 5 year goals • Minimizing the vulnerability of women who participate in the interventions. Establish a sense of urgency and legitimacy Education of women and men re: gender based obstacles, skills in analysis and solution Education of leaders and buy-in: data, case histories, workshops, facilitated discussion Interventions for faculty and fellows: • e.g., Monthly colloquia career workshops; information for faculty development • annual reviews of career progress training in mentoring, networking, negotiation, conflict resolution Interventions with the organization • leader legitimizes problems • promotions committee monitoring of faculty career development • promote deserving faculty • leader intervenes with individuals who transgress • leader sets expectations for other leaders • leader supports women faculty who experience gender-based problems • specific training for thought leaders, division chiefs; educational activities (above) • analyses of intra divisional processes that enact gender schemas • search committees: membership of women; questions of candidates to assess their track record in working with women and ensure ability to provide ongoing leadership in this area; group assertion of import of search results to women. Cultural change: • decrease isolation: Between women Of women from men Of women in the organization: Visibility: grand rounds, firm leaders, ACS, Topics, Leadership: deputy directors change culture: workshops to help thought leaders and all faculty understand gender schemas, cumulative disadvantages and benefits to all of change in culture. Monitoring and evaluation: annual evaluation of progress and problems • Data base of faculty by gender and rank • Chair reports to women faculty, leadership annually • Set new goals annually and every 5 years.
238
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
identified. These were in the categories of a) committed leadership which stayed out front in insisting on progress in this area, setting goals, modeling the required problem identification and solving on behalf of women faculty, and holding faculty accountable; b) a leadership team of the department Chair, invested Task Force, and an organizational consultant in system change (ES); c) Education toward cultural change: ongoing, stepwise education of faculty and trainees as to the nature ofgender-based obstacles, the import of aU faculty taking responsibility to solve them, and the skills in diagnosis and developing solutions; d) a series of interventions still ongoing to change the culture of the department so that it no longer devalues its women faculty and trainees; e) Faculty development,
mentoring, leadership development of women, and correction of isolation: A range of interventions to decrease the isolation of women, including a monthly colloquium sponsored by the department for the women faculty and trainees to provide generic career skills mentoring, ongoing training in analysis of gender-based career obstacles, and networking; in addition, Departmental Grand Rounds were changed from Saturday to Friday morning to permit the inclusion of more women and all faculty with child rearing responsibilities, and to signal this important cultural change for the department; the development of programs for women, and then all faculty, on the essential skills ofeffective, positive mentors; women faculty were also supported by the department every year to attend the national faculty development programs for women offered by the Association of American Medical Colleges; f) Annual reviews ofcareer development: the Departmental Promotions Committee was charged with annual reviews ofcurriculum vitae ofwomen faculty, with advice to the department Chair as to women who appeared to need mentoring to get their career development on track, and women who appeared ready for promotion. Based on initial findings of a high proportion of women faculty who were not receiving the information needed as to their career progress, annual reviews ofall faculty by their Division Chiefs have been implemented in all Divisions based on a standardized approach recommended by the Task Force and Department; g) rewards: salary inequities were corrected in 1991-92, and annual monitoring since then has identified areas of backsliding and corrected these; promotions committee review, as above, plus other interventions appear to have corrected the inequities in promotion rates by gender; departmental activities, such as major conferences and courses, have been monitored to ensure that a critical mass of women faculty are invited as speakers; women are nominated for national awards
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
239
by the department. Ongoing analysis seeks to evaluate the decision making processes within the units of the department to improve women's participation and impact; h) Structural obstacles addressed included the changing of meeting times away from evenings and weekends (as above); additionally, the School of Medicine lengthened the time permitted at rank in the early 1990s; i) Institutionalization of successful interventions through a new Departmental Office for Faculty Development, directed by a prior Chair ofthe Task Force (SM). This office is leading the application of Task Force interventions to improve career development for all faculty in the department. Importantly, the mission of improving the culture of the department to improve success and satisfaction, and inclusion, of all faculty and trainees has become a core goal of the department; j) Stability and diffusion of commitment: to date, this intervention has been maintained and led by two successive department Directors, and two interim Directors, and a succession offour Task Force Chairs (LPF, SM, CR, ]B) who continue to serve on an Executive Committee for the Department's Task Force as well as serving in other departmental Leadership roles; k) Monitoring and el'aluation has been ongoing, with the Task Force charged by the department Director with annual reporting of progress and next steps needed; I) Collaborative work with the School of Medicine and the University to strengthen and expand these interventions throughout the University.
ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
As described above, evaluations indicated that our institution, along with others evaluated nationally, had gender-based career obstacles that were profound, that constrained both job performance, success and expectations' and caused enough of an adverse cost-benefit ratio for women faculty that they frequently chose to leave. Since 1990, as a result of the interventions implemented we have seen substantial improvements in the retention and success of individual women faculty, and the proportion of women who feel like a welcomed member of the institution has increased meaningfully. From 1990 to 1993 alone, this increased by 40%, from 35% to 53% of women who felt welcomed. Additionally, we went from 31% of our women faculty saying they currently had a mentor to 65% in these three years. Overall, there is evidence that both women and men have substantially benefitted from these interventions, and that the resulting changes have led to greater career success, satisfaction and retention of
240
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
faculty. Some observations about what appear to be the elements of successful institutional change, from this experiment, follow. First, creating a guiding coalition that brings complementary expertise, leadership and commitment to the solution of gender based career obstacles appears essential. Leadership has to be willing, first, to recognize the problems that are there-which can be uncomfortable personally and requires going against many leaders' own acculturation and has the potential to jeopardize the support from their own male reference group. We had a leader who sought to take the "high road," accept evidence that there were problems and take responsibility to maintain the excellence of his institution through cultivating and retaining the most excellent people, inclusive of both genders. Second, leaders have to take some risks on behalfofwomen faculty in order to set the tone and high standards that the system is seeking; this is also essential to get buy-in and maintain the commitment of women faculty to helping lead cultural change which can increase their own personal vulnerability-and even jeopardize careers-in the short run. Leaders need to minimize the vulnerability of faculty who seek to assist change, and not "kill the messenger." Women need to act together so that no single individual is labeled as "the problem" and harmed in the process of seeking organizational changes. Third, each institution has to develop a clear understanding of the motivations for change, and they need to be articulated in a way that is compelling and clearly to the institution's benefit. This clarity is essential to motivating the thought leaders and other members of the institution, and to establishing and maintaining institutional commitment. In our case, our leader believed that the obstacles to the career success and satisfaction of his women faculty were obstacles to the future excellence of the department. He thought that they needed to be solved in order to draw from all the best candidates to keep his institution competitive. There was also face validity to the perspective that, in this era of cost constraints, it was not cost-effective to lose faculty in whom one has invested, because one didn't invest quite enough. Finally, it became very clear through our analyses that women trainees see what the women faculty are experiencing, and they elect other career directions on that basis if they see their role models as having low likelihood of career success or satisfaction. Fourth, the process of cultural change involves both backsliding and progress, and leaders need to recognize the former and maintain the group's perspective and focus on the need for the latter. The leader also has to
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
241
maintain firm leadership to address backlash which frequently occurs, and to hold faculty accountable for behaviors that contribute to an adverse environment. It is critical that the guiding coalition maintain communication and a jointly developed agenda focused on constructive progress, especially when there is backlash. It is our experience that the degree of backsliding and backlash that occurs varies with the visibility of departmental leadership provided, as well as the stature of the leader. Fifth, critical mass is desirable, but not sufficient to cultural change (Etzkowitz et al. 1994). While 50% of medical students are women, representation of women on academic medical faculty is substantially lower and diminishes rapidly toward the top, so that only 10% of Professors and 3% of medical school Deans are women (Bickel, Galbrarth and Quinnie 1994). Without intentional institutional interventions, this lack of representation at the top has changed little in the last 20 years. In our own natural experiment at Johns Hopkins, in the 10 year follow-up after the Provost's Committee report of 1989, few improvements were identified in the status of women except where intentional, institutional interventions were implemented. These observations suggest that even with a critical mass of women going into the pipeline, intentional interventions to change institutional cultures and practices will be needed to shift this. Based on our experience, this will require long-term institutional commitment and leadership, at least 15 years, and multifactorial interventions that match the complexity and deep-seated nature of the problems and seek to change institutional cultures to ones that value women's presence and contributions. To accomplish this there must be a partnership between leadership and the women faculty to making changes together, making them constructive and implementing them strategically so that buy-in from the broader faculty is accomplished, and minimizing the vulnerability that individual women incur by participating. The leadership has to be willing to be out front for many of these changes in order to put the weight of their position behind the importance for change, and to make change possible. Finally, all change requires ongoing diagnosis of the nature and status of gender-based career obstacles at an institutional level, mandated by the top leadership and with evidence that diagnosis will lead to committed action. The evidence for problems that are most readily visible, such as salary and promotion inequities, is a likely symptom of deeper seated problems that must be improved in order to correct the problems visible "above the water line" for the long run. Case histories, while unsettling
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
242
to leadership and individuals who hear them, provide opportunity for insight into more deep-seated problems, as well as opportunities to provide solutions. The informal processes and channels by which faculty development, mentoring, collaboration and professional rewards often occur are likely to exclude women and minorities through established cultural patterns, more than by intent. However, the result is that the likelihood of experiencing these essential components of career success is related to one's sociodemographic characteristics. Leadership needs to provide the sense of urgency as well as analysis to change this, and a tolerance of the long-term, multifactorial nature of the solutions that are required. Solutions have to be led from the top down, demonstrating group urgency and responsibility for the solutions to these problems, as well as group investment and benefits from the change that will ensue. In conclusion, the analysis and interventions implemented in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine since 1990 provide evidence that systemic change can be implemented in complex academic settings, and that such interventions can be successful.
REFERENCES American College of Physicians. 1991. Promotion and tenure of women and minorities on medical school faculties. Ann Intern Med 114:63-68. Bickel, J. 1988. Women in medical education. N Engl ] Med 319: 1579-84. _ _.1990. Building a stronger women's program. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Medical Colleges. _ _.1995. Scenarios for success: Enhancing women physicians' professional advancement. West] Med 162(2):165-169. _ _, A. Galbrarth, and R. Quinnie. 1994. Women in U.S. academic medicine: Statistics. Washington, D.C.: Association ofAmerican Medical Colleges. Boyer, James L., C. Elton Cahow, Anne McB. Curtis, Peter A. T. Grannum, Joy Hirsch, J. Murdoch Ritchie, Abigail L. Smith, and Merle Waxman. 1988. Report ofthe task force on women faculty. Yale University School of Medicine.
Organizational Change to Support Success of Women
243
Carr, P. L., R. H. Friedman, M. A. Moskowitz, L. E. Kazis, and H. G. Weed. 1992. Research, academic rank, and compensation of women and men faculty in academic general internal medicine. J Gen Intern Med. 7 (Jul-Aug):418-23. _ _, R. H. Friedman, M. A. Moskowitz, L. E. Kazis, and H. G. Weed. 1993. Comparing the status of women and men in academic medicine. Ann Intern Med 119:908-913. Committee on Work and Family. 1989. Recommendations to the department of medicine. Baltimore: University of Maryland School of Medicine. Conley, F. K 1993. Toward a more perfect world-eliminating sexual discrimination in academic medicine. N Engl J Med 328:351-52. DeAngelis, C. D., and M. E. Johns. 1995. Promotion of women in academic medicine: Shatter the ceilings, polish the floors. JAMA 273: 1056-57. Dean's Office and Dean's Advisory Committee on Women Faculty. 1993. Sur'Pey offaculty quality ofwork life andgender issues. Davis: University of California School of Medicine. Etzkowitz, Henry, Carol K.emelgor, Michael Neuschatz, Brian Uzzi, and Joseph Alonzo. 1994. The paradox of critical mass for women in science. Science 266:51-54. Fried, Linda P., and Clair A. Francomano. 1990. Questionnaire on faculty development and gender-based obstacles. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University. _ _ _, Clair A. Francomano, Susan M. MacDonald, Elizabeth M. Wagner, Emma J. Stokes, Kathryn M. Carbone, Wilma B. Bias, Mary M. Newman, John D. Stobo. 1996. Career development for women in academic medicine: Multiple interventions in a department of medicine. JAMA 276:898-905. Grosz, B. J., for the FAS Standing Committee on the Status of Women. 1991. Report on women in the sciences at Har'Pard, part I: Junior faculty and graduate students. Boston: Harvard University. Provost's Committee on the Status ofWomen. 1989. First annual report. Johns Hopkins Uni'Persity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University. ReIman, A. S. 1989. The changing demography of the medical profession. N Engl J Med: 321:1540-41.
244
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Task Force on Women's Academic Careers in Medicine. 1991-1995. Annual report to the department of medicine. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Tesch, B. J., H. M. Wood, A. L. Helwig, and A. B. Nattinger. 1995. Promotion of women physicians in academic medicine. lAMA 273:1022-1025.
Chapter Ten
Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins Feminist Interventions' Londa Schiebinger
Feminism has brought some remarkable changes to the natural sciences. Who just a decade ago could have predicted that the chief scientist at NASA would be a woman, or that the Secretary of the Air Force (now former secretary) could be a female professor of engineering from MIT? Who would have expected to see Science, the nation's premier science journal, debating whether a female style exists in science, or Marie Curie, once shunned by the prestigious French Academie des Sciences, exhumed and reburied in the Pantheon, the resting place of French heroes like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo? The current "science wars" as the often childish tussles between scientists and their critics are unfortunately called, offer a certain measure ofthe successes of feminism in science. I was shocked to read in Paul Gross and Norman Levitt's Higher Superstition that the only widespread, obvious discrimination today is against white males, but I was more surprised to see the depth of our agreement. Feminists and some of our most vocal opponents now agree that women should have a fair chance at careers, inside and outside academic life. We agree that some women thinkers have been rightfully restored to their place in history. We agree that the record of science, until recently, is-in its social aspect-tarnished by gender-based Equal R.ites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American R.esearch Universities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
247
248
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
exclusions. We agree further that baseless paradigms in medicine and the behavioral sciences have been pretexts for subordinating women. All this, Gross and Levitt claim, is beyond dispute and generally recognized, and I would add even among political conservatives (Gross and Levitt 1994:110; Gross, Levitt, and Lewis 1996; Koertge 1994; Ross 1996). From a historical point of view, this depth of agreement marks an extraordinary change for women, who were admitted to American and European universities only about a century ago, to graduate programs even more recendy, and who were told as late as 1950 that women simply need not apply for professorships in biochemistry (Briscoe 1984). By this measure, it would seem we have all become feminists. One area ofdisagreement remains, however, and here Levitt and Gross speak for many in proclaiming that there are as yet no examples offeminism uncovering sexism in the substance ofscience-as opposed to women merely being excluded from this or that area of inquiry. One reason for this disagreement is that Levitt and Gross focus on feminist historians and philosophers of science and overlook the contributions of scientists, many of whom not only apply feminist insights in their work but have contributed to key aspects of feminist theory and practice. It is primatologists themselves, for example-not academic outsiders-who provocatively claim that mainstream primatology is a feminist science. Whether or not one accepts that claim, feminist interventions have refit foundational paradigms in primatology. Non-human females are no longer passed off as docile creatures who trade sex and reproduction for protection and food, but are studied for their own unique contributions to primate society. In this paper, I address just a few of the changes feminism has brought to the content of primatology and archaeology-disciplines that study from different vantage points questions concerning human origins and evolution. I am a historian ofscience and have been asked to discuss the changes feminism has brought to the natural sciences. I will not be discussing my own discipline but reporting from the outside on other disciplines. I have chosen to talk about primatology and archaeology, sciences in many ways closely allied with the social sciences and humanities. One might have asked a chemist or physicist to report on the physical sciences. I note that Harvard University tenured its first woman in chemistry (Cynthia Friend) in 1989, and its first woman in physics (Melissa Franklin) in 1992. Or one might have asked a biologist to discuss genomics or developmental biology, or a medical doctor to discuss NIH's new Office for Research for
Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins: Feminist Interventions
249
Women or the women's health initiative-research medicine is one area where rapid change has occurred. But on to primatology.... PRIMATOlOGY
Women have done well professionally in primatology where they now receive close to 80 percent of all Ph.D.s in the U.S. This is astonishing given that no Ph.D.s were awarded to women primatologists in the 1960s (see also French 1994: 529-540).2 Primatology is also widely celebrated as a feminist science-not least by primatologists themselves. Twentieth-century primatology inherited views from the past embodying now recognizable gender dynamics. In his intriguing portrayal from 1765 of the Orangutan and his female, Claude Le Cat characterized gender (and also race) dynamics in early modern natural history, when Europeans were first coming into contact with the great apes (LeCat 1765:35; Schiebinger 1994, ch. 3). One of the few to draw a male and female ape together, Le Cat portrayed his Ourang-outang as a vigorous being whose forthright gaze and open palms confront the observer. His stunningly erect penis, a sign of his virility, embodies Aristotle's belief that the ape, like the dog, had a bone in his penis. The female orang, labeled "his female," is copied from the Dutch anatomist Nicolaas Tulp's 1641 portrayal of Homo Sylvestris. She is passive, drawn with downcast eyes, an abdomen swollen as though pregnant, and hands and feet quietly folded. The modest female and the aggressive male remained stock characters of primatology well into the 20th century. Post World-War II North American primatology traded in stereotypical attitudes toward males and females. Primatologists tended to divide primates into three groups for study: dominant males; females and young; and peripheral males. These divisions reinforced the notion that primate society was driven by competition among dominant males who controlled territorial boundaries and maintained order among lesser males. Females (often studied with the young as a single reproductive unit) were described as dedicated mothers to small infants and sexually available to males in order of the latter's dominance rank, but otherwise oflittle social significance (Fedigan and Fedigan 1989:41). It is interesting to identify the tools of analysis used in feminist remakings of their science. In primatology, feminist analysis often hinges on examining how choices of study subjects can influence the results of science. In this instance the choice of subjects went beyond the usual
250
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
feminist insistence upon looking for a representative mix of male and females. Primatologist Linda Fedigan has discussed the 1950s myth of the killer ape, the pervasive image of primates engaged in a Hobbesian war of all against all, seething with dark implications for human nature. This image ofaggressive primates was drawn almost exclusively from studies ofsavanna baboons in a process that Fedigan has called the baboonization of primate life. Baboons are typically portrayed as given to bully aggression against females and violent infighting among males. From the 1950s to the 1970s, baboons were the most widely studied monkeys, despite the widespread knowledge that other primate species could provide more sanguine visions of ancestral humans (Fedigan 1986). Why, despite the alternatives, should baboons and other aggressive populations have dominated postwar primate studies? For one thing, baboons live on the ground, making them accessible to foot-heavy humans (90 percent of primates species are arboreal) (Strum and Fedigan, 1999). Secondly, they inhabit the African savanna, considered the birthplace of early man (as early humans are sometimes still called) and were thought to have shared certain selective pressures with protohominids. Equally important, the image of primate society as aggressive, competitive, and male dominated played well to a public embroiled in the Cold War. Baboons provided a ready explanation for human warfare, violence, and male aggression. In this instance, the choice of subject matter interjected a potent anti-feminist element into primatology, highlighting and reinforcing notions about male dominances. Recognizing and overturning the paradigm of primate society drawn from the study of baboons has revised many findings in primatology in the last two decades. In primatology, as in medicine and in many of the humanities, the majority of feminist changes to date have come from implementing perhaps the most potent analytic offeminism-studious reevaluations offemales. In many instances, reevaluation of gender stereotypes went beyond the liberal paradigm of sameness to a reevaluation of sexual difference. Seeing the primate world from the female monkey's point ofview (as Berkeley zoologist Thelma Rowell has put it, Rowell 1984:16), called into question stereotypes of male aggression, dominance and alliance, and female compliance. Feminist primatologists have now studied the significance of female bonding through matrilineal networks, analyzed female sexual assertiveness, female social strategies, female cognitive skills, and female competition for reproductive success. Within baboon society Rowell found, for example, that older females determined the route of daily foraging; Shirley Strum found that male investment
Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins: Feminist Interventions
251
in special relationships with females had greater reproductive payoffs than did a male's rank in a dominance hierarchy. Today, in a turn-about from the 1960s, conventional wisdom concerning baboons recognizes that females provide social stability while males move from group to group. While this phase ofrapid-fire critique did not produce alternative explanatory paradigms fur the discipline, it undermined key conceptions about aggression, reproductive access, and dominance. Feminist primatologists-both men and women-today argue about many things: some critically suggest that much work in primatology celebrated as feminist rests upon the theory of sexual selection, dubbed by Sarah Hrdyone of the crown jewels of sociobiology, and like sociobiological theory reduces the notion of social behavior narrowly to reproduction, a category that is too easily assumed to be homologous across classes of animals from insects to humans (Hrdy and Williams 1983:7). Other feminists argue that the successes of feminist primatology rest on the fact that feminists have not gone far enough; that they have remade females into active participants, but have not challenged underlying theories of evolutionary biology (Haraway and Sperling, cited in Longino 1996:52). Still other feminists rebuff those who, like Linda Fedigan, have argued that mainstream primatology is a feminist science, by saying that she has claimed too much for feminists and that what she identifies as feminist elements in primatology are merely good science (Fedigan 1997:56-75). Despite the many warring factions, it is safe to say that feminism has been one factor refitting fundamental paradigms in primatology in the last twenty years. Similar changes have taken place in archaeology, though challenges here came significantly later than in primatology and paleoanthropology. Again it is interesting to identity analytical tools from women's studies or feminist theory that have been developed or put to work here. Margaret Conkey and Sarah Williams open their 1991 analysis of the Political Economy of Gender in Archaeology by challenging one of the traditional objects of archaeological knowledge: origin stories. This is a deep challenge. The search for origins-of hominids, the state, agriculture, trade, fire, gender roles, status, toolmaking, hunting, language, and so forthdefines the big, prestigious questions in archaeology. The primacy oforigins research, Conkey and Williams claim, allows its practitioners to structure the discipline, to influence career success, and to make political statements about human nature and human society through the results of their research (Conkey and Williams 1991:102-139). As is well known, origins research has traditionally left little place for women or gender
252
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
analysis in the evolution of humankind. Fossil women, even when imagined to have contributed to cultural innovations, are seldom shown as making major strides in human evolution. What is new in Conkey and Williams' discussion is how gender inequalities in intellectual authority have played a role in determining what counts as evidence (another standard tool of feminist analysis), in this case archaeological evidence. Archaeologists have tended to privilege the technological domain over the social, and this has given primacy to tools in defining human societies. The tight fit between the long dominant man-the-hunter hypothesis and man-the-toolmaker paradigm has elevated technology to the element defining the prehistoric "Ages of Man": the Paleo- and Neolithic, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age (Conkey 1993:11). We see here the type of question Joan Kelly asked many years ago about periodization in history- have women had a Renaissance? (Kelly-GadoI1977:137-164). Here it would be: have women had a Bronze Age? The privilege given tools (narrowly defined as finely articulated arrowheads, spears, axes, and the like) and the bones of the great beasts felled by them has been buttressed by disciplinary hierarchies that largely exclude women from fieldwork and cluster them in less prestigious fields, such as paleoethnobotany, museum work, laboratory analysis and macroand micro-wear lithic analysis (Gero 1994:37-42). Sexual divisions in academic labor are especially evident in the high-status area ofNorth American Paleoindian research, where in the late 1980s men still carried out 90 percent of the field work. Archaeologist Joan Gero has challenged the traditional man-thetoolmaker story. She argues that there is good evidence that such a narrow definition of stone tools overlooks as much as ninety percent of prehistoric tool production. Big-game hunting, which in fact probably provided only a small part ofearly peoples' diets, has been considered among the great events of prehistory but overlooks the importance of flake stone tools (which may or may not have been used more commonly by women) and the work associated with them. Women archaeologists, who are well represented in lithic studies, typically study these flake stone tools and other informal instruments found on house floors, at base camps, and in village sites. These microand macro-wear studies, as they are called, focus not on recreating past technologies but on how the stones were put to use in a wide range of activities, including nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting, and woodworking. Expanding notions ofwhat counts as tools (as Sally Slocum argued some twenty years ago) opens up new questions about how the hunters'
Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins: Feminist Interventions
253
meat was prepared, what early people usually ate, and the economic and cultural goals of tool-making societies (Gero 1991:163-193; Gero 1993:31-40). Gender studies in archaeology are expansive. Archaeologists commonly find and highlight the achievements of lost women in prehistory, as for example the innovations surrounding women potters. Archaeologists have typically become interested in pottery only after mechanization (the development of the potter's wheel) and in its association with the development of commerce, the domain of men. Rita Wright argues that the development of pottery (7000 B.C.) was an invention of major historic significance fostered and cultivated by women (Wright 1991). Finally, feminist archaeologists also uncover how gendered assumptions direct research. Taking the example of grave finds, Margaret Conkey has highlighted how an object found in the grave of a women is often assumed to have a very different meaning than when the very same object is found in the grave ofa man. Pestles, for examples, when buried with females are interpreted as mementos of women's grain grinding activities, but when buried with males are thought to indicate that men manufactured them. The same is true of trade goods: when found interred with women, it is assumed that they were part ofwomen's households, when found with men, it is assumed that men controlled trade. Similarly atlatls (spear-throwers) found with men are immediately taken to symbolize men's extensive hunting activities; when found alongside women, they are thought to be purely ceremonial or related to the transfer of property (Conkey and Spector 1984:11).3
***
I could detail any number of examples where revising interpretations of gender-for both men and women-has loosened up scientific practices and launched new projects that benefit human beings more generally. I want to ask instead, how do we continue to foster positive change in relation to feminism? There is no firm starting point for change-no Archimedean point-which once established will ensure progressive reform, unless it is a critical understanding of problems. In many instances this is already in place. Academic programs, such as women's studies programs in the U.S., have provided scholarship detailing how gender ideologies and practices have operated. Fostering these programs and their ties across the university is one way to continue refining this work. Government programs are also important supports in this on-going process. Bernadine Healy, former head of NIH, put it simply: let's face it, the way to get scientists to move into a certain area is to fund that area
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
254
(Healy 1995:773). In the U.S., advances in women's health research were reinforced through laws requiring grant applications to include female participants in medical research. Efforts could be made to foster feminism in science nationwide: in Congress the Morella Commission (Constance Morella, R-MD) has called for a full review ofwomen in science; a federal bill proposed in 1993 would set up a 17-member commission to study the problems women face entering and succeeding in technical professions. No action has yet been taken (two bills are still in committee); nonetheless the groundwork for such action has been laid. In Europe, the European Union set up a new commission in the spring of 1998 to oversee efforts to improve the status of women in European science. These projects marry research on women and gender to government initiatives. This kind of mission-oriented science is familiar. The U.S. Manhattan project was government-directed science aimed at securing national defense. The u.s. Apollo Program to land men on the moon, the attempt to build, launch, and operate a space station, and the costly Human Genome Project, a fifteen-year research initiative aimed at mapping the human genome, are all examples of mission-oriented government science. The u.s. or European governments might launch a Women's Science and Engineering Initiative aimed at analyzing gender in the content of the sciences and securing equality for women in science and technical fields. Such initiatives should be collaborative efforts joining the expertise of scientists and humanists. Though some still hate people called feminists and their efforts to right past wrongs, all in all it is an exciting time to be a women in the academy.
NOTES 1. This essay is drawn from my Has Feminism Changed Science? (Harvard University Press, 1999), chap. 7. 2. I thank Trudy Turner, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Linda Fedigan for these numbers. 3. Women comprise half of those engaged in micro-wear studies (studying flakes for evidence of use), though they make up only 20 percent of archaeologists in North America.
Primatology, Archaeology, and Human Origins: Feminist Interventions
255
REFERENCES Briscoe, Ann. 1984. Scientific sexism: The world of chemistry. In Women in the scientific and engineeringprofessions, ed. Violet Haas and Carolyn Permcci. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Conkey, Margaret. 1993. Making the connections: Feminist theory and archaeologies of gender. In Women in archaeology: A feminist critique, ed. Hilary du Cros and Laurajane Smith. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University. _ _ _, and Janet Spector. 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7:1-38. _ _ _, with Sarah Williams. 1991. Original narratives: The political economy ofgender in archaeology. In Gender at the crossroads ofknowledge: Feminist anthropology in the post-modern era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Fedigan, Linda. 1986. The changing role of women in models of human evolution. Annual Review ofAnthropology 15:25-66. _ _ _. 1997. Is primatology a feminist science? In Women in human evolution, ed. Lori Hager. New York: Routledge. _ _ _, and Laurence Fedigan. 1989. Gender and the study of primates. In Gender and anthropology: Critical review for research and teaching, ed. Sandra Morgen. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. French, Jeffrey. 1994. A demographic analysis of the membership of the American Society of Primatologists. American Anthropologist 96. Gero, Joan. 1991. Genderlithics: Women's roles in stone tool production. In Engendering archaeology. ed. Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey. Oxford: Blackwell, 163-193. _ _ _. 1993. The social world of prehistoric facts. In Women in archeology: A feminist critique, ed. Hilary du Cros and Laurajane Smith. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University, 31-40. _ _ _. 1995. Excavation bias and the women at home ideology. In Equity issuesfor women in archeology, ed. Margaret Nelson, Sarah Nelson, and Alison Wylie. Arlington, Va.: American Anthropological Association: Archeological Papers, No. 5:37-42.
256
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Gross, Paul, and Norman Levitt. 1994. Higher superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. _ _ _, Norman Levitt, and Martin Lewis, eds. 1996. The flight from science and reasons. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences. Haraway, Donna, and Susan Sperling. 1996. Cited by Helen Longino, in Cognitive and non-cognitive values in science: Rethinking the dichotomy. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy ofscience, ed. Lynn Nelson and Jack Nelson. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Healy, Bernadine. 1995. Science 269 (11 August): 773. Hrdy, Sarah, and G. Williams. 1983. Behavioral biology and the double standard. 1983. Social BehaviorofFemale Vertebrates, ed. Samuel Wasser. New York: Academic Press. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. 1977. Did women have a renaissance? In Becoming visible: Women in European history, ed. Renata Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Koertge, Noretta. 1994. Are feminists alienating women from the sciences? The Chronicle ofHigher Education (14 September): A80. Le Cat, Claude. 1765. Traite de l'existance du fluide des nerfs.... Berlin, plate 1, p. 35. Ross, Andrew, ed. 1996. Science wars. Durham: Duke University Press. Rowell, Thelma. 1984. Introduction: Mothers, infants, and adolescents. In Female primates: Studies by women primatologists, ed. Meredith Small. New York: Alan Liss. Schiebinger, Londa. 1994. Nature's body: Gender in the making ofmodern science. Boston: Beacon Press. Strum, Shirley, and Linda Fedigan. 1999. Theory, method and gender: What changed our views of primate society? In The new physical anthropology (Advances in Human Evolution Series), ed. Shirley C. Strum, Donald G. Lindburg, and David A. Hamburg. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Wright, Rita. 1991. Women's labor and pottery production in prehistory. In Engendering Archaeology, ed. Gero and Conkey.
Chapter Eleven
Transforming Knowledges Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s) Piya Chatterjee
I find this question very difficult, since it appears to assume that I (or we) know what is meant by the terms "anthropology)) and ('feminism.» I see anthropology as in flux and as a discipline that ought to be intellectually and practically open. The barriers we face to opening the discipline are lat;gely those ofthe nature ofthe academy and the mat;ginal position so many ofus occupy within it (...) The problem that concerns me more is not about the specifics of anthropology but about what vision of "ftminism)) (or women)s liberation, or something else) we bring to this effort at change. Perhaps, I am particularly sensitive to this because the Chinese women)s movement, as well as many other women)s movement activists in various parts ofthe world, are very critical of Western feminism. ---<Judd 1999:290) Ellen Judd, an anthropologist who writes on women's political organizing in China, is responding to a question posed by the editors of a recent collection on feminist ethnographic research: "Where do you place your work as a feminist within contemporary anthropology, and what directions do you see the relationship between anthropology Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities
Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
257
258
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
and feminism taking in the future?" (Howard-Bobiwash 1999: 282) Both the question and Judd's ambivalent, though powerful, response gesture towards the often tense-and indeed ambivalent-relationship between anthropology, the study "of women" and gender, and feminist scholarship writ large. Whether compensatory and/or critical in its perspective, feminist scholarship has had a profound, ifvexed, impact on the discipline's framings of cultural difference. Simultaneously, when feminist claims of knowledge are also critiqued through other prisms of difference-national location, race/ethnicity and class-then the task of "transformation" is inextricably coupled: women, gender, and cultural difference are mutually constitutive. In a significant sense, two fields of inquiry, anchored by the conceptual cornerstones of"culture" and "woman," have come under considerable scrutiny within the past three decades. Catalyzed by the revisionary demands of scholars active in what is known as the Second Wave of the U.S. Women's movement, androcentric knowledge claims of disciplines, such as anthropology, were critiqued and challenged by feminist scholarship. These critiques included revisiting scholarly work which had been relegated to the dusty margins of the discipline's archive because it posed questions about gender and power in cultural practice. While these interventions were being made within the discipline's walls, feminist scholars also began to explore the category "woman"-and later "gender"-as a "site" of explanatory power in situ: a disciplinary field in itself within which scholarly activity would be based on adherence to specific disciplinary training as well as interdisciplinary work (Boxer 1998:388). "Women's Studies," thus emerged as an intellectual and institutional site within which feminist scholarship would investigate and theorize about the knowledges of "women and gender" issues. Indeed, such an examination would be characterized by the close attention paid to theoretical claim and its practical "effects." Thus, in the 1970s, the incisive and unsettling agendas of feminist thought and practice-of questioning the nature of knowledge itself-were explicitly drawn. We will see, however, that by the early 1980s serious critiques of a unitary "feminist" agenda-or conceptually, a singular woman-subjectwere being challenged. Both Women's Studies departments, and a feminist analytic which insisted on seeing gender as the primary site of difference and subordination, were criticized for their inattention to other vectors of difference and power. By the early 1980s, what is now called the Third Wave of feminist writing had started theorizing about the relationship
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
259
among categories of gender, race, class, sexuality and nationhood as they are actualized in daily social practice. Their theoretical critiques have been joined by post-colonial and historical criticism that has analyzed the ways in which colonial rule and imperialism have informed our understandings of women, gender and difference. l Thus, any contemporary discussion about Women's Studies and anthropology must tackle Ellen Judd's cautionary note about the ''vision of feminism," or feminisms that we bring to our understandings of anthropology. Just as much as anthropology can be revisioned through the lens of women and gender analysis, so can women and gender analysis be revisioned by an anthropology that remains attentive to the contradictions of cultural difference and power within historical and transnational matrices. Such a consideration recognizes the vast interdisciplinary literature through which both domains of inquiry have emerged. Because of the depth and scope of such a literature, I emphasize that this is not a conventional review essay about "feminism" and "anthropology." It is, rather, an exploration of what I have seen as some central theoretical tensions that emerge when working across disciplinary boundaries, with tools that ask the sharpest questions about the relationship of knowledge claims to lived social life. To a scholar institutionally located in Women's Studies but trained in historical anthropology-and beholden to a subterranean training in Third Wave, and Third World/post-colonial feminist critique-this process of reflection illuminates one's connection, and disconnection, to a lineage ofscholarship that continues to carve an institutional space within which some of the hard questions can still be asked. What does it mean to produce knowledge about "women and culture" in other parts of the world when one is located in the United States? What effects do such knowledges have on the historical practices of "globalization" on the ground? What is the relationship of a critical gender studies to the political economies of theoretical and institutional production? What indeed is the relationship of such intellectual work to a vision that knowledge is transformative? What are the national, economic, racial and ethnic positions which inform what is meant by both "transformation" and knowledge itself? In this essay, I emphasize the contributions of Second Wave feminist analysis. This research focused attention on an earlier anthropology "of women" and gender that laid the groundwork for later research and theorizing. Such a compensatory revisioning was quickly joined to theorizing about the universal nature of gender subordination in most cultures and
260
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
societies. These contributions were then followed by post-structuralist interventions around the category "gender" and critiques of an "essential woman" (Butler and Scott 1992; Fraser 1989). While it is beyond the scope of this particular essay to outline the parameters of the "woman" and "gender" debate (and its political effects) suffice to say that it was a theoretical emphasis on process (rather than structure) that allowed room for the more trenchant critiques of universals to follow. I will, however, focus on challenges offered by "Third World women" critiques of such categorical imperatives. Writing from the edges of the academy, these theories "trickled" into Women's Studies and anthropology departments and had a profound impact on the way graduate students started to situate their own academic training and practice. When combined with post-colonial analysis, such critiques have challenged the knowledge claims of not only the unitary "woman-subject" (or unitary feminism) but also the ways in which anthropology has constructed its knowledges about "others" who cannot be framed only within the gendered binary of male:female. Anthropology's complicated relationship to colonialism (Asad 1973; Said 1989) and its particular vectors of othering-the native, the primitive-layers the critique (Minh-ha 1989). In other words, "Third World women's" theorizing about the interlocked nature of subordination, when coupled with an analysis of colonialismand neo-colonialism-offers an important challenge to the powerful knowledge claims of hegemonic 2 "feminism" and anthropology's construction of otherness and its difference. GENDERING AND RACE-ING CULTURE: ONTOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
Constructing Culture and Its Woman-Other. Christine Gailey has argued that a scrutiny of how "women" are considered within theories of culture, and in ethnographic analysis (the datum for those theories), has uncovered the partial and masculinist bias of anthropology's epistemology, its "basis for knowledge claims" (Gailey 1998:204). Such an interrogation entails looking "behind" the terms of research execution: assumptions that men's narratives were more important than women's; speaking only to men; assuming that women and men's agency was the same and so forth. The result of such epistemological bias has meant that women's agency-and questions ofpower-were obscured, ifnot entirely dismissed. Micaela di Leonardo has argued, for example, that while
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
261
"gender" saturated ethnographic monographs and theories (kinship studies, marriage, sexual division oflabor), power and sexual difference were either ignored or assumed to be self-explanatory (di Leonardo 1991). In order to unravel this epistemological snarl, feminist criticism has had to focus on the deeper ontological assumptions through which theoretical maxims are generated. Such a focus has moved into a genealogical tracking of the culture concept itself. Late nineteenth century notions of culture and society did not exclude "women," or gender, but their theories of how these categories functioned within constructions of society were based upon evolutionary paradigms dominant at the time (Stocking 1968). For nineteenth century social evolutionists, women's high status belongs to an earlier stage of social development (matriarchy), which had now become transformed, through a linear telos, into patriarchy. "Culture" and "society," and women's status, were understood by universalist-and even programmatic-claims about social development, progress and most significantly about what defined "civilization" itself. While this assumption of evolutionary place has been widely critiqued in anthropology (Lamphere and Rosaldo 1974) the conceptual location of women remained problematic within the anthropological canon: status was assumed to be subordinate, and agency either passive or negligible in the face of men's status and power. The late nineteenth century "science of man" focused its lens on the difference of "nature." If "culture" was to distinguish man from animal, then nature, (the other of culture), becomes the site of analytic dissection. Genevieve lloyd has argued that nature has been linked to woman in much of hegemonic western philosophy. Nature was conceived as intrinsically female and making "her" knowable was the task ofreason and science (lloyd 1984)3. Lloyd argues that the premise of an objective and universal rationality, gained through the careful application ofits reason, is infused with the dominant belief about the innate inferiority of women vis a vis men. Carol MacCormack notes, "Women were the repository of 'natural laws' and 'natural morality', but also that which was emotional and passionate, needing constraint within social boundaries. The opposed categories of nature and culture (or society) arose as a part of historically particular ideological polemic (... ) which created further contradictions by defining women as natural (superior), but instruments of a society of men (subordinate)" (MacCormack 1980).4 This inferiority could be explained by the philosophical, metaphoric and literal conflation ofwomen with Nature-the capricious yet necessary base-matter ofall life. Certainly,
262
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
the binary coupling ofwoman/nature: man/culture was held within complex-and often ambivalent-debates about reason and science (Bloch and Bloch 1980). A critical distillation is useful: for a discipline whose primary concern is with "culture," its theorization must remain reflexive about the philosophical and historical genealogies upon which the concept has come into "being." This is the fundamental contribution of feminist analysis. By first locating the category in its particular cultural and historical formation through European philosophy, feminist philosophers trace a lineage that suggests a clear androcentric bias within discussions of nature and culture as female: male. This gendered "fixity" mediates secondary or tertiary levels of analysis about social behaviour. To wit, if the ontological premise is not interrogated, then the epistemological frames will assume the secondary place of women as co-eval actors of culture-making (Fox Keller 1985; Harding 1986; Haraway 1989; Harding 1991). For anthropology, a discipline which constructs its subjects around the culture-concept, such ontological interrogations are crucial. Indeed, the very "fact" that anthropologists may deploy these binaries as "universal" from the cultural and historical specificities of European philosophy is a matter that is both ironic and highly problematic. Constructing the Primitive. Feminist challenges to androcentric binaries of anthropology were beginning to shake the structuralist (if not universalist) paradigms in forceful ways. Yet, the nature/culture debates included another construction of otherness: the "primitive" would come to also define the "nature of culture." Indeed, if "woman" was the Other of Enlightenment thought, she was certainly not alone. Sexual and biological difference would be tracked into the constructions of another kind of essential nature. The culture:nature/male:female/self:other would work through a simultaneous double movement-and the category of "race" was powerfully implicated within it. Thus, gender was not the only category that functioned to explain the binary, and the ways it got inserted into the paradigms of social evolution. From the eighteenth century, a "lesser" nature was now to be coupled to a growing discourse about difference encountered through trade and imperial expansion in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia. The idea of primitivism-and savagery-became vitally important for social evolutionary paradigms, and like the ambivalent constructions of female nature, signified both dangerous chaos and necessary life. If for Rousseau, the woman/nature construct could be the womb-like site of
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
263
social generation and growth, then for Diderot, the savage too could embody the virtue of a "natural" society (Bloch and Bloch 1980:31). The "primitive," who came to feature in much of classical anthropology of Africa, can be located within the ambit of imperial "knowledges" that emerged out of the colonial encounter. As Phillip Curtin has suggested, the "idea of Africa" was central to the Great Chain of Being and marked a nadir, the lowest and most originary rung on the ladder of civilization (Curtin 1964; Mudimbe 1988). To the administrators, travelers, and writers of empire in nineteenth and early twentieth century Africa, its inhabitants-homogenized by singularity-exhibited customs and manners that were considered both fascinating and grotesque (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992). The "dark" continent was a metaphor which suggested the necessity of (European) light and reason; of people and cultures whose customs (and even bodies) demanded the disciplines and moral imperatives of European rule. African "nature" contained the signs of originary forcechaotic, dangerous and necessary for European's own sense of enlightened settlement. Most importantly, it was the codification ofdifference-through the categories of "race"-which would come to influence much anthropological theory on the nature of African society. When it came to ethnological and literary discussions about African women, however, the construction of otherness was doubly inscribed. This was a process by which constructions of purported sexual behaviour (alleged promiscuity) and race (African-ness, Black-ness) were inextricably connected to define pathology and primitiveness (Gilman 1985). In nineteenth century Paris, the anatomical dissection of the infamous Hottentot Venus displayed the bodied spectacle of difference: a tragic but transparent demonstration of how science could claim the racialized and gendered knowledges-and bodies-of difference (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997). In this brief exegesis on the culture-concept, I have sketched the gendered and racialized ontologies of what is a primary "space" of anthropological analysis. I have done so to draw out some of the important foundational issues that continue to be of deep concern to scholars who call themselves "feminists," "anthropologists" or "feminist anthropologists." The basic argument that a concept such as "culture" is neutral (in itself) has been thoroughly challenged by feminist scholarship in anthropology. It is also challenged for its racial and imperial ontologies-and this, we shall see, will be one important conundrum for feminist theorizing about difference, and cultural difference in particular.
264
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS ABSENCE As I have noted, feminist scholarship on the philosophy and history of science has presented a detailed accounting of the ways in which both "race" and gender are primally inscribed within the discourses of nature/ culture. The critique of anthropology, a discipline built upon the almost totemic centrality of culture, is implicit. Within the discipline itself, cultural theory is produced through a methodological and textual practice that has an iconic status in academic training: field research and ethnographic production. The ethnography, often the first academic monograph of the fledgling anthropologist, has long been a rite of passage. Its detailing of local practices is considered the foundation upon which cultural theory rests. From the very beginning, U.S-based women anthropologists have been active in the production ofethnography and cultural theory, and some were also actively involved in public policy. Some explicitly researched on "women and gender" issues. Whether these can be considered "feminist"5 remains debatable. Alice Fletcher (1838-1923), who conducted extensive ethnographic research on folklore and ritual among Native Americans in Omaha, was prominently involved in the execution of the Dawes Indian Act of 1887 which changed the existing federal policy of Indian segegration and denial of citizenship. For Fletcher, such a liberal shift would be possible only if Indians gave up "traditional tribal customs to establish monogamous patriarchal families" (Newman 1996:249). The explicit assimilationist law was premised on late nineteenth century anthropological theories of social evolution within which the monogamous patriarchal family (and acceptance of private property) were critical units of analysis. Fletcher's theoretical positions on gender not only defined the contours of law, they offered the strikingly programmatic vision of patriarchy and culture dominant at the time. The assumption that American Indian "difference" could be molded into a practical vision of theory is significant in what it tells us about the consistent relationship between knowledge and power. In contrast, Elsie Clew Parsons (1874-1941), an independently wealthy and influential patron of American anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s, began her intellectual work within the radical socialist and feminist salons of New York City. In the mid-teens, she was publishing books that looked explicitly at gender and power within the social conventions of the time. Most significantly, she argued for universalizing frames of analysis. In the 1920s, Parsons began to work within the Boasian school and left behind
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
265
the explicit feminist perspective. In a fine tribute to Parsons' patronage of anthropology, and more significantly to her earlier gender scholarship, Louise Lamphere suggests that the central theoretical premises ofthe pathbreaking edited volume, Woman, Culture and Society (1974) resonate directly with Parsons' early intellectual concerns about American domesticity and convention (Lamphere 1989: 525). What is noteworthy, however, is that Parsons' gender critique was not sustained in her later ethnographic work. This suggests both the unease, and elision, of explicitly feminist analysis within this period of growth in American anthropology. Margaret Mead (1901-1978) among the most famous American anthropologists of her time, is well-known for a study of gender and sexuality in Coming ofAge in Samoa (1928). Marking a clear departure from Victorian evolutionary theories about race and racial supremacy (as inherent within cultural practice), Mead insisted on the primacy of cultural process over biological transmission (Newman 1996:239). Because this book was based on an ethnographic investigation of sexuality in Samoa, as compared to the United States, Mead's theories about sexuality have had a powerful effect on subsequent feminist analysis of patriarchy as a social institution in the West (Newman 1996:233).6 Zora Neale Hurston's (1903-1960) career and contribution to an "anthropology of women"--or to a critical gendered analysis-presents an anomaly and object-lesson of the constraints faced by women, and particu1arly African-American women, in academia generally, and in anthropology at that time. Encouraged by Franz Boas,7 Hurston studied her own African-American traditions and wrote about them in highly evocative, story-telling narrative style. Critiqued by professional anthropologists who "questioned her objectivity, research techniques and ethnographic style" (Mikell 1988:162). Hurston described her community as "not merely...an object to be externally described but as a realm intimately inhabited" (VlSweswaran 1994:33). Her books, which now occupy an important place in early twentieth century American, and more specifically African-American literature, reflected an abiding concern with gender and its cultural productions within not only the communities where she was raised, but also in the cultural life of Jamaica and Haiti. Rejected by the mainstream scholarly community, Hurston retreated into a series of temporary lectureships. Her professional life was difficult, and some would say tragic, because her subjectivity was marked doubly by difference: of being a woman and an African-American at a time when such embodiment could not permit an explicit recognition of both creativity and genius.
266
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
However, a resurgence of interest in Hurston's work has demonstrated that her "outsider within" status as ethnographer and writer provided a critical "standpoint on self, family and society for Afro-American women" (Collins 1986:515). Indeed, it was precisely this authorial presence from "within" that compelled Hurston's writing towards other kinds of narrative engagement: of pushing past the assumptions of the "objective" by working within a "fiction" of analysis that was well ahead of its time (Visweswaran 1994). Indeed, the debates about "objectivity," authorship, and ethnographic writing were anticipated by Hurston fifty years before they became prominent in debates about representation and power in anthropology. I have chosen four women anthropologists from what can be considered the "classical" period ofAmerican anthropology, a time where equally influential women scholars were active in the discipline. In fact, the roster is long and distinguished. I have gestured to the work of Fletcher, Parsons, Mead and Hurston to suggest that while a lacuna, and certainly a tension about a "feminist" perspective existed in the discipline, research on "women and gender" did not constitute an "absence." Certainly, what is debatable is whether an anthropological analysis in which women (as scholars and as subjects ofscholarship) are "present," can be seen as "feminist"-and if it can, what kind of feminist lens is aimed at discussions of gender, difference, and power. For Alice Fletcher, a patriarchal vision of assimilation policy was critical to her ethnographic theory. For Zora Neale Hurston, a gendered analysis of power and racialization-through even the semi-autobiograpicallens of family life-<>ffered rich insights into African-American cultures at the time. I make these curious, and even counter-intuitive juxtapositions, to argue for the rich contradictions and possibilities already present in these gendered examinations of culture, difference and power in American anthropology. RE-VISIONING "WOMAN" AND CRACKING THE UNIVERSAL
We have become increasingly aware ofsexual inequities in economic, social and political institutions and are seeking ways to fight them.( ... ) For the most part, scholars have taken for granted a view ofwomen as passive sexual objects.( ... ) Within the field of anthropology, a concern to understand and to change women's position has generated a number of important questions. Are there
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
267
societies that, unlike our own, make women the equals or superiors to men? If not, are women "naturally" men's inferiors? (... ) How and in what kinds of situations do women exercise power? (... ) It seems fair to say, then, that all contemporary societies are to some extent maledominated, and although the degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is presently a universal fact of human social life. (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974:2) A number of anthropologists have engaged the discursive and representational problems of classical anthropology in recent years. One of the major questions feminist anthropology has to address is preciselythe questionofboth representing Third World women in anthropological texts (as a corrective to masculinist disciplinary practices) and simultaneously speaking for Third World women. (Mohanty 1991:31-32) Excerpted from Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo's introduction to their 1974 edited volume, Woman, Culture and Society, the first quotation heralds a significant collective statement about the analysis "of women" in American anthropology. Connecting their theoretical agenda to the wider social discussion about gender inequity, the authors of this important collection focus on re-visioning earlier analysis about women's inferior or passive agency, and demonstrate how women's status is defined through acts of power mediated through culture. Some authors argued that sex and gender differences come into cultural meaning as difference through social practice. In so doing, these essays underscored arguments against biological essentialism. Other essays, like Karen Brodkin Sack's meditation on Engels' theory of the origin of the family, reinterprets this classic formulation on private property and the sexual division of labor through the foil of four African communities, showing how property informs women's dependent roles (Sacks 1974). In another essay, Marjorie Wolf shows how Chinese women strategize a subterranean politics by the constraints set within rural and patriarchal households (Wolf 1974). Though this collection of essays posits "universal" subordination and uses the "local" (and the cultural) as a foil against which a general theory could be proven, they do so with careful attention to ethnographic detail, a hallmark of the best kind of anthropological work. They also
268
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
mark out diverse registers of feminist analysis: biology/culture arguments about women's roles; production and division of labor; the politics of "domesticity" and so forth. All essays argue that women's status and role within "culture" need to be seen through the lens of power and politics, even if this means re-defining those key terms. Most importantly, their appearance in one volume suggests a unified agenda for feminist scholarship within the discipline. Though such singularity of theoretical purpose has been thorougWy critiqued, the ruptural effects of the book on the discipline cannot be underestimated. From the early 1980s, a growing body of post-structural, "Third World" and post-colonial criticism challenged the unitary construction of the "woman subject" in feminist theory. A wide range of scholars from each of these three domains of interrogation overlapped in their general deconstruction of the category of "woman" but they also worked out of various political and institutional sites of production. Certainly, the "visions" of feminist theory and practice offered were higWy contentious and would create a rich field of disagreement. For example, "Third World women's" writings around the exclusionary practices of mainstream Second Wave feminism(s) were first published by alternative and non-academic presses. They were compelled by political conflicts such as the one that occurred in a 1981 National Women's Studies Association meeting, where a caucus of "women ofcolor" constituted itself to analyze the manner in which class, race, ethnicity and "cultural difference" marked issues of inequity between women (Gordon 1999). Anthologies such as This Bridge Called My Back:Writings by Radical Women of Color (1984), edited by Cherne Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, had profound implications for both anthropology and Women's Studies. Now, the categories "women of color" and "Third World women" qualified a "gendered standpoint" (Smith 1990; Longino 1993; O'leary 1997) in crucial ways: anti-colonial stances were coupled to feminist theorizing that now would take into account race, ethnicity, class and sexuality in ways that would shatter the premise that the man:woman, male:female binary was the only-or primary-fulcrum of subordination (Anzaldua 1990:379). Both the subject of ''woman''--and "woman in culture"-would require another kind of scrutiny. It is important to underscore that these writings brought together scholars, poets, activists and other cultural workers to address the exclusionary practices ofmainstream U.S. feminism. Their critical "edge" emerged out of the fact that many authors sat on the margins of the academy and
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
269
their critiques privileged the experiential, active and challenging voices that academic disciplines may have subsumed to the task of "theory." In fact, their insistence that their interlocked "exclusion" be addressed both theoretically and pragmatically continued to have an important effect on the analysis of culture, power, and difference within the academy. The interventions by radical "women of color" worked alongside another set ofcriticisms which challenged mainstream feminist analysis through international and post-colonial frames. If "women ofcolor" analysis opened up the faultlines of race, class, and sexuality in understanding culture and politics within the United States, then post-colonial theorizing challenged the national and historical locations of privilege which informed "western" feminist social science, literary theory and history of "Third World women" in sites historically and discursively so inscribed. Chandra Mohanty's powerful 1984 essay, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" (Mohanty 1984), argued that the study of women in the Third World assumed an analytic and methodological singularity (of the category "woman") through which "universal" subordination could be proven. The "Third World," and its cultural "differences" are ("thick description" not withstanding) molded into a homogeneity in which "otherness" served to re-inscribe assumed powerlessness and subordination of all women: "An analysis of 'sexual difference' in the form of a cross-culturally singular, monolithic notion of patriarchy or male dominance lead to the construction of a similarly reductive and homogenous notion of what I call the "Third World difference"-that stable, ahistorical something that apparently oppresses most if not all the women in these countries. And it is in the production of this "Third World difference" that Western feminisms appropriate and "colonize" the constitutive complexities which characterize the lives ofwomen in these countries (Mohanty 1984:53-54; Ong 1986). Mohanty is careful to note that it is the discursive and ideological effects ofsuch research which serve to inscribe women "elsewhere" into becoming doubly effaced. The "Third World" woman is constructed as doubly-othered. The binary is not shattered. Indeed, what di Leonardo has called mainstream western feminism's "synechdochic fallacy ofclaiming to represent the lives of all women" (di Leonardo 1993:77) has been an important obstacle in challenging the ontological problem in the construction ofculture and difference that is not just sexed. In this, the "primitive" haunts our contemporary debates about the "Third World" and the representation of "women" from that discursive site (Chakravarty Spivak 1988; Lazreg 1988; Kaplan 1987).
270
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Interestingly enough, the "crises of representation" heralded by poststrueturalliterary criticism have had a far more visible impact on anthropological production than critiques by and about "Third World women." It is significant to note here post-strueturalism's production within, and effects upon, the epicenter of the academy. For anthropology, post-structural critiques focused on the epistemologies of ethnographic representation. The global field, in all its neo-colonial hybrid forms, could be interrogated through text and the ethnographer's self-conscious craft. Authorial selfreflexivity was championed (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986). Significantly, the anthropologist/author's subject position in the ethnography, and the critique of neo-colonial objectivity it assumed, obscured decades of feminist theorizing around the problem of objectivity and the terms of knowledge production which it assumed (di Leonardo 1993:76). Women and gender analysis remained marginal in what is generally understood as a "postmodern" turn in mainstream anthropology. In 1995, Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon's Women Writing Culture offered a feminist counter-narrative to these texts. The text was viewed, by some, as a significant contribution to new, reflexive feminist research in anthropology. Debates about "feminist ethnography" (Abu-Lughod 1990; Enslin 1994) interrogated the relationship between ethnographic practice (in the field), textual production, and academic/institutional 10cation. 8 For some, like Kirin Narayan, hybrid and diasporic subjectivity has challenged the ethnographic binary between 'native' and 'anthropologists' (Narayan 1993). The premise of accurate cultural analysisbased upon an ethnographic collection of "native" knowledges-is built upon the now familiar colonial dichotomies of anthropologist/native. When post-colonial anthropologists go back to study their "own" cultures, the assumptions of "authentic" cultural knowledge (of a 'native informant') are deeply shaken (Narayan 1993). As she astutely argues, what such assumptions of "nativism" might obscure are "internal" and transnational relations of privilege and power that such an anthropologist may have with his or her ethnographic subjects. Class position, transnational locations, ethnic privilege all inform the heterogeneity of such authoritative claims on cultural "authenticity." Feminist analysis within anthropology navigates a rich field of disagreement-and as the writers featured here have demonstrated, this is a field also rich with creative possibilities. Following Deborah Gordon's important critique of her own edited Women Writing Culture I would like to suggest that feminist analysis and criticism within anthropology
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
271
needs to revisit the terms of anthropological production (field, ethnographic and theoretical "work") through the vectors of political economy and national location suggested by both "Third World" women's criticism and by anthropologists who have consistently focused on issues of political economy and class politics in their feminist analysis (Gordon 1999:54-55). The research and writing of Eleanor Leacock (1954-1985), for example, complicated gender analysis by focusing on kin roles, race, ethnicity, and class. Her ethnohistorical work on the Innu looked at the complex ways in which political economy and gender worked within commodity production. Her later work on women and colonization clearly situated the analysis of gender and power within world-historical frames. Despite her prolific publication record, and her importance in drawing attention to the inextricable link between women's status, work and colonization, she had a difficult time getting hired in the academy (Gailey, 1998). She is now recognized as one of the more important theorists of gender and political economy within anthropology. More recently, Micaela di Leonardo has argued that political economy, "bedeviled by economic reductionism and evolutionism," (di Leonardo 1993:78) still makes a difference. She asserts, "It is the only practice that enables us to work adequately with varying and opposing cultural constructions, whether those of our informants or our own.( ... ) They do allow us to interpret, to make sense, to contextualize ideologies, just as ideologies interpret, make sense of and contextualize political economy. We feminists should not leave home without it" (di Leonardo 1993:80). Deborah Gordon, extrapolating from Mary E. John's Discrepant Dislocations: Feminisms, Theory and Postcolonial Histories (1996) pushes the critique further. She argues that Women Writing Culture did not adequately address how the "the dominance of the West lies in the unacknowledged national location ofthe United States in feminist ethnography" and equally significantly, the ways in which this location also obscures the politics of class that are generated within the nexus ofthe nation-state (Gordon 1999). Such a "political economy ofknowledge production" would simultaneously present research that carefully draws out the sinews ofdifference and power in a given "space" of analysis as well as situate this theorizing within the immediate ambit of institutional power and circulation. The implications of these debates about nation, race, ethnicity and class for feminist analysis and theory in anthropology are profound ones. Indeed, for a discipline that has claimed the study of "culture" in the
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
272
cartographies of "elsewhere," the epistemological questions aimed at universal "woman" are equally valid for anthropological constructions of "culture." In both, notions of "difference" are critical. In both, imperialism and its material specificities mark the epistemological terrain. Ethnographic work must acknowledge, Gordon argues, the vibrant feminist theorizing and practice in other parts of the world: knowledges whose insights must co-evally shape the conclusions of feminist-and anthropological-writing that are institutionally located in the United States. It must work through the critical insights of what informs and sustains an "imperial epistemology." That is, ifwe are interested in "transforming knowledges" in radically "equal" ways. More significandy, it will create another kind of resurgence in the ways that feminist scholars have insisted that we view the relationship between our theory, writing and practice. Such "work" is difficult but it is important if we, as feminist scholars, seek to remain accountable to that critical interface between knowledge and power, writing and its privileges.
NOTES 1. For among the most influential writing in the historical anthropology of colonialism and sexuality, see Ann Stoler 1989, 1995.
2. I use "hegemonic feminism" in the United States to mean those knowledge claims about women's experiences which assumed a categorical and unified "we" in claims to "sisterhood." When these knowledge claims are re-produced, politically and theoretically, as speaking for "feminism," their effects are hegemonic. More generally, "hegemonic feminism" can be applied to other national locations where issues of representation and power are equally vexed. 3. For an excellent discussion of Platonic notions of gender and the body in the "polis", and its implications for "difference" in European philosophy, see Elizabeth Spelman's Inessential Woman: Problems of
Exclusion in Feminist Thought (1988). 4. In addition, Ludmila Jordanova examines the manner in which the philosophic co-relation and conflation of woman/nature becomes inscribed within anatomical and biological science. To understand woman's body was to understand nature herself-matter and body, then, were viewed as a twinned "uterine economy." See Jordanova 1980.
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
273
5. I use "feminist" in this instance quite broadly to demarcate scholarship at this time which offered some explicit analysis of gender and power. 6. Newman's careful critique ofMead works on another axis, however. Her central argument is that Mead cannot escape the epistemological premise of her comparative frames: the use of a so-called primitive society to critique patriarchal gender relations in the United States. This becomes even more problematic in Mead's 1935 Sex and Temperament. 7. Franz Boas remained a patron of other influential women anthropologists such as Ella Deloria, Ruth Landes, and Ruth Underhill. 8. While the following authors may not explicitly locate themselves as "feminists" or feminist anthropologists, their ethnographies are viewed widely as contemporary classics in the "new" writing on gender, power and "global" location. Certainly, the list is not exhaustive, merely representative. They are Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's In the Realms of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-way Place (1993); Lila Abu-Lughod's Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (1986); and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence ofEveryday Life in Brazil (1992).
REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women and Performance: A Journal ofFeminist Theory 5. _ _. 1993. Writing women's worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Anzaldua, Gloria. 1990. La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a new consciousness. In Makingface, makingsoul: Creative and criticalperspectives by women ofcolor, ed. Gloria Anzaldua. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. _ _, and Cherne Moraga, eds. 1981. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women ofcolor. Watertown, Mass.: Persephone. Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London: Ithaca Press. Behar, Ruth, and Deborah Gordon, eds. 1995. Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bloch, Maurice, and Jean H. Bloch. 1980. Women and the dialectics of nature in eighteenth century French thought. In Nature, culture,
274
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
gender, ed. Marilyn Strathern and Carol MacCormack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boxer, Marilyn J. 1998. Remapping the university: The promise of the women's studies Ph.D. Feminist Studies 24 (Summer): 387-403. Butler, Judith, and Joan Scott, eds. 1992. Feminists theorise the political. London: Routledge. Clifford, James, and George Marcus. 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics ofethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems 33: (December): SI4-S32. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. Boulder: Westview Press. _ _ _. 1997. Africa observed: Discourses ofthe imperial imagination. In Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history and representation, ed. Richard Steiner and Christopher Grinker. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Curtin, Phillip. 1964. The image ofAfrica: British ideas and action. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. di Leonardo, Micaela, ed. 1991. Gender at the crossroads of knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. _ _. 1993. What a difference political economy makes: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era. Anthropological QJlarterly 66 (2): 76-81. Enslin, Elizabeth. 1994. Beyond writing: Feminist practice and the limitations of ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 9: 537-568. Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly practices: Power, discourse andgender in contemporary social theory. Cambridge: Polity. Gailey, Christine Ward. 1988. Eleanor Leacock. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press. _ _ _. 1998. Feminist methods. In Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology, ed. Russell Bernard. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Gilman, Sander. 1985. Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth century art, medicine and literature. Critical Inquiry 12 (1): 204-242.
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
275
Gordon, Deborah. 1993. The unhappy relationship of feminism and postmodernism in anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly 66 (July): 109-119. _ _ _.1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howaro-Bobiwashin Feministfields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. _ _ _' 1999. U.S. feminist ethnography and the denationalizing of "America": A retrospective on Women writing culture. In Feministfields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race and nature in the world ofmodern science. New York: Roudedge. Harding, Sandra, 1986. The science question infeminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
_ _.1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinkingfrom women's lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press. _ _. 1988. Talking back: Thinkingfeminist, thinking black. Boston: South End Press. Howard-Bobiwash, Heather, compiler. 1999. Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued. In Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. John, Mary E. 1996. Discrepant dislocations: Feminisms, theory and postcolonial histories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jordanova, L. J. 1980. Natural facts: A historical perspective on science and sexuality. In Nature, culture,gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Judd, Ellen. 1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howard-Bobiwash, in Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. Kaplan, Caren. 1987. Deterritorializations: The rewriting of home and exile in feminist discourse. Cultural Critique no.6 (Spring): 187-198. Keesing, Roger M. 1985. Kwaio women speak: The micropolitics of autobiography in a Solomon Island society. American Anthropologist 87: 27-39.
276
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Khan, Aisha. 1988. Introduction. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press. Lamphere, Louise. 1989. Feminist anthropology: The legacy ofElsie Clew Parsons, American Ethnologist16 (August): 518-534. ___" and Michelle Rosaldo. 1974. Introduction. In Women, culture and society, ed. Lamphere and Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lazreg, Marnia. 1988. Feminism and difference: The perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria. Feminist Studies 14 (Spring): 81-107. Leacock, Eleanor, and Mona Etienne, eds. 1980. Women and colonization. New York: Praeger. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man ofreason: Male and female in western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Longino, Helen. 1993. Feminist standpoint theory, and the problems of knowledge: Review essay, Signs 19 (1): 201-213. MacCormack, Carol. 1980. Nature, culture, gender: A critique. In Nature, culture,gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mikell, Gwendolyn. 1988. Zora Neale Hurston. In women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, native, other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. Boundary 2 (SpringjFall): 333-58. _ _. 1991. Cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism. In Third World women and the politics offeminism, ed. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Transforming Knowledges: Anthropology's Encounters with Feminism(s)
277
Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mudimbe, Valentin. 1988. The invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Narayan, Kirin. 1993. How native is a native anthropologist? American Anthropologist 95: 671-686. Newman, Louise. 1996. Coming of age, but not in Samoa: Reflections on Margaret Mead's legacy for western liberal feminism. American QJlarterly 48 (2): 233-272. O'Leary, Cathy. 1997. Counteridentification or counterhegemony? Transforming feminist standpoint theory. Women and Politics 18 (3): 45 -72. Ong, Aihwa. 1986. Colonialism and modernity: Feminist representations of women in non-western societies. Inscriptions 3 and 4: 79-93. ___. 1995. Women out of China: Traveling tales and traveling theories in postcolonial feminism. In Women writing culture, ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist. 1974. Woman, culture, and society: A theoretical overview. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sacks, Karen. 1974. Engels revisited: Women, the organization of production, and private property. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Said, Edward. 1989. Representing the colonized: Anthropology's interlocuters. Critical Inquiry 20: 205-225. Sandoval, Chela. 1990. Feminism and racism: A report on the 1981 National Women's Studies Association conference. In Makingface, making soul: Creative and critical perspectives by women of color, ed. Gloria Anzaldua. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the political economy ofpassion: Exoticism and decolonizatwn. Boulder: Westview Press. Smith, Dorothy. 1990. Texts, facts and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. London: Routledge. _ _. 1992. Sociology from women's experience: A reaffirmation. Sociological Theory 10 (Spring).
278
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. The Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. 1988. Can the Subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation ofculture, ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stacey, Judith. 1988. Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women's Studies International Forum 2: 21-27. Stocking, George Jr. 1968, 1982. Race, culture and evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago. Stoler, Ann. 1989. Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule. Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (January). _ _. 1995. Race and the education ofdesire: Foucault's history ofsexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 1993. In the realm ofthe diamond queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions offeminist ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wolf, Marjory. 1974. Chinese women: Old skills in a new context. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Chapter Twelve
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia Problems and Sol utions 1 Marianne A. Ferber
BACKGROUND
In order to better understand the present situation of women at research universities and to develop more effective strategies for increasing their representation as well as improving their status, it is useful to very briefly examine the history of women in academia. Recently more women than men have been earning B.A. and M.A. degrees, and they have also been earning a rapidly growing proportion of professional and Ph.D. degrees. Their representation among faculties at institutions of higher learning has also been increasing for several decades, and this is true at research institutions as well, although their numbers there have been growing less rapidly (see Table 1). Further, while the gender earnings gap in academia persists, it appears to have been declining. At the same time, however, favorable trends do not always continue. While the share ofdegrees earned by women rose from the beginning of the twentieth century to about 1930, as did women's representation among college and university faculties till about 1940, these figures declined sharply after that for several Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
281
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
282
Table 1 PERCENT OF BACHELOR'S AND DOCTORAL DEGREES EARNED BY WOMEN 1993-94, AND PERCENT OF WOMEN FACULTY BY FiElD, 1992 Bachelor's Degree All fields Agric. and home econ. Business Education Engineering Fine arts Health professions Humanities· Natural Sciences Social sciences
54.5 59.3 47.6 77.3 14.9 65.8 82.4 64.7 46.6 46.1
Doctoral Degree
Full-time Faculty
Part-time Faculty
38.5 32.6 28.2 60.8 11.1 62.1 58.5 58.1 31.1 36.1
33.2 24.7 31.2 51.1 6.1 33.6 50.1 41.4 19.5 27.5
44.6 52.0 30.0 67.3 8.0 48.3 56.5 59.0 32.2 43.2
• For degrees includes English, foreign languages, liberal arts, sciences and humanities Sources: 1990-1991; National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 1997, Tables 231, 254
decades. Similarly, since the 1990s not only has the increase in women faculty slowed (Hornig, Chapter Two), but there has been an ominous increase in the proportion of women hired for positions that are not on tenure track. As a result, the proportion oftenured faculty who are women, which reached 34.6 percent in 1995, is likely to increase far more slowly and may even decrease. In addition to this setback, it is a matter of concern that the salaries of academic women remain lower than those of men. This is in substantial part the result ofa significant negative relationship between salaries and the proportion ofwomen in a field (Bellas 1994; Smart 1991),2 and in part of women's low representation in the prestigious Research I universities. Hence the earnings gap is not inconsistent with the findings of other researchers that large discrepancies between women and men with comparable qualifications in the same field, and of equal rank at the same institutions have largely disappeared (Long, this volume; O'Neill and Sicherman 1990).3 The uneven gender distribution offaculty by field is, ofcourse, closely related to the distribution of degrees earned. This has not been easy to remedy in part because there is a vicious circle. When few women receive a degree in a discipline, there is only a small pool of candidates from which universities can hire, and the dearth of women faculty in tum deprives women graduate students and junior faculty members ofrole models and mentors (Berg and Ferber 1983:629-48). This is all the more true
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
283
because women are so sparsely represented among faculty at doctoral granting institutions in general, and particularly at the prestigious Research I universities, where the great majority of graduate students are trained. This history suggests that continued progress of women in academia can not be taken for granted. Equally ominous is the fact that the proportions ofB.A.s earned by women in such male dominated fields as agriculture, computer and information science, economics, and mathematics have failed to increase further in recent years and in some instances have declined. Thus it is not beyond possibility that the progress of earlier decades could slow down further, or conceivably be reversed. Tight budgets, and the growing tendency to allocate fewer resources to units that do not bring in large amounts of funding, for instance education, the humanities, and some arts, which tend to be disproportionately female, are an additional threat to further advancement for women faculty. In fact, examples of backsliding are not hard to find. For instance, an internal report of one large urban university notes that "there was a significant reduction in the percentage ofwomen receiving tenure relative to men beginning in 1991, just when downsizing commenced."4 Or again, while the proportion ofwomen obtaining tenure had increased at Stanford for some time, it decreased between 1974-75 and 1990-91 (Stanford, 1998). It is also a matter of concern that at least two outstanding institutions, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Chicago, have an extremely small proportion of women assistant professors (4.4 percent and 9.4 percent respectively), which does not bode well for the future. Therefore, continued vigilance and increased efforts to maintain and improve the position of women, especially at the most highly ranked universities, are called for. The remainder of this paper addresses the causes of the remaining disparities, and how they can best be remedied.
THE CHILLY ACADEMIC CLIMATE AND POSSIBLE REMEDIES The problems for women at research universities, many of them also mentioned in the other papers in this volume, include the tendency to devalue women scholars and their work, the dearth of successful female role models and, as already noted, the very unequal distribution ofwomen by field. In this section of the paper we examine the many disadvantages women continue to face and some of the programs that have been or could be instituted to remedy them. In the following section various ways to ensure the effectiveness ofexisting programs are discussed, followed by
284
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
suggestions how universities could be encouraged to adopt more of them and to give them their full support. Turning first to the severe underrepresentation ofwomen in particular fields, it is, of course, possible that there are good reasons for this. For instance, neoclassical economists, who generally have an economic explanation for everything, argue that women tend to prefer fields where career interruptions are not heavily penalized, and to avoid those where the opposite is true (Polachek 1978). That would presumably explain the small proportion of women in fields where there have been rapid new developments, such as the physical sciences and engineering. This rationale is not, however, very convincing in light of the fact that, although the proportion of women in these fields continues to be small, in 1996 more than twice as many women earned Ph.D.s in the natural and mathematical sciences as in the humanities (Hornig, this volume). It is also frequently suggested that the disparities in men's and women's choices of disciplines are at least to some extent caused by differences in innate abilities and tastes, but large international differences in the gender composition of various professions raise question about the validity of this explanation. For instance, women comprised the great majority of physicians, and about one-third of engineers in the Soviet Union,s at a time when there were few women in medicine and only a minuscule number in engineering in the United States. Similarly, there was a large proportion of women among dentists in the Scandinavian countries, and pharmacists in the Philippines, two other professions with few women in the U.S. In addition, the very unequal representation ofwomen in the same occupation in different firms, documented early on by Blau (1977) and later by others (e.g., Cabral, Ferber and Green 1981) raises similar doubts. Because these explanations are not very satisfactory, it is reasonable to assume that there must be other causes that help to perpetuate gender segregation by field which might be remedied by appropriate programs that would facilitate increases in the representation of women in traditionally male fields. Therefore the search for such programs deserves continued attention. The first step in this direction obviously is to increase the pool of qualified women Ph.D.s. Efforts toward achieving this goal must begin with high school counselors encouraging bright women students to take the courses that will enable them to go on to major in traditionally male fields. 6 Next, promising women undergraduates, including "returning students" who have interrupted their education, must be made to feel welcome in whatever field they have chosen.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
285
At a minimum, this means avoiding comments about their being in an "odd field for a woman," and that those who are over twenty, let alone thirty, no longer have enough years left to make it worth their while to pursue a career. Beyond that, instructors need to make sure to involve women students in class discussions, to mention, whenever possible, the scholarly achievements of women as well as men, and to see to it that women are not excluded from study groups and research teams. They should also be encouraged to go on to graduate work at top universities. Once in graduate school, capable women in these fields need to be given as much attention and support, moral as well as financial, from senior faculty members as promising male students normally receive. Changing the climate for women students is not, however, the focus of this paper. Instead, our primary concern here is on removing the obstacles facing young women who have successfully completed their formal education. Therefore, we go on to consider what can be done to encourage research universities to hire them on equal terms as comparable men, and to provide them with equal opportunities for a successful career after they have been hired. This is far more important than getting universities to hire well established women for tenured positions. While this would, no doubt, help to raise salaries and at times the rank of faculty women who are already well established, it will do far less to increase the total number of successful women than hiring and training of new degree recipients does.
BARRIERS TO WOMEN'S PROGRESS AND HOW TO REDUCE THEM A major obstacle for young women who want to enter academia is that they are frequently not fairly evaluated. There is considerable evidence that male and female scholars are viewed differently, even when their qualifications are comparable, because senior scholars tend to be strongly committed to stereotypes (&:skin 1998), and that publications are evaluated differently depending on their authorship. It has, for instance, been shown that identical job applications and identical papers were judged to be inferior when the attached names were female rather than male (Etaugh and Kasley 1981; FideU 1970; Wenner1s and Wold 1997).7 Other researchers found that male students tended to rate male instructors more favorably than female instructors, although the opposite was often true of female students (Ferber and Huber 1975; Kaschak 1979).
286
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Because these studies date from the 1970s and 1980s, there might be doubts whether such disparities would still be found today, but a far more recent study indicates to what extent judgments of the quality of performance continue to be influenced by the sex ofthe performer. Goldin and Rouse (1997) found that a woman's chances of being advanced beyond preliminary tryouts for major symphony orchestras were increased by about 50 percent when the auditions were held behind a screen. Further, instituting "blind auditions" explains 25 percent ofthe recent increase in the number of women in these orchestras. Similarly, the Modern Language Association discovered that anonymous submissions of papers for journals and conferences by women had considerably higher acceptance rates than those submitted with their names. Unfortunately, there is no way to interview academic candidates behind a screen, or to evaluate candidates for faculty positions without becoming aware of their sex, so we must look for other solutions. Closely related to the problem of biased evaluations of job candidates are the disadvantages women, and particularly those in predominantly male fields, face in accumulating the credentials by which they are judged. The process begins in graduate school, where there are few female professors in most departments. This is important because getting to know a faculty member well has been found to increase a graduate student's chances of obtaining a Ph.D. (Berg and Ferber 1983), and students are far more likely to get to know faculty of the same sex. Further, it is entirely likely that junior faculty women are confronted by the same problem. This conclusion appears to be invalidated by Sonnert and Holton's (1996) finding that some young women were discouraged when they did get to know women faculty. This may, however, be explained because they were likely to see that, unlike male professors, their female mentors often had not had a very successful career. As the women scientists who lodged the now famous complaints against MIT put it: "The unequal treatment ofwomen who come to MIT makes it more difficult for them to succeed, causes them to be accorded less recognition when they do, and contributes so substantially to a poor quality of life that these women can actually become negative role models for younger women" (Zernike 1999). Universities could remedy this problem by removing the obstacles to progress women often encounter. They could, for instance, compensate for the dearth of female mentors by designating carefully chosen senior faculty members who would maintain contact with women graduate students and junior faculty women who have not succeeded in establishing
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
287
such relationships themselves. They could also organize workshops for junior faculty dealing with such critical topics as grant writing, publishing, and tenure requirements at their particular institution. Of course, not all such programs have been successful. For instance, the College of Liberal Arts of one large state university held a "mentoring dinner" once a year, only to find it was so poorly attended that they discontinued it. It could be that a dinner is not a good format for this purpose because it does not lend itself to informal discussions that are most likely to be useful. By way of contrast, the Women's Caucus in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University has for some time offered a tenure workshop that has apparently been very successful. Similarly, an informal "mentoring workshop" sponsored by the Women's Studies Program at the University of Illinois U -C for several years was invariably well attended. Women's professional groups can also be helpful in this respect. For example, the Committee on the Status ofWomen in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) conducted a mentoring workshop at the January 1998 Allied Social Sciences Meetings. The junior women who attended reported afterwards that they found it very useful, and CSWEP has offered similar workshops at the meetings of the regional economics associations since then. In addition, Higher Education Resource Services has offered career workshops at about 30 universities nationwide. Another obstacle to women's advancement is that they are likely to have more difficulties finding collaborators. This is suggested by the tendency of men to have fewer women on their research teams, and to have considerably fewer female co-authors than would be expected ifthere were random pairing (Ferber and Teiman 1980; McDowell and Smith 1992). While Long (1992) found that patterns of collaboration were similar among male and female biochemists, he also noted that women's male co-authors were much more likely to be their spouses, readily explained by the large proportion offaculty women in the sciences who have a spouse in the same field. This is relevant, not only because it explains the relatively large proportion of male-female collaborations in that field, but because it is questionable whether publishing with a spouse is advantageous for women. It is widely believed that they are often thought to be "riding their husbands' coattails," all the more so because their husbands are generally senior to them, both in age and rank. Providing funding for travel to conferences and summer grants for young female faculty members in departments where there are few other women would make it possible for them to spend time at institutions where they could find
288
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
same-sex colleagues and thus help to compensate for their absence on the same campus. Such awards could be offered on a competitive basis to applicants who provide evidence that their productivity would be enhanced if they had the opportunity to work with colleagues at other institutions. This is especially important for schools in relatively isolated locations, with no other research institutions within easy commuting distance. One problem, however, is that mothers of young children might find it difficult to take advantage of such opportunities. When scholars have succeeded in doing research and writing papers or monographs, the next hurdle they confront is getting their work published. Again, there is evidence that women often are at a disadvantage. While papers with only female authors were found to have acceptance rates higher than those written by men in journals where referees did not know the identity of the authors, their acceptance rate was only equal in journals where the referees knew their identity (Ferber and Teiman 1980). This again suggests a bias against women. s The problem has been mitigated by the growing number of journals that have adopted a policy of double-blind refereeing; but it is not likely that it has been entirely remedied, if only because referees, who are usually very familiar with the field, can often guess the identity of the authors. 9 It might therefore be useful if journal editors would accompany requests to potential referees with a note providing information about the possible existence of gender bias. Beyond that, there is the question whether editors, who always make the final decision, and who necessarily know the author's identity, may at times be biased themselves. Finally, when the work of a faculty member has been published, the question remains how its quality will be judged. It has become increasingly common to use citations as the most easily quantifiable yardstick for doing so, although questions have been raised about the use of this measure, if only because citations are solely attributed to the first author, and because no distinctions are made between favorable and unfavorable references. Beyond that, however, this measure, like others discussed earlier, turns out to be biased. References to publications written by women were found to constitute a significantly smaller proportion of citations in articles written by men than in articles written by women, even in the same narrow subfields (Ferber 1986). Consequently, women are at a disadvantage in fields where they are a minority, all the more so because the differences between citation patterns ofmen and women authors are greater when the proportion ofwomen in the discipline is smaller (Ferber 1988).10
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
289
This is a cause for concern in spite of Long's (1992) finding that women's papers are cited as often, or even somewhat more often, than those written by men. For, as suggested by the higher acceptance rates of manuscripts written by women in journals that have double-blind refereeing, it may be that women's papers are of higher quality than those by male authors. To the extent this is the case, women are cited less frequently than they deserve to be, and less than papers of comparable quality written by men. For all these reasons women are likely to do less well, especially in fields where there are few of them (Stack 1994). We have also seen that they may have special problems when they are employed in institutions where they have few female colleagues, as is generally the case at highly ranked research universities. Thus, while it is clear that being employed by such institutions tends to have a positive effect on productivity (Long 1978), this effect is likely to be smaller for women. This helps to explain why a differential in publications, albeit a smaller one, is found even between women and men at the top ranked universities (Sonnert and Holton 1995; see, however, Shauman, this volume). In sum, all the evidence reported shows that women in general have found it more difficult to become productive researchers, to have their work published, and to gain recognition for their work. This view gains further support from a detailed study reported by Fried et al. (1996) based on a survey of the faculty of the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (Chapter Nine, this volume). They conclude that women, compared with equally qualified men, were (1) less likely to be nominated for promotion, to have mentors who actively fostered their careers, to be sought for collaborative research, to have equal access to resources and comparable salaries, or to participate in informal institutional networks and decision making; (2) more likely than men to find that their work was used by their mentors to further their own careers; (3) more likely to experience isolation and lack of support from the academic environment; and (4) less likely to have mentors who facilitate their external visibility, by providing them the opportunity to chair sessions at conferences and to participate in invited manuscripts. In addition, no less than 10 percent of the women reported overt sexual harassment. The authors concluded that these difficulties add up to serious cumulative disadvantage. One reason why these issues have received so little attention in discussions of why women tend to publish less than do comparable men, generally referred to as "the productivity puzzle,» may be that there has been little effort to update the relevant research. See, however, Shauman
290
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
(this volume). Universities as well as foundations should encourage exploration ofthese questions, so that we will know whether these problems persist in more recent years. Further, universities should make sure that the findings of such studies are brought to the attention of everyone involved in hiring, promotions, salary increases, and all the other decisions that shape the careers of academics. This information should also routinely be provided to newly hired women and members of minority groups so that they themselves will be aware of the disadvantages they are likely to face, and will be less inclined to blame themselves if they encounter difficulties. At the same time the information will make it easier for them to protest successfully if their record is unfairly evaluated when decisions are made concerning their salary, tenure or promotion. There is broad agreement that leadership by administrators in these matters is crucial (see, for instance, Fried et al. 1996, and Hornig, Chapter Two). Because many ofthose who pass judgment on such matters may simply choose to disregard the evidence unless it is made clear that this is not acceptable, it is imperative that the central administration set the right tone. It has the responsibility to make it clear that ignoring the obstacles women and minorities encounter in climbing the academic ladder will no longer be tolerated. This is by no means always the case now. It may, however, become a more realistic goal as some women are finally joining the ranks of administrators, and as older men with wives who are full-time homemakers are gradually replaced by a younger generation with wives who aspire to careers of their own. It is obviously not possible to provide precise guidelines how prejudicial decisions can best be avoided. On the other hand, it would not be difficult to make the decision makers aware ofexisting evidence that biased judgments often vitiate what are generally considered to be objective measures and evaluations. This should not only enable them to make more thoughtful decisions, but will also make it easier for women, and for men of courage and good will who support them, to receive a hearing when they challenge what they deem to be unfair treatment. It would be a contribution toward setting up a "benign circle" of more women being hired and promoted, thus making further progress easier. In addition, the central administration can make a great contribution and set a good example by strictly adhering to its own guidelines. This requires making efforts to find highly qualified women and underrepresented minorities for high level positions where they will participate in making the really important decisions that shape institutions and the atmosphere that permeates them.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
291
ADDITIONAL WAYS TO ENCOURAGE PROGRESS Because the quality of the departments where young scholars are located has a significant effect on their productivity over time, the first step of a new graduate toward a successful academic career is to get an appointment at an institution that provides good opportunities for professional advancement. We have already seen that the representation of women is smaller at the more prestigious institutions, where these opportunities are greatest. Therefore, beyond merely announcing that they are equal opportunity employers and beyond complying with established rules that require some proof that they are not practicing manifest discrimination, research universities should make every effort to find and hire highly qualified women and members of underrepresented minorities. The first step toward doing this is to ask caucuses ofwomen and of minorities in the various disciplines for rosters and for suggestions of qualified candidates. In addition, whenever possible, women and members of minorities should be included on search committees, and recommendations from them should no more be discounted because they would be expected to support "their own kind," than endorsements from white men are discounted. In view of the slow rate of promotion of women to tenure and to higher ranks after they have been hired (Bentley and Blackburn 1992; Ferber and Loeb 1997), it is necessary first, to make sure that they are not burdened with special difficulties. One problem to be avoided is assigning women heavier teaching loads, as was frequently the case in the past. While there is no evidence that this is still common, it is not unheard of even in recent years. 11 It is equally important to avoid giving women more separate preparations, or having them teach more undergraduate courses, which are far less complementary with research than is graduate teaching. There has long been a debate whether assigning more and different teaching responsibilities to women is the result of discrimination or a response to women's own preferences. Spencer and Bradford's (1982) findings that most academic women complain about not having enough time for research suggest that it is not likely to be the latter. In any case, whatever the answer to that question may be, it seems unlikely that women who are primarily interested in teaching would seek positions at research universities. A different but related problem is that excellence in teaching, and particularly undergraduate teaching, is valued so much less than research. Interestingly, many research universities today claim that they are placing greater emphasis on teaching, but
292
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
so far there is little evidence that they have adjusted salaries accordingly. If they were to do this, the first step would be to find better ways of evaluating teaching. Even then there would be the problem that unlike research and publications, teaching has litde visibility, and hence is far less likely to result in attractive offers from other institutions. A second problem is that women also appear to spend more time on service than do men. There are similar debates whether this is by choice, or because they are assigned more such responsibilities. A report by the University of Michigan (1994) sheds light on this question when it states that "because their numbers are still too small, women faculty often carry disproportionate commitments for student advising; department, school! college, and University committees; dissertation committees; program development, conference planning; professional service; and other service to the University and wider communities." There is, however a real dilemma here, for it is important to have women involved in these activities. The best solution for this problem in the long run is, of course, hiring more women; but that does not help those who are overburdened now. A constructive alternative to reducing demands on women is to find ways that will help to offset the additional workload. Toward this end the University ofMichigan established a Career Development Fund for Women Faculty, similar to the Minority Faculty Development Fund it already had. This Fund provides women faculty members with discretionary accounts which may be used to support graduate students or any other expenditures related to their teaching and scholarly activities. Also, as in the case of teaching, another reasonable approach would be to increase rewards for service and this would be consistent with current claims of many universities that they are placing increasing emphasis on this function. Retaining and promoting women faculty will not only be a boon to the individuals concerned, but the university will also benefit because it will avoid cosdy turnover. Further, the presence of greater numbers of successful senior women means that there will be more influential advocates and better role models for young women academics (as well as women students), and more examples to help both faculty and students overcome traditional notions that women are not likely to be productive scholars. This is particularly important because there is evidence of a strong "halo effect" when people are favorably impressed by the performance ofwomen in a predominandy male profession (Ferber, Huber, and Spitze 1979). Unlike undergraduate teaching and much of service work, developing relationships with graduate students is likely to be mutually beneficial,
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
293
because collaborating with them tends to enhance professors' productivity. This is particularly true of laboratory scientists who often depend heavily on the work of their teams of graduate students for their relatively labor intensive experiments. Therefore, the presence of larger numbers of successful senior women is also important in helping to overcome the prejudices of male students and the reservations women students have when they see women faculty members as struggling and frustrated.
ACADEMIC CAREERS AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES So far, the focus of this paper has been on issues stemming from the fact that women are still a minority in academia, and are only gradually overcoming their status as outsiders in a community where insider status is often crucial to success. We now turn to another issue that has generated a great deal of interest, and that also deserves our attention: the possible effect offamily responsibilities on the careers ofacademic women. Scholars who as early as the 1970s were predisposed to believe that there was no discrimination in academia, such as Lester (1974) and Sowell (1975), frequently attributed women's lower achievements and rewards entirely to their family responsibilities. There are many more who now recognize that there was discrimination in "the bad old days," but believe that this is no longer true. In their view, women are rewarded according to merit today, although this was not true earlier. The preponderance of evidence does not support this view. On the contrary, researchers have found only very small if any differences in the productivity ofwomen who have children and those who do not (e.g., Helmreich et al. 1980) and a number of studies, from Astin and Bayer (1979) to Shauman and Xie (this volume), have concluded that married academic women tend to be more successful than those who are single. More detailed examinations (Astin and Davis 1985; Clark and Corcoran 1986; Astin and Milem 1997) show that it is specifically women married to academics who are more productive. Bellas (1997) shed further light on this issue. Most notably, she showed that the positive effect of having an academic partner disappeared when other characteristics are controlled for. Only the number of years the partner was not employed (and presumably took on more household responsibilities), was still found to have a positive effect for both men and women, while greater physical distance between commuting partners (when the husband presumably takes care of his own household to a great extent) has a positive effect for
294
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
women. These findings suggest that, on the one hand, women do enjoy the advantages of better networking that an academic partner brings, but that on the other hand, household "responsibilities" per se do have a negative effect on their productivity. This interpretation is all the more plausible because a man's productivity is not improved by having an academic partner, although his productivity declines with greater physical distance from his wife. More surprising is the absence of convincing evidence that women who have children are less productive than those who do not (Helmreich et al. 1980), in spite of the claim by 43 percent of mothers that time required for children is a serious impediment to achieving tenure, and by 18 percent that it is somewhat of an impediment (Finkel and Olswang 1995). A large part of the explanation may be that this is the result ofselfselection. It is likely that it is mainly relatively energetic and determined women who stay in academia when they are married and have children. To the extent that this is the case, these findings are not inconsistent with the common assumption that it is difficult for many faculty women to combine a successful career with a family; most of those who had serious problems coping were presumably no longer in the sample. Therefore, there is reason for continued concern with this issue as long as the existing unequal division of child care and housework persists, and as long as universities fail to make it easier for faculty to manage dual responsibilities. At present, most continue to aggravate the problem by still adhering to rigid rules, devised at a time when the vast majority of faculty members were men who were either married to full-time homemakers or were single. Most problematic are the rules concerning the probationary period, which force young people to qualify for tenure during the early years when many are also building their families. If candidates look promising but do not yet appear to be fully qualified for a tenure track appointment, it would be preferable to offer them a "post-doc" type of position, which would give them the opportunity to do research, preferably under the auspices of a senior faculty member, rather than a job as instructor or lecturer, which generally involves a very heavy teaching schedule. Initially, family responsibilities were not much ofa problem even when women started to enter academia. In the early days, relatively few women combined marriage with an advanced degree, let alone an academic career, with the notable exception of higWy educated African American women (Perkins 1997). As recently as 1960 only 41 percent ofwomen Ph.D.s had ever been married, as compared to 88 percent of men. By 1989-1990,
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
295
however, as many as 60 percent of women Ph.D.s were married, and an additional 13 percent were divorced, while the comparable figures for men were 82 percent and 7 percent respectively (Astin 1992). At the same time, however, social norms still dictate that women as wives, mothers, and daughters have the primary responsibility for care ofthe family (Ferber and O'Farrell 1991). Thus, although the time women devote to homemaking has declined during recent decades, while the opposite has been true for men, by the 1990s wives were still spending almost twice as many hours on housework and child care as their husbands did (Blau, Ferber and Winkler, forthcoming). Under these circumstances, family-friendly policies are crucial if women are to make more progress in academia,12 and especially so at research universities where faculty are expected to devote considerable amounts of time and energy to scholarly activities, in addition to meeting their teaching and service responsibilities. As discussed in other papers in this volume, universities could adopt a variety of programs to reduce the conflicts that face faculty members with family responsibilities, ranging from more generous maternity, parental and family leaves, as well as assistance with child care and elder care, to rollbacks of the tenure clock. To this list should be added assistance to faculty who dropped out for some years to help them get back into the mainstream. This has become increasingly important as life expectancy has increased. A woman who wants to reenter, say at the age of 40, plausibly has 30 or more productive years ahead of her. All such programs would surely be very helpful, but it would be a serious mistake to make any of these benefits available to women without also extending them to men. Not only would this be unfair to men who take on their fair share of housework, but it would also serve to perpetuate the traditional view that only women have family responsibilities. Further, restricting benefits to women would make it more expensive to hire them, thus reinforcing existing preferences for hiring men. Two additional subjects not covered elsewhere in this paper deserve attention. One is providing better terms for faculty who prefer to work less than full-time, so that they will not be at a serious disadvantage compared to regular full-time faculty; the other is mitigating the problems academic couples face when they want to find jobs in the same geographic area. As already noted, there has been a considerable increase in part-time and other irregular appointments. A good deal of evidence suggests that universities mainly offer such jobs to save money and to increase their
296
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
own flexibility, not in order to accommodate women and men who prefer more flexible arrangements. These appointments are generally "off track" as far as tenure is concerned, have no other form of job protection, pay disproportionately low salaries, and provide few if any of the other benefits that are available to tenure track faculty (Raabe 1997). Also, people with such appointments frequendy do not have a vote in department and college matters, and in many instances are not even afforded the opportunity to obtain outside funding under university auspices (Fox 1989). Such practices are consistent with developments in the economy as a whole, where nonstandard jobs have also proliferated. Although there is considerable evidence that this increase is mainly the result ofchanging preferences of employers rather than workers (Tilly 1991), it is also true that some workers prefer part-time and other nonstandard arrangements to regular full-time jobs. The problem is that the greater flexibility is often obtained at the expense of lower earnings, and almost always less favorable longterm prospects (Ferber and Waldfogel 1998). As might be expected, women are disproportionately represented among workers in nonstandard positions, at universities as in the rest of the economy. This is all the more unfortunate because women have been found to be considerably more productive when they are in tenure track positions (Reskin 1978). A far more equitable approach would be to offer faculty the opportunity to have reduced teaching and service loads, or not to teach each semester/quarter, with a correspondingly adjusted rate ofpay and a proportionate benefits package. For the most part, salaries, pensions, travel subsidies, expense allowances and other such benefits could simply be pro-rated. Because this can not be done in the case of health insurance, part-time and part-year employees could be required to make appropriate contributions toward covering its cost. Fair solutions of other issues can also be found. Part-time as well as part-year faculty might have to share offices; also, they might be expected to take on fewer dissertation responsibilities and fewer service commitments, but those employed only part-year would need to continue to carry out those they have taken on even during the semesters/ quarters when they are not employed. The time for the tenure decision could be extended, so that faculty who work, say, half-time would have twice as many years to qualifY for tenure as those who work full-time. Alternatively, a person working half-time might be evaluated for tenure at the same time as full-time faculty members, but be expected to have done only half as much research, service, and teaching. Needless to say, no adjustments would be made in terms of the quality of work expected of the candidates.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
297
Until traditional family arrangements change far more than they have to date, providing equal opportunities for nonstandard employees by instituting such policies will undoubtedly make a direct contribution to increasing the number and improving the status of women on university faculties. This in turn is likely to encourage more young women to plan on and to remain in academic careers because it would be much easier to combine having a family with a successful career. The second family related problem that continues to impact women more than men is the difficulty of both partners finding suitable jobs without resorting to long commutes. This is often especially difficult for academics because so many of them have partners who also are, or would like to be, academics. Certainly many ofthem have the necessary qualifications. Among first partners of a large representative sample of faculty at 22 institutions of higher learning in Illinois, as many as 40 percent of women's partners had Ph.D.s and an additional 27 percent had M.A.s. Among first partners of men, the proportion that had advanced degrees was lower, but still high relative to the total population. Eighteen percent of them were also employed by an academic institution; 15 percent had Ph.D.s and 47 percent had M.A.s. Further, fully 35 percent ofwomen's first partners who were employed when they first met were also employed by an academic institution (Ferber and Loeb 1997). How universities deal with the issue of partners who are also looking for faculty or professional positions is therefore very important for academic women, most notably at the many universities and colleges that are located in geographic areas where other job opportunities are very limited. The reason this problem is particularly serious for these women is not only that they are even more likely than their male colleagues to have partners who have the qualifications to be academics, but also that women continue to be more likely than men to follow their partners (Bielby and Bielby 1992), albeit less so than in earlier days. Therefore many of them are still in a position of trying to find a job as best they can after their husband has accepted a position. For a long time universities took no interest in the problems of partners of candidates or faculty members who were unable to find suitable employment. On the contrary, they generally even enforced rigid so-called anti-nepotism rules against hiring both members of married couples. 13 This may well have been in large part because it was primarily married women who were unable to obtain jobs under those conditions. In fact, as Hornig (1997) suggests, anti-nepotism rules gave administrators a pretext for not
298
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
hiring the women they preferred not to employ in any case. The situation finally began to change when it became increasingly difficult to hire and retain promising young men with partners who were unable to find suitable jobs. In addition, legal challenges may have played a part as well. Today, such anti-nepotism rules are long gone, and many universities go so far as to extend help to partners of prospective and current faculty members in finding jobs. Some merely provide information about possible openings with other employers in the community, some either permit individual units within the university to negotiate with other units about accommodating qualified partners of candidates they want to hire or of faculty they want to retain. Increasingly, however, many institutions have gone further and have instituted programs to facilitate hiring partners. By the beginning of the 1990s, more than half of a national sample of colleges and universities had, or were planning to initiate some provisions for hiring spouses (Raabe 1997). Regrettably, at present these programs are generally restricted to spouses and are not extended to unmarried partners, whether of the same sex or the opposite sex, putting the latter at an unfair disadvantage. As would be expected, there are many concerns about possible problems that might arise when such programs are adopted. It may be difficult to find appropriate openings for two people, so that the "trailing partner" may have to be hired for a position that has a relatively low priority. Highly valued scholars with a great deal of bargaining power may use their influence to have their partners hired and retained, and perhaps to gain other advantages for them as well. (One may suspect that these concerns in many instances tend to be fueled by the fact that no less than 69 of 90 "trailing spouses" were women, although this proportion has been declining over time.) Programs to accommodate couples are sometimes viewed as conflicting with affirmative action policies and procedures. In view of the high divorce rate, it has been suggested that if the couple later breaks up, the more highly qualified partner is the one who is more likely to find an attractive position elsewhere, leaving the employer with a bad bargain indeed. At times colleagues are apprehensive about the possibility that the partners may form political alliances, particularly when both have appointments in the same small unit. Finally, questions have also been raised about the legality of giving preference to spouses over other candidates. While these concerns are not implausible, a careful study by Loeb (1997) of the consequences of the program that was implemented at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign by 1990, suggests that they have little basis in fact. 14 She found that "trailing spouses" were, in fact, hired
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
299
on terms no better than those extended to other candidates with comparable qualifications. Minorities are actually somewhat more frequently involved in special accommodations than would be expected on the basis of their representation among faculty members. As of 1997 there had been no instances of such couples getting divorced and the university being left with only the person who was the secondary hire. Concerning both spouses being in the same small unit, only 32 couples out of 90 were even in the same college; no more than 12 were in the same department, and most of these departments were rather large. One outcome that is viewed askance by some is that the secondary hires were more likely to be in areas to which the university assigns lower priority. Others are, however, likely to be pleased because this will help to offset what they view as an undesirable emphasis universities now tend to place on lucrative fields at the expense of disciplines that used to be considered the core of a liberal education. Furthermore, any advantage departments that hire the "trailing spouses" gain will be balanced partly or entirely by the greater success in hiring and retaining the targeted faculty members, who were disproportionately represented in high priority fields. Finally, Shoben (1997), who considers the legality of such programs at some length, concludes that since there have been no recorded challenges to any of them, there are not likely to be any legal problems for institutions that choose to pursue such an agenda. GETIING EFFECTIVE POLICIES ADOPTED AND IMPLEMENTED
Throughout this volume, numerous and varied programs are suggested that would be expected to be helpful in increasing the representation and improving the status of women at research universities. IS The real challenge in many instances is to find ways to encourage universities to institute such programs, and to provide adequate support for them so that they will be effective. A number ofsuggestions are offered below that might be helpful in achieving these goals. These recommendations are in part based on the favorable outcomes achieved by the programs at the Department of Medicine ofJohns Hopkins University and at the University of Michigan, as reported elsewhere in this volume. ENCOURAGING UNIVERSITIES TO ADOPT NEW POLICIES
(1) Although there is a great deal ofevidence of bias and subtle forms of discrimination against women and minorities, administrators are often
300
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
not convinced that these problems exist at their own institutions. Therefore, research focusing on the situation on individual campuses is particularly useful and faculty concerned with improving the situation should consider devoting some of their time and energy to such efforts. Hollenshead (this volume) reports that such research has been very useful in promoting women's progress at the University of Michigan, and the research reported in Ferber and Loeb (1973) eventually led to salary adjustments for a substantial number of women at the University of Illinois, U-C. At the same time, many such studies have also been published, thus direcdy furthering the career of the researchers as well. (2) Existing research focuses almost entirely on the negative effects of discrimination on the people against whom it is directed. There is reason to believe that it frequendy also has negative effects on the institutions that discriminate. It would be very useful if more effort were made to document that. One of the few studies that provides such evidence is Kolpin and Singell (1996). They found that economics departments which hired fewer women subsequendy declined in rank relative to those that hired more of them. 16 This is the kind of documentation administrators are likely to find persuasive. In addition, it would be useful to demonstrate the benefits of a diverse faculty, not only because it would provide role models for diverse students, but also because it would help to broaden the horizons of the many young people who still all too often think that scholars and researchers are necessarily white males. (3) Although organized groups of women and minorities, along with their allies within universities, may have some influence on administrators, support from influential groups of outsiders is likely to be extremely helpful. These might include alumnae, particularly those with graduate degrees, women's committees and caucuses of professional organizations and large contributors as well as political figures sympathetic to the cause of women and minorities. Advocacy by these groups and individuals will be all the more effective ifthey are willing to back their recommendations with financial support, as for instance, a group of University of Pennsylvania alumnae and the Committee for the Equality ofWomen at Harvard have done.
ENSURING EFFECTIVENESS OF POLICIES Getting the administration to agree to adopt a program is necessary but not sufficient. Just as important is making sure that responsibility for administering the program is in the hands of people who are sympathetic
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
301
to its aims and who have no conflicts of interest; that the specific provisions of the program will serve the intended purposes; that its existence is adequately publicized; and that the intended beneficiaries have ready recourse if they believe they have not been fairly treated. To further these purposes, the following recommendations should be considered. (1) As far as possible, policies to improve the representation and status ofwomen and minorities should be uniform across the whole campus rather than left in the hands of individual colleges, let alone departments and institutes. A decentralized system leaves individual candidates and faculty members largely at the mercy of the administrators of particular units, who tend to be members of the "old boys' network" in their own department or institute, and who often find it relatively easy to shift responsibility for fairer treatment of underrepresented groups upward. Instead, responsibility should rest with a single office, which can be held accountable by the underrepresented groups and their supporters, and which is directly responsible to the central administration. Reasonable people disagree whether or not this should be the Mfirmative Action Office. On the one hand, objection may be raised that the primary function of this office is to defend the university against charges of non-compliance. On the other hand, although the experience with ombudspersons shows that wise and competent individuals with little or no administrative power can be effective, there is reason to look askance at adding one more administrative unit that may well end up being viewed as a mere token with no real authority or influence. (2) Development of the details should not be left in the hands of the administrators alone, because they can not be counted upon to be sufficiently aware of what is needed if the programs are to be useful to the intended beneficiaries. Rather there should be advisory committees which include representatives of the groups to be served, who are likely to have more expertise in this respect, and who can also see to it that all provisions are carefully spelled out so that misunderstandings will be minimized. (3) There is evidence that some programs are surprisingly rarely used. For example, Finkel and Olswang (1995) report that only 30 percent of those eligible take full paid maternity leave when it is available. One reason for this may be that such programs are not adequately publicized. Further, word ofmouth suggests that many faculty members are reluctant to take advantage ofsome programs for fear that they will be viewed as not being serious about their careers. To counter this it is crucial to offer assurances that the programs are intended to be used, and that doing so will not be viewed unfavorably.
302
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
(4) There need to be watchdog bodies to monitor the operation of these programs and to provide safeguards in case ofoccasional mistakes and abuses. These might be already existing committees on the status ofwomen and minorities, a committee especially designated to monitor the operation a ofa particular program, or perhaps caucuses ofwomen and minorities. To be effective, some of the members of the designated bodies must be individuals who identify with the cause of promoting the status of women and minorities and have good rapport with these groups. Such committees might want to conduct exit interviews with all faculty who leave their jobs, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. These people obviously do not constitute a random sample, but they may be expected to provide much useful information because they are more likely to be candid about any problems they may have encountered than are faculty who will have to continue to associate with the people who created difficulties for them. (5) Finally, there need to be clearly defined grievance procedures that provide reasonable recourse for all faculty members who believe that they have been injured by the failure of administrators or committees to follow the specified rules. These procedures should generally involve use of outside referees. This would put decision makers on notice that their dirty linens might become public and, if that is not sufficient to make them more careful, should increase the chances that the grievant will receive a fair hearing. While there would undoubtedly be objections to such a procedure on the grounds that it would be a burden on the outsiders, these can be countered by pointing to the routine use of outside referees in tenure and promotion cases.
NOTES 1. I would like to thank Jane W. Loeb and Robert Toutkoushian for their very useful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft, as well as mends and colleagues who provided information about other universities. 2. This relation between earnings and the gender composition of a discipline is not always obvious when broad fields are examined because there is a good deal of segregation within these categories. For instance, in the area of "health" women are particularly highly represented in nursing. Or again, in the "social sciences" there is a far larger proportion of women in anthropology and sociology than in economics and political science.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
303
3. Interesting differences were also fOWld in patterns between racial/ethnic groups. White and Asian women earned less than men with similar characteristics, while there is no evidence that this was the case for Hispanic and black women. Further, equally qualified Hispanic males earned less than white males, but there was no difference between black and white males, nor between Hispanic and white females, but black females earned more than white females (Toutkoushian 1998). 4. This information was received in private correspondence from a friend who asked that the source remain confidential. 5. This may have, at least in part been the result ofWorld War II, when a very large proportion of young men in that country were in the armed forces. 6. One way to ensure that girls will not avoid taking such courses is to require all students to take them. In countries where this is done, the proportion of women in science tends to be a good deal higher.
7. The same point is illustrated by Valian (1998), who reports that people who were shown pictures of pairs of women and men who were, in fact) ofthe same height, consistently thought that the men were taller. 8. One can only conjecture why papers written by women have a higher acceptance rate in journals with double blind refereeing. A plausible explanation is that women are far less likely to submit papers till they have been carefully polished, as suggested by the fact that they submit fewer papers. 9. Footnotes are often very revealing, and it is not Wlusual to find explicit references to previous work by the authors.
10. This will not surprise anyone who is familiar with Kanter's (1977) work on the problems of "tokens." Further evidence that women are viewed more Wlfavorably when there are fewer of them is provided by Heilman (1980) who fOWld that male and female MBA students judged a woman applicant for a managerial position less favorably when the proportion of women in the applicant pool was smaller.
11. Such a charge is made, for instance, by the internal report of the large urban Wliversity previously mentioned.
12. For example, Fried et al. (1996) fOWld that two-thirds ofwomen and almost one-third of men experienced problems because of their family responsibilities when faculty meetings were scheduled after 5 p.m. or on weekends.
304
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
13. The rules were often far more relaxed when it came to other relatives. For instance, Hornig (1997) reports that while Princeton refused to consider a woman who was a lecturer in a language department for a regular appointment because she was married to a professor in the chemistry department, the institution employed a set of twin brothers for many years. Such practices were frequently justified on the grounds that faculty wives are likely to be less qualified than other faculty women, although research showed early on that this was not the case (Ferber and Loeb 1973); this has recently been confirmed (e.g. Bellas, 1997). 14. This program evolved gradually out of the growing practice of accommodating couples which began in the late 1980s. Its main provisions are: (1) The officer of the unit recruiting or trying to retain a tenured or tenure track faculty member contacts the unit that might employ the partner, and must put up one-third of the partner's salary. (2) The officer of the partner's unit must provide justification for agreeing to hire the partner, and must also put up one-third of the salary. (3) Once both units agree, and after consultation with the Chancellor, the Associate Chancellor and the Mfirmative Action Officer, the Provost extends a waiver of the usual search and puts up the remaining one-third of the salary. (4) If the faculty member hired under these provisions resigns or is terminated in less than 5 years, the funds allocated to his or her department by the campus must be returned. Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania also have well developed programs of this type. Possible advantages and disadvantages of hiring couples are also discussed by Hornig (1997). 15. One issue that has received a great deal of attention from researchers, but that is not specifically addressed in this paper is the earnings gap between men and women faculty. The main reason for the decision not to focus on salaries here is that it can plausibly be argued that it is more urgent to increase the representation of women and to provide them with a fair opportunity to obtain tenure. A second reason is that resolving the other issues (including a more equal distribution by field) is likely to increase women's salaries in any case. 16. The rankings were taken from Graves, Marchand, and Thompson (1982), and were done on the basis of the number ofpages published per faculty member in 24 leading journals for the period between 1974 and 1978 (Kolpin and Singell 1996).
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
305
REFERENCES Astin, Helen. 1992. Academic women 1989-1990. Paper presented at the February 1992 Sustaining Faculty Diversity in the Research University conference, University of Tucson. _ _ _, and Alan E. Bayer. 1979. Pervasive sex differences in the academic reward system: Scholarship, marriage, and what else? In Academic rewards in higher education, eds. Darrell R. Lewis and William E. Becker, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing. _ _ _, and Diane E. Davis. 1985. Research productivity across the life and career cycle: Facilitators and barriers for women. In Scholarly writing and publishing: Issues, problems, and solutions, ed. Mary F. Fox. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. _ _ _, and Jeffrey F. Milem. 1997. The status of academic couples in U.S. academic institutions. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Bellas, Marcia L. 1994. Comparable worth in academia: The effects on faculty salaries of the sex composition and labor market conditions of academic disciplines. American Sociological Review 59: 807-2l. _ _ _. 1997. The scholarly productivity of academic couples. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Bendey, Richard J., and Robert T. Blackburn. 1992. Two decades ofgains for female faculty? Teachers College Record 93: 697-709. Berg, Helen M., and Marianne A. Ferber. 1983. Men and women graduate students: Who succeeds and why? Journal ofHigher Education 54: 629-48. Bielby, Denise D., and William T. Bielby. 1992. I will follow him: Family ties, gender role beliefs, and reluctance to relocate for a better job. American Journal of Sociology 97: 1241-67. Blau, Francine D. 1977. Equalpay in the office. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath. _ _ _, Marianne A. Ferber, and Anne E. Winkler, eds. Forthcoming. The economics ofwomen, men, and work, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
306
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Cabral, Robert, Marianne A. Ferber, and Carole A. Green. 1981. Men and women in fiduciary institutions: A study of sex differences in career development. Review ofEconomics and Statistics 63: 573-80. Clark, Shirley M., and Mary Corcoran. 1986. Perspectives on the professional socialization of women faculty. Journal of Higher Education 57: 20-43. Etaugh, Claire, and Helen C. Kasley. 1981. Evaluating competence: Effects of sex, marital status and parental status. Psychology of Women Q;tarterly 6: 196-203. Ferber, Marianne A. 1986. Citations: Are they an objective measure of scholarly merit? Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11: 381-89. _ _ _. 1988. Citations and networking. Gender and Society 2: 82-89. _ _ _, and Brigid O'Farrell, eds., in collaboration with LaRue Allen. 1991. Work and family: Policiesfor a changing work force. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. _ _ _, and Jane W. Loeb. 1973. Performance, rewards and perceptions of sex discrimination of male and female faculty members. American Journal of Sociology 78: 995-1002. _ _ _, and Jane W. Loeb. 1997. Introduction. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _, and Jane Waldfogel. 1998. The long-term consequences ofnontraditional work. Monthly Labor Review 121: 3-12. _ _ _, and Joan A. Huber. 1975. Sex of student and instructor: A study of student bias. American Journal ofSociology 80: 949-63. _ _ _, Joan A. Huber, and Glenna Spitze. 1980. Preference for men as bosses and professionals. Social Forces 58: 466-76. _ _ _, and Michelle L. Teiman. 1980. Are women economists at a disadvantage in publishing journal articles? Eastern EconomicJournal 6: 89-94. Fidell, L. S. 1970. Empirical verification of sex discrimination in hiring practices in psychology. American Psychologist 25: 1094-98. Finkel, Susan K, and Steven G. Olswang. 1995. Child rearing as a career impediment to women assistant professors. Review ofHigher Education 19: 123-39.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
307
Fox, Mary Frank. 1989. Women and higher education: Gender differences in the status of students and scholars. In Women: A feminist perspective, ed. Jo Freeman. Mountain View, Cal.: Mayfield Publishing Company. Fried, Linda P. et al. 1996. Career development for women in academic medicine. Journal ofthe American Medical Association 276: 898-905. Goldin, Claudia. 1990. Understanding the gender gap. New York: Oxford University Press. _ _ _, and Cecilia Rouse. 1997. Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of blind auditions on female musicians. NBER Paper No. 5903. Graves, Philip E., Jarnes R. Marchand, and Randall Thompson. 1982. Economics department rankings: Research incentives, constraints, and efficiency. American Economic Review 72: 1131-31. Heilman, M. E. 1980. The impact of situational factors on personnel decisions concerning women: Varying the sex composition of the applicant pool. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 26: 386-95. Helmreich, Robert, Janet T. Spence, W. Beane, G. W. Lucker, and K. Matthews. 1980. Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39: 896-908. Hollenshead, Carol S. 2002. Components of successful change. This volume. Hornig, Lilli S. 1997. Academic couples: The view from the administration. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _. 2002. Chapter Two, this volume. Kanter, Rosabeth. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Kaschak, Ellyn. 1979. Sex bias in student evaluations of college professors. Psychology of Women Quarterly 2: 236-44. Kolpin, Van W., and Larry D. Singell, Jr. 1996. The gender composition and scholarly performance of economics departments: A test for employment discrimination. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 49: 408-23.
308
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Lester, Richard A. 1974. Antibias regulation ofuniversities: Faculty problems and their solutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Loeb, Jane W. 1997. Programs for academic partners: How well can they work? In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Long, J. Scott. 1978. Productivity and academic position in the scientific career. American Sociological Review 43: 889-908. _ _ _. 1992. Measures of sex differences in scientific productivity. Social Forces 71: 159-78. McDowell, John M., and Janet Kiholm Smith. 1992. The effect of gender-sorting on propensity to co-author: Implications for academic promotion. Economic Inquiry 30: 68-82. O'Neill, June, and Nachum Sicherman. 1990. Is the gender gap in economics declining? Unpublished manuscript. Perkins, Linda M. 1997. For the good ofthe race: Married Afiican-American academics: A historical perspective. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Polachek, Solomon W. 1978. Sex differences in college major. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 31: 498-508. Raabe, Phyllis H. 1997. Work-family policies for faculty: How career and family-friendly is academe? In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Reskin, Barbara F. 1976. Sex differences in status attainment in science: The case of the postdoctoral fellowship. American Sociological Review 41: 597-612. _ _ _. 1998. The realities of affirmative action in employment. Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association. Shauman, Kimberlee A., and Yu Xie. 2002. Explaining sex differences in publication productivity among postsecondary faculty. This volume. Shoben, Elaine W. 1997. From anti-nepotism to programs for partners: Legal issues. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Smart, John C. 1991. Gender equity in academic rank and salary. Review of Higher Education 14: 511-26.
Women's Uneven Progress in Academia: Problems and Solutions
309
Sonnert, Gerhard, and Gerald Holton. 1995. Gender differences in science careers: The Project Access study. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Sowell, Thomas. 1975. Affirmative action reconsidered: Was it necessary in academia? Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Spencer, Mary L., and Eva F. Bradford. 1982. Status and needs ofwomen scholars, in Handbook for women scholars: Strategies for success, eds. Mary L. Spencer, Monika Kehoe, and Karen Speece. San Francisco: Center for Women Scholars, Americas Behaviorial Research Corp. Stack, S. 1994. The effects of gender on publishing: The case of sociology. Sociological Focus 27, no. 1 (February): 81-83. Stanford University. 1998. The status of women at Stanford: An update of the 1993 report on the recruitment and retention of women faculty. Background data for presentation to faculty senate. Palo Alto: Stanford University. Tilly, Chris. 1991. Reasons for the continuing growth of part-time employment. Monthly Labor Review 114: 10-18. Toutkoushian, Robert K. 1998. Racial and marital status differences in faculty pay. The Journal of Higher Education 69: 513-541. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 1994, 1997. Digest for Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. University of Michigan. 1994. Draft announcement for a career development fund for women faculty. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why so slow? Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Wenneras, Christine, and Agnes Wold. 1997. Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature 387: 341-43. Zernike, Kate. 1999. MIT women win a fight against bias; in rare move, school admits discrimination. The Boston Globe March 21.
Chapter Thirteen
Work/Family/Life Issues and Programs in Higher Education-What's New Kathleen Sullivan
Colleges and universities have as their mission as institutions of higher learning a focus on teaching and research. Until recently, higher education rarely looked at itself from the perspective of an employer. Campuses often have rich working environments with opportunities for establishing unique working relationships and, almost always, with opportunities for continuing education for staff and faculty, as well as students. Because these programs are often housed within academic units as part of an ongoing research and/or teaching project, they are not always visible to employees and therefore not considered part of the employee support programs traditionally administered by Human Resources. Likewise, parttime and alternative work schedules, job shares and other accommodating work arrangements often exist on the campus. However, they are not necessarily reflected in workplace policies, but rather occur randomly according to the management style of individual department chairs or supervisors. In 1991 the Families and Work Institute published The Corporate Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs (Galinsky, Friedman, and Hernandez 1991), a landmark study which gave objective criteria and data on the need for and effectiveness of these programs in the business world. At the same time books were written on the changing workforce Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities Edited by Hornig, K1uwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
311
312
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
and companies who care. Companies that excelled at supporting their employees in balancing work and family began receiving awards. As businesses began receiving recognition for achievement in this area, and, more importantly, the positive effect of work-family policies and programs on the company's bottom line was documented, it became increasingly evident that the old mind-set of work and family or personal life as two separate and unrelated worlds was no longer viable. During this period with the changes in the workforce and in the national economy, campuses found themselves in a position to consider reorganization, downsizing and other elements of organizational change. That necessitated following business's lead and looking at how best to support faculty, staff and students through the change process. In the early '90s two important things happened that were pivotal in the formal development of family friendly benefits and programs on campuses. First was the founding of the College and University Work/Family Association (CUWFA) in 1994. And then, in 1996 the College and University Personnel Association Foundation (CUPAF) and the Families and Work Institute (FWI) published The College and University Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs. The work of CUWFA and the study done by FWI and CUPAF will form the sources for the information we present in what's new in work/family/life issues and programs in higher education. Many colleges and universities have offered child care on their campuses since the early '70s. Often it was initially established as a service for students, many of whom were returning to campus after having started their families. As the workforce changed with an increased number of women and dual working parent families on campus, the centers began to be increasingly utilized by faculty and staff. These centers often became the "hub" for faculty, staff and students in seeking assistance, not only with their children and child care issues, but also with the unique personal and family related challenges facing those who work and live on campuses today. Some universities responded by adding family care resource and referral services to their child care efforts, and/or offering educational seminars for parents. In 1994 a group of approximately 12 campus child care and family resource administrators at campuses around the country came together to share information and discuss the challenges unique to being on a campus. With this effort the College and University WorkjFamily Association was formed. Formally established in 1995, the mission of CUWFA is to provide leadership in facilitating the integration of work and study with family/personallife at institutions of
Work/Family/Life Issues and Programs in Higher Education-What's New
313
higher learning. The organization's mission supports the broader goals of creating a healthy and productive environment for men and women across the life span and contributing to the well-being of future generations. The principal objectives of CUWFA are as follows: 1. To offer professional support and provide a forum for discussion of issues and opportunities for networking, mentoring, and professional exchange. 2. To gather and disseminate information on relevant research, trends, publications and events related to work/life issues in higher education. 3. To contribute to awareness and understanding of developments in the field, including projects linking research to practice (Galinsky et al' 1991). Membership in CUWFA grew quickly. By 1998 over 100 college and university campuses from all over the United States, Canada and Australia were represented in the membership. The group established CUWFANET, an interactive listserve on which members can ask questions, collect information and share challenges and successes unique to the higher education environment. As CUWFA members began to explore the establishment of formal work/family/life programs in their colleges and universities it became clear that campuses offered some very unique factors that could present challenges different than those in the corporate world. They included the: • focus of the institutional mission on research and education; • highly decentralized environment, making it difficult to identifY those faculty, staff and students who had work/family/life needs and effectively respond; • three unique and distinct constituencies-faculty, staff and students--each ofwhom had very different roles, benefits, schedules, expectations, environmental needs, and ways of measuring success; • distinct funding streams for different constituencies, many ofwhich cannot be combined even if they have similar missions. Universities and colleges also often have some distinct advantages that put them ahead of the game when it comes to formalizing a work/ family/life program. They included: • elements of family-friendly programs may already be in place though decentralized; • collaboration and partnerships are inherent to the culture and often highly valued;
314
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
• less new money may be required to triage with existing programs in a work-life umbrella; • creativity and cutting edge programs are highly valued on campuses. Thinking 'outside of the box' is often a mantra for those developing new programs on campuses. Among CUWFA members the structure ofthe work/family/life program and even where it reports within the University administration is highly variable. Programs exist within Human Resources, in Student Mfairs, under the Provost and President's Office and in Vice President for Business's offices. All can be equally effective if campus wide partnerships are formed. The first formal study of work/family programs in the nation's colleges and universities was done jointly by the College and University Personnel Association Foundation and the Families and Work Institute in 1996 (Friedman, Rimsky, and Johnson 1996). The purpose of this study was to examine the campus as a workplace, to understand the motivations and barriers for work-family policy development, and to discern future trends for addressing work-family conflicts in the lives of faculty, staff and students. The study identified best practice by conducting a survey of 375 institutions of higher education. In addition to the survey data analysis, the report included a number of case studies that illustrated how workfamily initiatives were implemented and integrated with other human resource objectives. From the information collected an Index of Campus Work Family Initiatives was created, which could be used as a self-assessment tool and as an aid to planning the expansion of an institution's work-family agenda. 375 institutions were surveyed and 94 leadership campuses were identified. These campuses had an average of 30 programs or policies designed to help employees balance their personal and family life with work/study responsibilities. While this is still a relatively small number the study showed that 84 percent of the leadership campuses expected work-family activity to grow and over half of the other respondents agreed with this assessment. This optimism is also reflected in the membership growth of CUWFA discussed above. Other key findings of the FWI and CUPA Foundation study included: • the primary driver of growth was concern about recruitment and retention, especially of women;
Work/Family/life Issues and Programs in Higher Education-What's New
315
• other major drivers of growth included targeting diversity efforts and linking them with work/family efforts, stressing human resource planning; • leadership campuses were more likely to have developed a rationale for work/family efforts in relation to strategic issues ofmorale, recruitment and retention. (Leadership campuses were focused on recruiting faculty and staff while other campuses had a stronger focus on recruiting students.) • institutional change often presented an opportunity for strengthening a work/family agenda and not, as is often believed, a reason for postponing work-family efforts. The study found that leadership campuses had experienced more institutional change than other campuses surveyed. • key to the success ofwork/family efforts on a campus was the importance and level of commitment of the various stakeholders for work-family efforts. 79% of the leadership campuses felt that having the president of the university committed was extremely important with 76% also listing the chief ofhuman resources and 65% the provost. 42% of the leadership campuses saw their president as "very committed," 79% gave that rating to their chiefofhuman resources, while only 29% rated their provost as very committed. The programs most often offered by leadership campuses included: Academic courses on work-family 84% Child care centers 72% Child care referral list 71 % Child care referral counseling 55% Summer camp 53% Relocation assistance 52% Elder care referral counseling 48% Elder care referral list 45% After-school care 33% Child care discounts 27% Holiday/vacation care 20% Evening child care 16% Sick child care 16% Emergency child care 14% Child care subsidies 11 % Adoption benefits 7% Child care reimbursement for business travel 4%
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
316
Offering family-friendly benefits and programs is only part of the challenge. The goal is to effect a change in the culture, where individuals are valued and respected in a holistic manner. In the FWI/CUPAF study several questions were asked regarding the extent to which policies were used and the employee's comfort in using the policies. Faculty sabbatical, child care, parent counseling, elder care resource and referral were among those programs most felt able to use. Administrative sabbatical, work at home/telecommuting, stopping the tenure clock and job sharing scored significantly lower in the respondent's comfort in taking advantage of the policy or program. Over a third ofthe staff felt there would be a penalty for utilization ofpart-time or work at a distance options. 26% of the faculty perceived a penalty associated with utilizing the stopping of the tenure track policy. In discussion with CUWFA members who do individual counseling in work-balance issues as part of their program significant concern is expressed at the career risks which may occur if family-friendly benefits are utilized. This is more critical in some academic fields than others and ofspecial concern to faculty women. Rae Simpson discusses this in more depth below. Work and family programs are becoming an integrated part of the university and college culture. In response to employees without dependents, more and more programs are moving from work/family to work/ life. With the advent of the competition for workers and the high stress level found in today's workplace, including our campuses, we must support all faculty, staff and students in having a life in which all the elements of their lives support each other. The WorkLife Office, working with other important partners throughout the campus community, can become a strong advocate for employees and the eyes and ears of the administration. Among the continuing challenges is how to best understand the unique circumstances faced by faculty women, the issue discussed by Rae Simpson.
NOTES 1. College and University Work/Family Association membership brochure. For more information, visit their website at http:// www.cuwfa.org.
Work/Family/Life Issues and Programs in Higher Education-What's New
317
REFERENCES Friedman, Dana E., Cathy Rimsky, and Arlene A. Johnson. 1996. College and universityreferenceguide to workfamilyprograms. New York: CUPA Foundation, Families and Work Institute. Galinsky, Ellen, Dana E. Friedman, and Carol Hernandez. 1991. The corporate referenceguide to workfamily programs. New York: Families and Work Institute.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
318
Old Issues, New Solutions: Fam iIy and Work Response to Kath leen Su II ivan Rae Simpson
This discussion will offer a few, very informal reflections on the ways in which the powerful work/family trends on university campuses play out specifically with respect to women faculty in Research I universities. There are a few important caveats: First, my presence is not intended to suggest that MIT should be regarded as a model in addressing faculty work/ family concerns; on the contrary, it is rather that my office has been giving special attention to these issues recently. Second, I am speaking strictly from informal observation ofone university; there are dearly significant differences in culture and programs among departments, let alone among universities and areas ofthe country. Third, my observations may be different even from those of others at MIT who are working intensely on these issues. However, in keeping in touch informally with others at MIT, with colleagues at other leadership universities, and with findings from relevant research, I do observe significant common ground as we struggle with these issues together. That said, given Kathleen Sullivan's description of the significant strides that have been made in programs and policies on university campuses, what still needs to be done specifically for women faculty in research universities around work/family issues? And how can we do it? A key problem-and a theme running through this book-is that there is still a significant disconnect on university campuses, as elsewhere, L. S. Hornig, Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes © Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2003
Old Issues, New Solutions: Family and Work
319
between what is politically correct and what is culturally correct with respect to work/family issues; between what women ask for and what they really want; between the policies and programs that are available and the policies and programs that women actually use. An underlying cultural assumption typically remains: children and academic careers in major research universities don't mix. If you have a child, "they will kill you," as one MIT faculty member recendy put it. At least if you are thinking in terms of a tenure-track career, having a child will jeopardize whatever your next career step may be-research opportunities, job prospects, tenure, grants, overall reputation among peers-and/or the heavy demands of your career will jeopardize your family life. Regardless of the realities ofyour own productivity, or of research findings about parenthood and productivity, you will be perceived and treated differendy. While certainly not in all departments and universities, in many settings this compelling message is passed along the pipeline from senior to junior faculty, from faculty to postdocs and graduate students-and it is being passed on to our children, our advisees, the next generation. Furthermore, it is continually reinforced by faculty members' own observation that in fact these assumptions still drive much of university decision-making and community life. The cultural assumption that, within research universities, academic careers and family life don't mix of course often drives much of the work/ family issue underground. Women faculty keep most of their work/family dilemmas to themselves, making and living out their decisions often silendy, often alone. Many, as we know, forego childrearing; some postpone childrearing, lamenting that the biological clock and the tenure clock tick in unison and praying that it will not be too late after they get tenure; and even more leave research universities for work environments that they hope will be more family-friendly. Those who elect to pursue dual goals of academic career and family life often engage in what one essayist recendy called, "silent parenting in the academy" (Coiner 1994). As a result, even well-intended policies typically do not reflect the complexity of faculty needs with respect to family life, and faculty typically do not benefit from the full range even of existing policies, reinforcing the disconnection. "You are on your own," as one faculty member recendy observed, and so, to some extent, ironically, are senior administrators as they try to sort out what faculty need. However, at MIT and elsewhere, change is very much in the air, and there is good reason to hope that 25 years from now these issues wililook very different, just as they now look different from 25 years ago. Several
320
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
kinds of initiatives seem to be effective in catalyzing change and bridging the disconnect. The list for each campus is, of course, different, but I will outline some of the initiatives that seem to be helpful at MIT. 1. Instituting and affirming those policies and services that are «above ground,» those that are in fact requested. In the absence of the kind of proactive initiatives like those at Johns Hopkins and Michigan (see Chapters Eight and Nine, this volume), senior administrators need at least to respond visibly and concretely to those requests that do surface and are brought forward. At MIT currently, the publicly-stated requests from faculty are primarily for three things: first, relocation assistance, including assistance with jobs for partners; second, formal, paid family leave and/or teaching release; and, third, in a departure from the past, on-site child care, including for infants. We know that women are looking for these policies and services and using them as measures ofthe extent to which a campus is family-friendly, both when they are being recruited and after they are hired, even though they often do not say so. We can also hope that these small changes in practices may themselves catalyze larger changes in assumptions. 2. Providing what isn't being asked but we know is needed. In the area of services, for example, it is important to offer high quality information about child care, schools, special needs, parenting, and elder care. There is a cultural evolution taking place about parenting, as well as about work, an evolution toward recognition that parenting is not a matter of common sense and instinct, performed in isolation, but rather a matter of learning skills, acquiring knowledge, and building supports. Administration can provide services to offer that information and support, without being asked, making them available in a variety of electronic and interpersonal, easily accessible ways.
3. Experimenting with new ideas, based on listening to faculty and on listening to the experiences of other universities. Exchange of ideas among research universities about work/family issues happens informally a great deal. However, we need more frequent and better forums for exchange. For example, I would like to see the College and University WorkjFamily Association (CUWFA) hold a conference specifically focusing on faculty work/family issues, in which leaders from research universities could exchange ideas about what is working and what is not.
4. Developing mechanisms on campus in which the issues that are underground, too risky for faculty to raise individually, can be raised and heard anonymously and/or collectively. Examples include formal and informal surveys and studies; articles in campus newsletters; seminars; and standing
Old Issues, New Solutions: Family and Work
321
and ad hoc committees. These forums need to be heard and responded to by senior administration, and they need to foster collaboration among men and women across the many constituencies with a stake in the issues. They also need to bring more visibility to research findings, such as some of those that have been presented here, as well as to personal experiences. 5. Creating safe spaces in which concerns about individual work/family matters that are still «underground» can be raised confidentially. There are several such offices at MIT-including my office, the ombuds office, the EAP program, religious counselors, and others-so that facility have a variety of ongoing, permanent access points to discuss their questions about whether they even want tenure, their fears about marrying or having a child, their need for extra supports for a special needs child or elderly parent, or their wish to find a family-friendly department or mentor. These offices, then, can also reflect back to the administration, anonymously and collectively, what we hear the needs to be. 6. Reaching out to the students and faculty who do not come to us, knowing that the issue is probably on their minds. It is important to provide not just guidance around making family choices but also guidance around career choices. Too often it is in the context of considering family decisions that a person first realizes she or he has doubts about earlier career decisions: this needs to happen proactively, preventively, sooner. 7. Questioning, in all of these settings, little by little, the cultural assumptions at the heart of the disconnect: • Is there really only one "good" path to success in academic research careers, particularly in science and engineering? Are alternative arrangements inevitably "second best"? • Among universities that have significant experience with alternative arrangements-such as part-time tenure, pretenure appointments of ten years or more, research appointments, and sequential combinations of tenure track and research appointments-what are they finding to be the myths versus the realities about the negative consequences of these options? • Does it really take 60 to 80 hours a week to succeed in getting tenure and maintaining a competitive career? There are MIT facility saying, offthe record, that they have found it quite possible to do so in 40 or 50; appearances and reality are different. Ifone is organized and clear and focused, one can cut down the hours. • In cutting back, however, what is lost? How much of what is cut out is "fluff' and how much is important to the university
322
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
community, such as mentoring and community-building? How can the important pieces be preserved while the "fluff' is reduced? • What more can research tell us? The findings thus far, including those presented here, are enormously helpful. What more can we learn, to expand on these findings, including: • about the relationship between parenthood and productivity? between flexible schedules and productivity? • about faculty fears in these areas? • about outcomes, both in terms of tenure and productivity, for those who take leaves, tenure clock extensions, and other measures to decouple the tenure clock and the biological clock? • about outcomes for children whose parents struggle with the stresses of high-pressure careers, and factors that affect those outcomes? • about changes in the roles of men and women in family life, specifically in the context of academic settings? • about ways in which peer perceptions about women may change in subde ways when they become pregnant or become parents? or when they are granted tenure clock extensions? In short, we must find ways to honor the tip of the iceberg that is above the surface with respect to work/family issues, and keep working on the ocean of assumptions that keeps the rest of the iceberg below the surface. My own hope is that ultimately we will experience the iceberg not as a hazard to senior administrators and faculty alike, with "negative spillover" from work to family and vice versa, but rather as an asset to campuses, with "positive spillover" in the skills and values each offers the other.
REFERENCES Coiner, Constance. 1994. Silent parenting in the academy. In Listening to silences: New essays in feminist criticism, ed. Elaine Hedges and Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 197-224.
Chapter Fourteen
Conclusions Lilli S. Hornig Barbara Lazarus
When we examine sex differences in any dimension, we inevitably emphasize and perhaps enlarge them. Instead of finding them diminished-over time, or by intervention-we tend to focus on the differences that remain. We are still short of equality, and so we tend to forget that at least we are a lot closer to it than we were. That may be especially true in the academic sphere, where we have a wealth of data and analyses that continue to confirm gender inequality. But they also confirm that we are closer to equality than we were thirty years ago. This volume has dealt with the specifics of some of the remaining inequalities, as well as with potential remedies, allowing us to take a longer-range view of achievements of the past several decades and of the likely propects for the future. Stimpson reminded us in Chapter One of the many changes that are in store for research universities as they move forward into an era of rapid technological expansion, greatly increased diversity of people and disciplines, and new paradigms of knowledge. These developments will alter their methods in fundamental ways and modifY their missions in some respects. Among the issues that have come to the fore in the past several years is the legitimacy of affirmative action policies-but this time the positions are reversed. Universities are defending their right to give preference in admissions to minority students while courts or state governments are seeking to abolish such practices, with somewhat mixed results to date. Note that no one is mentioning women in this debate, but if Equal R.ites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American R.esearch Unipersities Edited by Hornig, Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, 2003
325
326
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
affirmative action policies are abandoned, we would argue that women will have lost an important tool in the fight for equality. What evidence do we see to support that claim? It seems very clear in retrospect that the growth in women's participation in the academic enterprise as undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty would not have taken place without the impetus of affirmative action policies. Although the formerly all-male or heavily male-centered universities began recruiting women students well before the law required it, since it offered financial advantages, they had no intention of increasing women faculty, as the prolonged resistance to equal-opportunity mandates demonstrated. The problems with uneven enforcement and institutional resistance to any outside "interference with academic freedom" imposed a de facto restriction on affirmative action as applied to promotion of women beyond the assistant professor rank. Thus the proportion of women assistant professors is in balance with the supply of new doctorates, but slow promotion and especially attainment of tenure for women in research universities perpetuate the male club atmosphere of many departments. It comes as no great surprise that these effects are clearest in the science departments. The figures there seem to confirm old stereotypes about women not being good in science or math, but the comparisons of recruitment and hiring with availability tell us something else. They show that far from correcting existing imbalances and making up deficits of women in science, universities have in fact reinforced the stereotypes and perpetuated the myths themselves. Why that situation should persist so stubbornly is not at all clear. Part of it is likely due to the relative isolation of women faculty from the networks of information within departments that Fox, Astin and Cress document. This limits women's contacts in the research community, makes the marshalling ofresearch resources more difficult, and results in fewer opportunities to present their work. The process of evaluating women and their research also needs attention. Scientists pride themselves on their objectivity, but Wenneras and Wold (1997:341) have shown that in Sweden the selection of people for a competitive fellowship in biochemistry is much more dependent on who is known to the selection committee and on who their backers are than on an independent evaluation of their credentials. The result was that women's credentials had to be far superior to the men's for them to be awarded a fellowship. This type of work badly needs to be replicated in the United States. The slow pace of improvement in the numbers and proportions of women faculty is explained to a large extent by women's later entry and shorter professional experience, as Long's analysis shows clearly. The facts
Conclusions
327
of male priority are what they are and as long as tenure and tenure-track slots are not expanded, change will be slow. Research universities need to examine two aspects of this problem. The first is what the ever-declining ratio of steady-state permanent faculty, as distinct from temporary, parttime, or adjunct personnel, to growing student bodies is doing to the quality ofthe very expensive education they offer. The second is what they need to do, publicly and visibly, to make it clear that the addition of women faculty is indeed a priority. Although the numbers and proportions ofwomen faculty have grown considerably, their salaries relative to men's have not, and gender differentials are worst by far in the leading research universities, averaging a 10 percent premium for men after all necessary controls for age and experience are applied (Academe 2001:34). It is hard to account for such a persistent difference; some part of it is surely due to gender differences in field distribution, not controlled for in the study, (since salaries are higher in science fields, by as much as one-third) but the MIT report cited previously also noted salary discrepancies that could not be explained. Although many universities have done salary equity studies, these findings indicate that it is time to revisit the problem. Long's work also shows clearly that in the sciences there is a relatively large loss of women immediately following the end of training. This may be equally true in other fields, but it has not been investigated there so thoroughly. It is generally ascribed to a combination of factors including marriage and motherhood, resulting geographic constraints, and similar individual rather than institutional barriers. Although these may indeed play some part in a woman scientist's decision not to seek a faculty appointment at a research university, there are indications that not many incentives are offered, either. We know too little about the openness of the initial recruitment process, for example. By law, openings must be advertised widely, but in research universities few appointments are probably filled by this process. The record of evasions around the law and "wired" recruiting is a long and dismal one. It would be fruitful to study this career stage in detail, with attention to the networks that are utilized and to behind-the-scenes personal referrals. The shortage ofwomen in science has been the target of numerous federal and foundation programs that seek to encourage young women to pursue careers in science, but if these women judge their career prospects by who their professors are, the outlook is clearly discouraging. It is essential to make academic science careers as inviting for women as they are for men. It should also be emphasized that much public investment is
328
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
wasted, along with much human capital, when fully trained scientists are not encouraged to practice their profession. Why is it important to increase the proportions of women senior faculty, and how will the changing gender balance among faculty and students affect the academic enterprise? The findings of several investigators (Astin and Cress, Fox) mark some significant differences between men and women faculty. Women spend more oftheir time than men in teaching and advising students. They are more student-centered in their pedagogy and more explicitly concerned about the formation of ethics, character, and value systems as goals of undergraduate education. They are more likely to indicate that important undergraduate goals include helping students gain selfunderstanding, develop personally, and become more civic-minded. They are more nurturant, more socially concerned-no surprises there-and less motivated by power, prestige, and financial gain. Unfortunately, they are also less satisfied with their roles as faculty members and more stressed in their work and personal lives. Astin and Cress did not, however, disaggregate their findings by field. It is tempting to speculate that, with a relatively larger proportion of women in the arts and humanities, some of their responses simply reflect the ethos of their disciplines rather than actual gender differences. In any case, as research universities come under increasing pressure to refocus on undergraduate education, the traits identified here become more important. Significantly in view of the greatly skewed sex ratios between students and faculty, Fox finds that women act as primary research advisors and mentors for a larger number of female graduate students than do men, while men advise more male students. She also reports that the great majority offaculty in the sciences, 70 percent, conduct research with teams including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and others. Women faculty's teams have about the same number of male students as do men's, but more women students. Female faculty believe that the success of women students depends not only on ambition and hard work, but also on their "alignment with successful faculty." Women faculty put greater emphasis on giving help to advisees and they believe that a range of competencies such as publications, participating in laboratory meetings, presenting their work at conferences, and interacting with faculty are more important for women students than for men while male faculty draw no such distinction. Fox concludes that women faculty's own experiences in achieving success heighten their awareness ofthe "complex conditions that govern attainments, and of the penalties for shortfall
Conclusions
329
in any dimension." In sum, they offer women students a more targeted approach to successful graduate training in the sciences. Kuh analyzed women scientists' and engineers' employment on research faculties from a different perspective, looking at the changes over time as various Ph.D. cohorts advanced through the academic ranks, thus taking account in part of the changing employment opportunities. Comparing the proportions of tenure-track and off-track positions held by women in research universities, she found women to hold twice as large a share ofthe latter in the fields where they are least well represented, physical and mathematical sciences and engineering, with slightly smaller differences in fields where they hold a greater share of all positions. For men, tenure and tenure-track positions far outnumber the off-track ones. In terms of faculty rank, again there is significant growth for women assistant and full professors since the 1970s, but it also is much larger in the fields where there are already much larger numbers ofwomen. Kuh finds, in agreement with Hornig (Chapter Two) that proportions of women assistant professors in the sciences are roughly commensurate with Ph.D. production, although there are some field differences. Between 1979 and 1995 the sex differences in achieving tenure have lessened, but the opportunities for gaining tenure have also diminished, with accompanying growth in softmoney, off-track positions. The unfortunate conclusion is that opportunities shrank just as more women were ready to enter academic science careers. The preponderance ofwomen in off-track positions merits some further consideration. These jobs have long been a sort of symbiotic compromise where women get to keep a hand in the field during periods when they are not able to commit to full-time work while performing some very necessary services for a university or department. In the ordinary course of events these jobs will not lead to regular faculty appointments when a woman is ready to resume a full-time career-a fact that many women in this position do not realize or, perhaps, want to believe. The point is, however, that there is no reason why someone who has spent some time off the tenure track should not be able to reenter it when the time is right and if her credentials are up to standard. If serving an institution in an off-track capacity disqualifies a woman from a regular position, it can be argued that the university is simply exploiting her. Among other problems, adjunct and part-time positions are drastically underpaid by regular faculty standards. They are also marginalized in many other ways such as access to information, participation in faculty governance, and input into a variety of academic policies, curriculum design,
330
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
and course assignments. Research universities need to develop policies that will accommodate such cases without the penalty of sacrificing an entire career. In many instances universities have done that on an individual basis, but the possibilities are seldom publicized and often remain unknown to those who need them most. Long continues with the theme of women in the sciences and engineering, examining the progression through education and entry into academic careers, specifically in research universities, and their ultimate outcomes. Perhaps the most striking difference between men and women in these fields occurs at the transition from graduate preparation to career entry. Although the proportion of women who do not have full-time employment has declined somewhat since 1973 while that of men has increased, women are still well over twice as likely to be less than fully employed. In particular, the number who report being out of the labor force (i.e. not employed and not seeking work), while small overall, is about five times as large for women as for men. Thus, over time, women of equal professional age and training accumulate less experience and less expertise than men who work full-time in their profession. Comparing only those scientists who are fully employed, however, still leads to considerable disadvantage for women in research universities. Although the traditional overrepresentation of men has declined by about half in these institutions between 1973 and 1995, men and women still do not hold the best positions in equal proportions. Research universities had the smallest representation of women compared to other types of institutions, and the fraction ofmen who held tenure-track positions exceeded women by about 14 percentage points. However, correcting for differences in professional age reduces the disparity by about half. Men appear much more likely to achieve tenure than women, but the difference is greatly reduced, to under 5 percentage points, when adjusted for the differing age structure. For attaining full professor status, the sex difference remains at almost 10 percentage points even when all relevant corrections are applied. Long concludes that while there has been very substantial progress in the presence of women science and engineering faculty in Research I universities, significant disparities remain in gaining tenure and full professorships. Perhaps the most cited likely cause of the gender differences in rank and tenure is the belief that women faculty are less productive than men. Shauman and Xie show three important findings: that since 1969 sex differences in research productivity have been declining, that male and female faculty productivities have been converging as women have gained
Conclusions
331
access to the positions and resources necessary for productivity, and that accounting for sex differences in access to resources explains a significant part of the differential. This work clearly suggests that further equalization of opportunities will result in continued reduction of any remaining gender differences in productivity. How can we go about equalizing opportunities? We have shown two models of intervention. Fried gives a detailed account of an eminently successful series ofactions designed to identify sources of discontent and/ or disparity and to remedy these systematically and incrementally. This model relies, as does the investigation at MIT (Introduction, this volume), on presenting a convincing analysis of a series of differences in the availability ofresources, access, and information to men and women. These differences, many ofwhich may seem insignificant one at a time, pyramid into real disadvantage. While Fried's analysis focussed on an individual department in a medical school, Hollenshead describes an institutionwide approach in a very large university, one which uses the same detailed kind of fact-finding but extends it from the beginning to all units of the institution and includes students and staff as well as faculty. Both approaches regard it as critical to have not only the support but also the leadership of the top administration, to assure cooperation from all constituencies and to make clear to the entire university community that the attainment of women's equality has the highest priority. The introduction of women's studies programs and courses, especially the inclusion of such material in the mainstream curriculum, has had a profound effect on broadening many disciplines and opening many minds. Enlarging fields such as history, sociology, psychology, literature and many more by making the experience and the work of women a legitimate part of the canon has the effect of raising respect for women as persons and for their accomplishments. Because of space limitations we chose just two fields among many to illustrate the reach and breadth of these burgeoning fields. Schiebinger shows us how the field of primatology, a traditional bastion of male dominance, has been enriched and in fact revolutionized by reorienting the study of primate social structures to encompass a female perspective. Chatterjee applies the methodology of women's studies to anthropology not simply to include the experience of women but to open the field to considerations of color and imperialism as well. While there is general consensus that, except in life sciences, neither the subject matter nor the intellectual approaches of natural science and mathematical fields have been much affected by women's studies, the
332
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
overall impact on academic institutions continues to grow. Integrating these new findings and intellectual styles into the mainstream curriculum will improve the understanding of faculty as well as students. Our final theme dealt with the issues commonly believed to hinder women in all careers, but particularly in high-level academic careers, because of their demands for personal commitment and long hours. The list is a long and familiar one, from marrying a fellow academic and thus restricting one's possibilities, formerly because of nepotism rules but always because ofgeographic limitations, to decisions about having children and when scheduling them will have the least unfavorable career impact, and to the responses of colleagues to limitations imposed by such other obligations and responsibilities. These vexing problems, considered almost insuperable in 1970, have had a surprising number of feasible solutions, as outlined by Sullivan and Simpson. Various subsidized daycare arrangements, for example, are widespread and very helpful. Delay of the tenure clock for new parents or for other unusual circumstances is also available in most universities, and has not created the difficulties that were originally foreseen. However, many institutions reported to us that this arrangement is rarely used because women are afraid their work will not be taken seriously if they take maternity leave. All in all, the constraints imposed on women by family obligations have proved easier to remedy than predicted, at least in the sense that administrative mechanisms to minimize their impact can be created. But they still leave women with a disproportionate share of responsibility for family care. The many small indignities and limitations that were traditionally imposed on women in universities have proved less tractable, as Ferber makes dear, and much of the discussion at the conference centered on such problems. There is solid experimental evidence, cited by Ferber, that shows bias against women in acceptances of papers submitted for publication, in citations, and in other proxy measures of quality when the sex of the author or applicant is known to the evaluator, while the identical work submitted anonymously is rated much higher. These problems are not limited to men but also occur when the evaluators are female, attesting to the depth of the prejudices we all grow up with. The effects are strongest in the fields where there are the fewest women, thereby perpetuating the stereotype that women are unsuited to the sciences. Motherhood is widely regarded as the primary reason for women's difficulties in demanding careers. It is therefore of great interest that married women with children, specifically those married to other academics,
Conclusions
333
do very well in academic life, for a variety ofreasons that Ferber and others have explored. She points out that universities need to review rigid rules such as the lockstep progression through the probationary period to tenure, rules devised for a now outdated male pattern of either bachelorhood or marriage to a full-time homemaker. This problem raises the issue, much discussed in many quarters, ofreplacing tenure with a system ofrenewable term contracts in order to give women easier access to the benefits of at least presumptively permanent employment. However, such a change would actually be harmful to women, since in any real-world arrangement those who now have tenure would surely be grandfathered in, occupying the senior ranks just as they do now and postponing access for newcomers for another generation. The two-career couple remains problematic for many individuals as well as institutions (Ferber and Loeb 1997). The nepotism rules that used to exclude faculty wives from faculty jobs no longer exist, at least overtly, but it is still very difficult to find appropriate appointments simultaneously for both members of a couple in the same institution or a nearby one. There are many good reasons for this as well as some less convincing ones. Research universities have been slow to address this issue and paid it little attention until they realized that they were losing some top people, mainly men, because of it. Now nearly all the institutions that responded to our questions make some kind of efforts to place a spouse or partner. Though not always successful, these are viewed at least as a good-faith gesture.The fact that this problem too, formerly considered so intractable, can be solved in many cases and in the many different ways described by Ferber supports the idea that most of the institutional constraints on hiring women faculty can be overcome. All of the themes we have reviewed here were echoed in the discussion groups composed of participants in the conference from which this book derives. The groups focussed particularly on activities and practices that were designed to recruit and retain women faculty and to create a climate supportive of women in their own institutions. There was broad agreement on a number of points. 1. While recruitment remains an important issue, many universities are now concentrating more on supporting the junior faculty they already have. Junior faculty in research universities are under enormous pressure to perform and produce, often feeling challenged by senior colleagues rather than helped. Currently many research universities recruit senior women from one another, recycling
334
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
proven stars rather than growing their own. Over time this practice depletes the supply of top level women because some of those who are not supported and promoted leave the profession. Exit interviews conducted at some institutions showed that women were leaving even before their tenure reviews because they felt the climate at their university was hostile and their prospects doubtful, although some then secured appointments at more prestigious places. 2. Many mechanisms can be devised to support and encourage junior faculty. Stanford was cited as having a well developed system, headed by a Vice Provost for Junior Faculty Development. Junior faculty who are teaching undergraduates receive grant support for research, and the Employee Assistance Program runs support groups for junior faculty. Other support systems involve organized mentoring by senior faculty. Several universities have faculty groups that meet or hold seminars to discuss and clarify the tenure process and help junior faculty with better preparation of dossiers and supporting documentation. These efforts generally lead to support for all junior faculty, not only women. In the 1970s Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) conducted academic career seminars for graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty, with support from the Carnegie Corporation, on about thirty major campuses. These resulted in many such programs being carried on locally. 3. Leadership at the top-by presidents, provosts, deans, and department heads-is universally deemed essential to assure equity for women. Several participants pointed out that it is helpful to have women in some of these positions, but some, from institutions headed by women, also noted that that is no guarantee of success. It may simply generate a feeling that the problem has been taken care of and needs no further attention. 4. However, enlisting the active support of leaders is sometimes the major problem. People tend not to believe that even unconscious bias exists in their own university or department. Change can then be initiated from the bottom up, for example by collecting data on underrepresentation, salary disparities, or uneven promotions. Any changes that are requested must be solidly grounded in evidence. Departments that clearly do not meet the level of female faculty to be expected on the basis ofavailability may not even realize how far off the mark they are unless up to date statistics are provided.
Conclusions
335
5. Groups of women faculty working together are far more effective in catalyzing change than individuals because they are less vulnerable. At Stanford a Faculty Women's Caucus, elected by women faculty, meets regularly with the President and Provost to discuss problems and remedies. 6. A well-publicized and confidential grievance process is essential and helps both men and women. Public universities, with generally greater openness and transparency, are perceived to be doing much better at this than private institutions, where such recourse is seen as much more difficult. 7. The much publicized situation at MIT is viewed as accurately reflecting a certain disenchantment on the part of senior women faculty while junior women are more optimistic. Senior women may be more aware oftheir marginalization because they are more familiar with the setting. Their situation should be examined in most research universities to determine whether they are fully integrated into their departments and have full access to all resources. 8. An outside group may be empowered by its detachment from personal advantage; examples cited were the Association of American Medical Colleges which stimulated the actions at Johns Hopkins, and alumnae groups such as the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard who used an escrow fund in support of senior women faculty at Harvard. Historically, women bought access to higher education and graduate study with their gifts to institutions, and they can continue to further their goals with such gifts. 9. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription. Every research university has its own structures and traditions and change is best accomplished in ways tailored to that situation. The common thread, however, is a clear definition and statement of the problem, the marshalling of adequate resources, financial and personal, and a careful plan for remedying the difficulties. A system of accountability for meeting, or not meeting, equal opportunity goals must also be in place and should be built into personnel policies and management reviews. 10. There is no substitute for data gathering in individual universities-on existing proportions of women faculty, on availability, on salaries, on unusual hiring or review practices, and on inappropriate behavior by students or colleagues. The "it doesn't happen here" syndrome is common and generally mistaken.
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
336
In sum, it is clear that much progress has been made but that a great deal remains to be done. Affirmative action regulations forced the institutions' hands in the beginning and remain a necessary but not sufficient basis for attaining gender equality. Equal admission of women to graduate programs, a prerequisite for training more female future faculty, was speedily implemented by universities, in part, certainly, because it was of financial benefit to them. Employing women as faculty, on the other hand, met with protracted and often stubborn resistance and remains unequal at tenured and senior professorial levels despite a more than adequate supply in most fields. For many years the emphasis in the drive toward equality has been on "improving" women, often to meet some ever-escalating standard. It is time for universities to respond seriously to the challenge of improving themselves, to adapt their structures and practices to a world of women and men with equal aspirations. There are working examples of such adaptations, as we have shown, at Michigan and Johns Hopkins and many other places. The studies carried out in the school of science at MIT and recently expanded to its other schools are a model first step and are already inspiring similar efforts in many other institutions. Universities that fail to move decisively toward gender equality, to take seriously their obligation of "good faith efforts" toward ending discrimination in the professoriate, may find themselves losing not only resources but also intellectual stature.
REFERENCES Ferber, Marianne A., and Jane W. Loeb, eds. 1997. Academic couples: Problems and promises. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wenner1s, Christine, and Agnes Wold. 1997. Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature 387.
Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women and Performance: A Journal ofFeminist Theory 5. _ _ _. 1993. Writing womenJs worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Academe. 1988, 1998,2000. Academe 74 (March-April 1988); 84 (MarchApril 1998); 86 (March-April 2000). Aguirre, A., Jr. 1994. Perceptions of the workplace: Focus on minority women faculty. Initiatives 56 (3): 41-50. Ahern, Nancy C., and Elizabeth L. Scott. 1981. Career outcomes in a matched sample ofmen and women Ph.D.s: An analytical report. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Aisenberg, N., and Harrington, M. 1988. Women of academe: Outsiders in the sacred grove. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Allison, Paul D., and J. Scott Long. 1990. Departmental effects on scientific productivity. American Sociological Review 55:469-478. American College of Physicians. 1991. Promotion and tenure of women and minorities on medical school faculties. Ann Intern Med 114:63-68. Anzaldua, Gloria. 1990. La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a new consciousness. In Makingface, makingsoul: Creative and criticalperspectives by women ofcolor, ed. Gloria Anzaldua. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. _ _ _, and Cherrie Moraga, eds. 1981. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women ofcolor. Watertown, Mass.: Persephone. Arenson, Karen W. 1998. A new way to read the law at home. The New York Times, September 20, WK 3. Aristotle. 1947. Metaphysics. In Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library. Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London: Ithaca Press. 337
338
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Astin, Helen S. 1969. The woman doctorate in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
_ _ _.1992. Academic women 1989-1990. Paper presented at the February 1992 Sustaining Faculty Diversity in the Research University conference, University of Tucson. _ _ _. 1997. The scholarly productivity of academic couples. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _, and Alan E. Bayer. 1973. Sex discrimination in Academe. In Academic women on the move, eds. A. S. Rossi and A. Calderwood. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. _ _ _" and Alan E. Bayer. 1979. Pervasive sex differences in the academic reward system: Scholarship, marriage, and what else? In Academic rewards in higher education , eds. Darrell R. Lewis and William E. Becker, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co. _ _ _, and C. M. Cress. 1998. A national profile ofacademic women in research universities. Paper presented at the Women in Research Universities: The Next Quarter Century Conference, Cambridge, Mass. _ _ _, and Diane E. Davis. 1985; Research productivity across the life and career cycle: Facilitators and barriers for women. In Scholarly writing and publishing: Issues, problems, and solutions, ed. Mary F. Fox. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. _ _ _, and Jeffrey F. Milem. 1997. The status of academic couples in U.S. academic institutions. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _, and Linda Sax. 1996. Developing scientific talent in undergraduate women. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement ofwomen in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering, ed. C. Davis, A. Ginorio, C. Hollenshead, B. Lazarus, and P. Rayman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. _ _ _, et at. 1997. Race and ethnicity in the American professoriate, 1995-96. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UClA. Babco, Eleanor L. 2000. Professional women and minorities. Washington, D.C.: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Barber, Leslie A. 1995. U.S. women in science and engineering, 1960-1990: Progress toward equity? Journal ofHigher Education 66(2): 213-234.
Bibliography
339
Behar, Ruth, and Deborah Gordon, eds. 1995. Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bellas, Marcia L. 1994. Comparable worth in academia: The effects on faculty salaries of the sex composition and labor market conditions of academic disciplines. American Sociological Review 59: 807-21. _ _ _. 1997. Disciplinary differences in faculty salaries: Does gender bias playa role? Journal ofHigher Education 68 (3): 299-321. Bentley, Richard J., and Robert T. Blackburn. 1992. Two decades ofgains for female faculty? Teachers College Record 93:697-709. Berg, Helen M., and Marianne A. Ferber. 1983. Men and women graduate students: Who succeeds and why? Journal ofHigher Education 54: 629-48. Bernard, Jessie. 1964. Academic women. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Bickel, J. 1988. Women in medical education. N Engl J Med 319:157984. _ _ _.1990. Building a stronger women's program. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Medical Colleges. _ _ _. 1995. Scenarios for success: Enhancing women physicians' professional advancement. West J Med 162(2):165-169.
___, A. Galbrarth, and R. Quinnie. 1994. Women in U.S. academic medicine: Statistics. Washington, D.C.: Association ofAmerican Medical Colleges. Bielby, Denise D., and William T. Bielby. 1992. I will follow him: Family ties, gender role beliefs, and reluctance to relocate for a better job. American Journal ofSociology 97: 1241-67. Blackburn, Robert T., Charles E. Behymer, and David E. Hall. 1978. Research note: Correlates of faculty publications. Sociology of Education 51:132-141. Blau, Francine D. 1977. Equal pay in the office. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath. _ _ _, Marianne A. Ferber, and Anne E. Winkler, eds. Forthcoming. The economics ofwomen, men, and work, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
340
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Bloch, Maurice, and Jean H. Bloch. 1980. Women and the dialectics of nature in eighteenth century French thought. In Nature, culture,gender, ed. Marilyn Strathern and Carol MacCormack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boice, R. 1993. New faculty involvement for women and minorities. Research in Higher Education 34 (3): 291-341. Bordin, R. 1999. Women at Michigan: The «dangerous experiment/' 1870s to the present. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Boxer, Marilyn Jacoby. 1998. Remapping the university: The promise of the women's studies Ph.D. Feminist Studies 24 (Summer): 387-403. _ _ _. 1998. When women ask the questions: Creating women's studies in America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, The. 1998. Reinventing undet;graduate education: A blueprint for America's research universities. New York: State University of New York at Stony Brook. Boyer, James L., C. Elton Cahow, Anne McB. Curtis, Peter A. T. Grannum, Joy Hirsch, J. Murdoch Ritchie, Abigail L. Smith, and Merle Waxman. 1988. Report ofthe task force on women faculty. Yale University School of Medicine. Brand, Myles. 1998. Research universities in transition. Paper prepared for Colloquium on Postbaccalaureate Futures, Aspen Institute, November 1-3. Briscoe, Ann. 1984. Scientific sexism: The world of chemistry. In Women in the scientific and engineeringprofessions, ed. Violet Haas and Carolyn Permcci. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Butler, Judith, and Joan Scott, eds. 1992. Feminists theorise the political. London: Routledge. Cabral, Robert, Marianne A. Ferber, and Carole A. Green. 1981. Men and women in fiduciary institutions: A study of sex differences in career development. Review ofEconomics and Statistics 63: 573-80. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. 1994. A classification of institutions of higher education: A technical report. Berkeley: The Carnegie Commission. Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education. 1975. Making affirmative action work in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bibliography
341
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1990. Women faculty excel as campus citizens. Change 22 (5): 39-43. Carr, P. L., R. H. Friedman, M. A. Moskowitz, L. E. Kazis, and H. G. Weed. 1992. Research, academic rank, and compensation of women and men faculty in academic general internal medicine. J Gen Intern Med. 7 (Jul-Aug):418-23. _ _ _" R. H. Friedman, M. A. Moskowitz, L. E. Kazis, and H. G. Weed.
1993. Comparing the status of women and men in academic medicine. Ann Intern Med 119:908-913. Chamberlain, Mariam K, ed. 1988. Women in academe: Progress and prospects. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Clark, Shirley, and Mary Corcoran. 1986. Perspectives on the professional socialization of women faculty. Journal ofHigher Education 57 (Jani Feb.): 20-43. Clemente, Frank. 1973. Early career determinants ofresearch productivity. American Journal of Sociology 83:409-419. Clifford, G. J. 1993. Shaking dangerous questions from the crease: Gender and American higher education. In Women in higher education: A feminist perspectipe, ed. U.S. Glazer, E. M. Bensimon, and B.K. Townsend. W. Needham Heights, Mass.: Ginn Press. Clifford, James, and George Marcus. 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coiner, Constance. 1994. Silent parenting in the academy. In Listening to silences: New essays in ftminist criticism, ed. Elaine Hedges and Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 197-224. Cole, Jonathan R. 1979. Fair science. New York: Free Press. _ _ _, and Harriet Zuckerman. 1984. The productivity puzzle: Persistence and change in patterns of publication among men and women scientists. In AdPances in motipation and achiePement, vol. 2, ed. P. Maehr and M. W. Steinkamp. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. _ _ _, and Harriet Zuckerman. 1987. Marriage, motherhood and research performance in science. Scientific American 25:119-125. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems 33: (December): S14-S32.
342
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. Boulder: Westview Press. _ _ _, and John Comaroff. 1997. Africa observed: Discourses of the imperial imagination. In Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history and representation, ed. Richard Steiner and Christopher Grinker. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Committee on Work and Family. 1989. Recommendations to the department ofmedicine. Baltimore: University ofMaryland School ofMedicine. Conkey, Margaret. 1993. Making the connections: Feminist theory and archaeologies of gender. In Women in archaeology: A feminist critique, ed. Hilary du Cros and Laurajane Smith. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University. _ _ _, and Janet Spector. 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7:1 38. _ _ _, with Sarah Williams. 1991. Original narratives: The political economy ofgender in archaeology. In Gender at the crossroads ofknowledge: Feminist anthropology in the post modern era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Conley, F. K. 1993. Toward a more perfect world-eliminating sexual discrimination in academic medicine. N EnglJ Med 328:351-52. Cornell University. 1974. A commitment to equality: One century later. Report of the Ad Hoc Trustee Committee on the Status of Women, Cornell University. Curtin, Phillip. 1964. The image ofAfrica: British ideas and action. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Dean's Office and Dean's Advisory Committee on Women Faculty. 1993. Survey offaculty quality ofwork life andgender issues. Davis: University of California School of Medicine. DeAngelis, C. D., and M. E. Johns. 1995. Promotion ofwomen in academic medicine: Shatter the ceilings, polish the floors. JAMA 273: 1056-57. di Leonardo, Micaela, ed. 1991. Gender at the crossroads of knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. _ _ _.1993. What a difference political economy makes: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era. Anthropological QJt-arterly 66 (2): 76-81.
Bibliography
343
Dickens, C. S. 1993. Collaboration in the research and scholarship offeminist women faculty. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 365 188. Elmore, G. C., and M. E. Balmert. 1995. A profile of college and university faculty: Minority and women in advertising, communication, journalism, media studies, public relations, and related fields. Journal ofthe Association for Communication Administration (2): 66-81. Enslin, Elizabeth. 1994. Beyond writing: Feminist practice and the limitations of ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 9: 537-568. Etaugh, Claire, and Helen C. Kasley. 1981. Evaluating competence: Effects of sex, marital status and parental status. Psychology of Women QJtarterly 6: 196-203. Etzkowitz, Henry, Carol Kemelgor, Michael Neuschatz, Brian Uzzi, and Joseph Alonzo. 1994. The paradox of critical mass for women in science. Science 266:51-54. Evangelauf, Jean. 1994. A new Carnegie classification. The Chronicle of Higher Education XL (April 6). Fedigan, Linda. 1986. The changing role of women in models of human evolution. Annual Review ofAnthropology 15:25 66. _ _ _. 1997. Is primatology a feminist science? In Women in human evolution, ed. Lori Hager. New York: Routledge. _ _ _, and Laurence Fedigan. 1989. Gender and the study ofprimates. In Gender and anthropology: Critical review for research and teaching, ed. Sandra Morgen. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Ferber, Marianne A. 1986. Citations: Are they an objective measure of scholarly merit? Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11: 381-89. _ _ _" 1988. Citations and networking. Gender and Society 2: 82-89. _ _ _" and Brigid O'Farrell, eds., in collaboration with LaRue Allen. 1991. Work and family: Policiesfor a changing work force. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. _ _ _"and Jane W. Loeb. 1973. Performance, rewards and perceptions of sex discrimination of male and female faculty members. American Journal of Sociology 78: 995-1002.
344
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
_ _ _"and J. W. Loeb, eds. 1997. Academic couples: Problems and promises. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _, and Jane W. Loeb. 1997. Introduction. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _, and Jane Waldfogel. 1998. The long-term consequences ofnontraditional work. Monthly Labor Review 121: 3-12. _ _ _, and Joan A. Huber. 1975. Sex of student and instructor: A study of student bias. American Journal of Sociology 80: 949-63. _ _ _, and Michelle L. Teiman. 1980. Are women economists at a disadvantage in publishing journal articles? Eastern EconomicJournal 6: 89-94. _ _ _, Joan A. Huber, and Glenna Spitze. 1980. Preference for men as bosses and professionals. Social Forces 58: 466-76. Fidell, L. S. 1970. Empirical verification of sex discrimination in hiring practices in psychology. American Psychologist 25: 1094-98. Finkel, Susan K. 1994. Childbirth, tenure and promotion for women faculty. Review of Higher Education 17 (3): 259-270. _ _ _, and Steven G. Olswang. 1995. Child rearing as a career impediment to women assistant professors. Review of Higher Education 19: 123-39. Finnegan, D. E. 1993. Segmentation in the academic labor market: Hiring cohorts in comprehensive universities. Journal ofHigher Education 64 (6): 621-656. Fox, Mary Frank. 1981. Patterns and determinants of research productivity. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. _ _ _. 1989. Disciplinary fragmentation, peer review, and the publication process. The American Sociologist 20 (Summer): 188-191. _ _ _. 1989. Women and higher education: Gender differences in the status of students and scholars. In Women: A feminist perspective, ed. Jo Freeman. Mountain View, Cal.: Mayfield Publishing Company. _ _ _. 1991. Gender, environmental milieu, and productivity in science. In The outer circle: Women in the scientific community, edited by H. Zuckerman, J. Cole, and J. Bruer, pp. 188-204. New York: W. W. Norton.
Bibliography
345
_ _ _. 1996. Women, academia, and careers in science and engineering. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement ofwomen in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering, edited by C. Davis et al., pp. 265-289. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. _ _ _. 1999. Gender, hierarchy, and science. In Handbook ofthe sociology ofgender, edited by J. S. Chafetz, pp. 441-457. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. _ _ _.2000. Organizational environments and doctoral degrees awarded to women in science and engineering departments. Women's Studies Q;tarterly 28 (Spring/Summer): 47-61. _ _ _, and Vincent Ferri. 1992. Women, men, and their attributions for success in academe. Social Psychology Q;tarterly 55 (Summer): 257271. Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly practices: Power, discourse andgender in contemporary social theory. Cambridge: Polity. French, Jeffrey. 1994. A demographic analysis of the membership of the American Society of Primatologists. American Anthropologist 96. Fried, Linda P., and Clair A. Francomano. 1990. Questionnaire on faculty development and gender-based obstacles. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University. _ _ _, Clair A. Francomano, Susan M. MacDonald, Elizabeth M. Wagner, Emma J. Stokes, Kathryn M. Carbone, Wilma B. Bias, Mary M. Newman, and John D. Stobo. 1996. Career development for women in academic medicine: Multiple interventions in a department ofmedicine. lAMA 276:898-905. Friedman, Dana E., Cathy Rimsky, and Arlene A. Johnson. 1996. College and university referenceguide to work family programs. New York: CUPA Foundation, Families and Work Institute. Gailey, Christine Ward. 1988. Eleanor Leacock. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et at. New York: Greenwood Press. _ _ _. 1998. Feminist methods. In Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology, ed. Russell Bernard. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Galinsky, Ellen, Dana E. Friedman, and Carol Hernandez. 1991. The corporate referenceguide to workfamily programs. New York: Families and Work Institute.
346
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Gero, Joan. 1991. Genderlithics: Women's roles in stone tool production. In Engendering archaeology. ed. Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey. Oxford: Blackwell, 163 193. _ _ _. 1993. The social world of prehistoric facts. In Women in archeology: A feminist critique, ed. Hilary du Cros and Laurajane Smith. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University, 31-40. _ _ _. 1995. Excavation bias and the women at home ideology. In Equity issuesfor women in archeology, ed. Margaret Nelson, Sarah Nelson, and Alison Wylie. Arlington, Va.: American Anthropological Association: Archeological Papers, No. 5:37 42. Gilman, Sander. 1985. Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth century art, medicine and literature. Critical Inquiry 12 (1): 204-242. Goldberger, Marvin L., Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela Ebert Flattau.
1995. Research-doctorate programs in the United States: Continuity and change. Washington: National Academy Press. Goldin, Claudia. 1990. Understanding the gender gap. New York: Oxford University Press. _ _ _, and Cecilia Rouse. 1997. Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of blind auditions on female musicians. NBER Paper No. 5903. Gordon, Deborah. 1993. The unhappy relationship of feminism and postrnodernism in anthropology, Anthropological QJtarterly 66 (July): 109-119. _ _ _. 1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howard-Bobiwash in Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. _ _ _. 1999. U.S. feminist ethnography and the denationalizing of «America": A retrospective on Women writing culture. In Feministfields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. Graves, Philip E., Jarnes R. Marchand, and Randall Thompson. 1982. Economics department rankings: Research incentives, constraints, and efficiency. American Economic Review 72: 1131-31. Gross, Paul, and Norman Levitt. 1994. Higher superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bibliography
347
_ _ _, Norman Levitt, and Martin Lewis, eds. 1996. The flight from science and reasons. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences. Grosz, B. J., for the FAS Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
1991. Report on women in the sciences at Harvard, part I: Junior faculty and graduate students. Boston: Harvard University. Haley-Oliphant, Ann E. 1985. International perspectives on the status and role of women in science. In Women in science: A report from the field, ed. J. B. Kahle. Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race and nature in the world ofmodern science. New York: Roudedge. _ _ _, and Susan Sperling. 1996. Cited by Helen Longino, in Cognitive and non cognitive values in science: Rethinking the dichotomy. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy ofscience, ed. Lynn Nelson and Jack Nelson. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question inftminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
_ _ _" 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women)s lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hargens, Lowell, and J. S. Long. Forthcoming. Demographic inertia and the representation of women and minorities on higher-education faculties. Journal of Higher Education. _ _ _" James C. McCann, and Barbara F. Reskin. 1978. Productivity and reproductivity: Fertility and professional achievement among research scientists. Social Forces 57:154-163. Harris, Ann Sutherland. 1970. The second sex in academe. AAUP Bulle-
tin 56 (3): 283-295. Haven, Elizabeth W., and Dwight H. Horch. 1972. How college students finance their education. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Healy, Bernadine. 1995. Science 269 (11 August): 773. Heilman, M. E. 1980. The impact of situational factors on personnel decisions concerning women: Varying the sex composition ofthe applicant pool. Organizational Behavior and Human Perftrmance 26: 386-95. Helmreich, Robert, Janet T. Spence, W. Beane, G. W. Lucker, and K Matthews. 1980. Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 39: 896-908.
348
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Hensel, N. 1991. Realizinggender equality in higher education: The need to integrate work/family issues. Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education. Hollenshead, Carol S. 1992. Women at the University ofMichigan: A statistical report on the status of women students, faculty and staff on the Ann Arbor campus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. _ _ _.1996. The graduate experience in the sciences and engineering: Rethinking a gendered institution. In The equity equation: Fostering the advancement ofwomen in science, mathematics and engineering, ed. C-S Davis. New York: Jossey-Bass, Inc. _ _ _. 1996. Women at the University ofMichigan: A statistical report on the status of women students, faculty and staff on the Ann Arbor campus, Volume III. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. _ _ _. 2002. Components of successful change. This volume. _ _ _, et al. 1999. Faculty work-life study report, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Center for the Education ofWomen. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist theory: From mat;gin to center. Boston: South End Press. _ _ _. 1988. Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Boston: South End Press. Hornig, Lilli S. 1984. Women in science and engineering: Why so few? Technology Review 87 (Nov/Dec): 30-41. _ _ _. 1997. Academic couples: The view from the administration. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. _ _ _. 2002. Chapter Two, this volume. _ _ _, and Ruth B. Ekstrom. 1984. The status ofwomen in the humanities. Report to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Howard-Bobiwash, Heather, compiler. 1999. Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued. In Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al. Toronto: Broadview Press. Hrdy, Sarah, and G. Williams. 1983. Behavioral biology and the double standard. 1983. Social Behavior ofFemale Vertebrates, ed. Samuel Wasser. New York: Academic Press.
Bibliography
349
Hurlbert, Jeanne, and Rachel A. Rosenfeld. 1992. Getting a good job: Rank and institutional prestige in academic psychologists' careers. So-
ciology ofEducation 65:188-207. Indiana University. 1971. Study ofthe status ofwomen faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington campus. Report of the AAUP Committee on the Status of Women. James, William. 1987. The Ph.D. octopus. In William James: Writings 1902-1910, ed. Bruce Kuklick. New York: Library ofAmerica. John, Mary E. 1996. Discrepant dislocations: Feminisms, theory and postcolonial histories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnsrud, L. K, and M. Wunsch. 1991. Barriers to success in academic life: Perceptions offaculty women in a colleague pairing program. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 399 312. Jones, Lyle V., Gardner Lindzey, and Porter E. Coggeshall. 1982. An assessment ofresearch doctorate programs in the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Jordanova, L. J. 1980. Natural facts: A historical perspective on science and sexuality. In Nature, culture, gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Judd, Ellen. 1999. E-mail note in Feminist fields: Conversations to be continued, compiled by Heather Howard-Bobiwash, in Feminist fields: Ethnographic insights, ed. Rae Bridgeman et al' Toronto: Broadview Press. Kanter, Rosabeth. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Kaplan, Caren. 1987. Deterritorializations: The rewriting of home and exile in feminist discourse. Cultural Critique no.6 (Spring): 187-198. Kaschak, Ellyn. 1979. Sex bias in student evaluations of college professors. Psychology of Women Quarterly 2: 236-44. Katz, J., and Rodney T. Hartnett. 1976. Recommendations for training better scholars. In Scholars in the making, edited by J. Katz and R. T. Hartnett, pp. 261-80. Cambridge: Ballinger. Keesing, Roger M. 1985. Kwaio women speak: The micropolitics of autobiography in a Solomon Island society. American Anthropologist 87: 27-39.
350
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kelly-Gadol, Joan. 1977. Did women have a renaissance? In Becoming visible: Women in European history, ed. Renata Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Kennedy, Donald. 1997. Academic duty. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Khan, Aisha. 1988. Introduction. In Women anthropologists: A biographical dictionary, ed. Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press. Koertge, Noretta. 1994. Are feminists alienating women from the sciences? The Chronicle ofHigher Education (14 September): A80. Kolodny, Annette. 1998. Failing the future: A dean looks at higher education in the twenty-first century. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Kolpin, Van W., and Larry D. Singell, Jr. 1996. The gender composition and scholarly performance ofeconomics departments: A test for employment discrimination. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 49: 408-23. Lamphere, Louise. 1989. Feminist anthropology: The legacy ofElsie Clew Parsons, American Ethnologist16 (August): 518-534. _ _ _, and Michelle Rosaldo. 1974. Introduction. In Women, culture and society, ed. Lamphere and Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lawler, Andrew. 2001. College heads pledge to remove barriers. Science 291 (February): 806. Lazreg, Marnia. 1988. Feminism and difference: The perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria. Feminist Studies 14 (Spring): 81-107. Le Cat, Claude. 1765. Traite de l'existance du fluide des nerfs.... Berlin, plate 1, p. 35. Leacock, Eleanor, and Mona Etienne, eds. 1980. Women and colonization. New York: Praeger. Leap, Terry L. 1993. Tenure, discrimination, and the courts. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILRPress. Lee, Stacey J. 1998. The road to college: Hmong American women's pursuit ofhigher education. In Minding Women: Reshaping the Educational Realm, ed. Christine A. Woyshner and Holly S. Gelfond. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Educational Review, Reprint Series No. 30.
Bibliography
351
Lester, Richard A. 1974. Antibias regulation ofuniversities: Faculty problems and their solutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Levin, Sharon G., and Paula E. Stephan. 1991. Research productivity over the life cycle: Evidence for academic scientists. American Economic Review 81:114-132. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: Male and ftmale in western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Loeb, Jane W. 1997. Programs for academic partners: How well can they work? In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Lomperis, A. M. T. 1990. Are women changing the nature of the Academic profession? The Journal ofHigher Education 61, 644-66. Long, J. Scott. 1978. Productivity and academic position in the scientific career. American Sociological Review 43:889-908. _ _ _. 1992. Measures of sex differences in scientific productivity. Social Forces 71:159-178. _ _ _. 1997. Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Press. _ _ _, ed. 2001. From scarcity to visibility: A study ofgender differences in the careers of doctoral scientists and engineers. Report of the panel for the study of gender differences in the career outcomes of science and engineering Ph.D.s. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. _ _ _, and Mary F. Fox. 1995. Scientific careers: Universalism and particularism. Annual Review of Sociology 21:45-71. _ _ _, Paul D. Allison, and Robert McGinnis. 1993. Rank advancement in academic careers: Gender differences and the effects of productivity. American Sociological Review 58:703-722. Long, Janice. 2001. Gender equity: Promises made. Chemical and Engineering News 79 (February 5): 8. Longino, Helen. 1993. Feminist standpoint theory, and the problems of knowledge: Review essay, Signs 19 (1): 201-213. MacCormack, Carol. 1980. Nature, culture, gender: A critique. In Nature, culture, gender, ed. Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
352
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1999. A study on the status of women faculty in science at MIT. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McDowell, John M., and Janet Kiholm Smith. 1992. The effect of gender-sorting on propensity to co-author: Implications for academic promotion. Economic Inquiry 30: 68-82. McGuigan, Dorothy Gies. 1970. A dangerous experiment: 100years ofwomen at the University ofMichigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. McIlwee, Judith Samsom, and J. Gregg Robinson. 1992. Women in engineering: Gender, power, and workplace culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. Mikell, Gwendolyn. 1988. Zora Neale Hurston. In women anthropologists: A biographicaldictionary, ed. Ute Gacs et al. New York: Greenwood Press. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, native, other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. Boundary 2 (SpringjFall): 333-58. _ _ _. 1991. Cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism. In Third World women and the politics offeminism, ed. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mudimbe, Valentin. 1988. The invention ofAfrica. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nadis, Steve. 2001. Top research universities face up to gender bias. Nature 409 (8 February): 653. Narayan, Kirin. 1993. How native is a native anthropologist? American Anthropologist 95: 671-686. National Academy of Sciences, Committee on the Education and Employment of Women in Science and Engineering. 1979. Climbing the academic ladder: Doctoral women scientists in academe. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Bibliography
353
National Research Council. 1977, 1987, 1996. Summary reports: Doctorate recipients from universities. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
u.s.
_ _ _. 1998. Trends in the early careers of life scientists. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Nettles, M. T., and L. W. Perna. 1995. Sex and race differences in faculty
salaries, tenure, rank, and productivity: Why, on average, do women, African Americans, and Hispanics have lower salaries, tenure, and rank? ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 391 402. Newman, Louise. 1996. Coming of age, but not in Samoa: Reflections on Margaret Mead's legacy for western liberal feminism. American
QJt-arterly 48 (2): 233-272. NSF (National Science Foundation). 1920-1995. Survey ofEarned Doctorates. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.
_ _ _. 1973-1995. Survey ofDoctorate Recipients. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.
_ _ _. 1997. Characteristics ofDoctoral Scientists and Engineers in the United States: 1995. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Studies.
_ _ _. 2000. Tabulations from data from Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Completion Survey; and NSF Survey ofEarned Doctorates. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1997. Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. O'Leary, Cathy. 1997. Counteridentification or counterhegemony? Transforming feminist standpoint theory. Women and Politics 18 (3): 45-72. O'Neill, June, and Nachum Sicherman. 1990. Is the gender gap in economics declining? Unpublished manuscript. Olsen, D. 1991. Women and minority faculty job satisfaction: A structural model examining the effect of professional role interests. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 339
323. Olson, Keith W. 1974. The G.!. Bill, the veterans, and the colleges. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
354
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Ong, Aihwa. 1986. Colonialism and modernity: Feminist representations of women in non-western societies. Inscriptions 3 and 4: 79-93. _ _ _. 1995. Women out of China: Traveling tales and traveling theories in postcolonial feminism. In Women writing culture, ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press. Parson, L. A. 1991. The campus climate for women faculty at a public university. Initiatives 54 (1): 19-27. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1992. The idea ofthe university: A reexamination. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Perkins, Linda M. 1997. For the good ofthe race: Married African-American academics: A historical perspective. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Perrucci, Robert, Kathleen O'Flaherty, and Harvey Marshall. 1983. Market conditions, productivity, and promotion among university faculty.
Research in Higher Education 19:431-449. Polachek, Solomon W. 1978. Sex differences in college major. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 31: 498-508. Provost's Committee on the Status ofWomen. 1989. First annual report. Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University. Raabe, Phyllis H. 1997. Work-family policies for faculty: How career and family-friendly is academe? In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Reiman, A. S. 1989. The changing demography of the medical profession. N Engl J Med: 321:1540-41. Reskin, Barbara F. 1976. Sex differences in status attainment in science: The case of the postdoctoral fellowship. American Sociological Review 41: 597-612. _ _ _. 1978. Scientific productivity, sex, and location in the institution of science. American Journal of Sociology 83:1235-1243. _ _ _. 1998. The realities ofaffirmative action in employment. Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association. Robertson, L. J., and J. P. Bean. 1997. Job satisfaction for women faculty members in a predominantly female discipline. Paper presented at the
Bibliography
355
Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Ill. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 406895. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist. 1974. Woman, culture, and society: A theoretical overview. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rosenfeld, Rachel A., and Jo Ann Jones. 1986. Institutional mobility among academics. Sociology ofEducation 59:212-226. _ _ _, and Jo Ann Jones. 1987. Patterns and effects of geographic mobility for academic women and men. Journal ofHigher Education 58:493-515. Ross, Andrew, ed. 1996. Science wars. Durham: Duke University Press. Rossi, A. S., and A. Calderwood, eds. 1973. Academic women on the move. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Rossiter, Margaret W. 1982. Women scientists in America: Stru!1!Jles and strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. _ _ _. 1995. Women scientists in America: Before affirmative action 19401972. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Rowell, Thelma. 1984. Introduction: Mothers, infants, and adolescents. In Female primates: Studies by women primatologists, ed. Meredith Small. New York: Alan Liss. Sacks, Karen. 1974. Engels revisited: Women, the organization of production, and private property. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Said, Edward. 1989. Representing the colonized: Anthropology's interlocuters. Critical Inquiry 20: 205-225. Sanderson, Allen R., et al. 1999. Doctorate recipients from United States universities: Summary report 1998. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Sandler, B. R. 1986. The campus climate revisited: Chilly for women faculty, administrators, and graduate students. Association of American Colleges, Washington, D.C. _ _ _'. 1991. Women faculty at work in the classroom, or, why it still hurts to be a woman in labor. Communication Education 40 (1): 6-15. _ _ _. 1992. Success and survival strategies for women faculty members. Association of American Colleges, Washington, D.C.
356
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Sandoval, Chela. 1990. Feminism and racism: A report on the 1981 National Women's Studies Association conference. In Makingface, making soul: Creative and critical perspectives by women of color, ed. Gloria Anzaldua. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the political economy ofpassion: Exoticism and decolonization. Boulder: Westview Press. Sax, L. J., et al. 1996. The American college teacher: National norms for the 1995-96 HERIfaculty survey. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA. Schiebinger, Londa. 1994. Nature}s body: Gender in the making of modern science. Boston: Beacon Press. Shauman, Kimberlee A., and Yu Xie. 2002. Explaining sex differences in publication productivity among postsecondary faculty. This volume. Shoben, Elaine W. 1997. From anti-nepotism to programs for partners: Legal issues. In Academic couples: Problems and promises, eds. Marianne A. Ferber and Jane W. Loeb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Shyrock, Henry S., Jacob S. Siegel, and associates. 1973. The methods and materials of demography, vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce. Simeone, A. 1987. Academic women: Working towards equality. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey. Smart, John C. 1991. Gender equity in academic rank and salary. Review
of Higher Education 14: 511-26. Smith, Dorothy. 1990. Texts, facts and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. London: Routledge.
_ _ _. 1992. Sociology from women's experience: A reaffirmation. Sociological Theory 10 (Spring). Solomon, Barbara Miller. 1985. In the company ofeducated women. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sonnert, Gerhard. 1990. Careers of Women and Men Postdoctoral Fellows in the Sciences. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meetings. _ _ _" and Gerald Holton. 1995. Gender differences in science careers: The ProjectAccessstudy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Bibliography
357
Sowell, Thomas. 1975. Affirmative action reconsidered: Was it necessary in academia? Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Special Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, Second Session. 1975. Hearings: Civil ritJhts oblitJations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1988. The Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press. Spencer, Mary L., and Eva F. Bradford. 1982. Status and needs ofwomen scholars, in Handbook for women scholars: Strategies for success, eds. Mary L. Spencer, Monika Kehoe, and Karen Speece. San Francisco: Center for Women Scholars, Americas Behaviorial Research Corp. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. 1988. Can the Subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation ofculture, ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stacey, Judith. 1988. Can there be a feminist ethnography? WomenJs Studies International Forum 2: 21-27. Stack, S. 1994. The effects of gender on publishing: The case of sociology. Sociological Focus 27, no. 1 (February): 81-83. Stanford University. 1998. The status of women at Stanford: An update of the 1993 report on the recruitment and retention of women faculty. Background data for presentation to faculty senate. Palo Alto: Stanford University. Stocking, George Jr. 1968, 1982. Race, culture and evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago. Stoler, Ann. 1989. Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule. Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (January). _ _ _. 1995. Race and the education ofdesire: FoucaultJs history ofsexuality and the colonial order ofthings. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Strober, M. H., et al. 1993. Report of the provost's committee on the recruitment and retention of women faculty. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 366 269.
358
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Strum, Shirley, and Linda Fedigan. 1999. Theory, method and gender: What changed our views of primate society? In The new physical anthropology(Advances in Human Evolution Series), ed. Shirley C. Strum, Donald G. Lindburg, and David A. Hamburg. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Szafran, Robert F. 1984. Universities and women faculty: Why some o'lJanizations discriminate more than others. New York: Praeger. Tack, M. W., and C. L. Patitu. 1992. Faculty job satisfaction: Women and minorities in peril. ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, Washington, D.C. Task Force on Women's Academic Careers in Medicine. 1991-1995. Annual report to the department of medicine. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Tesch, B. J., H. M. Wood, A. L. Helwig, and A. B. Nattinger. 1995. Promotion of women physicians in academic medicine. JAMA 273:1022-1025. Tilly, Chris. 1991. Reasons for the continuing growth of part-time employment. Monthly Labor Review 114: 10-18. Toutkoushian, Robert K. 1998. Racial and marital status differences in faculty pay. The Journal ofHigher Education 69: 513-541. Trow, Martin. 1977. Departments as contexts for teaching and learning. In Academic departments, edited by D. E. McHenry and Associates, pp. 12-33. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 1993. In the realm ofthe diamond queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Tuckman, Howard, Susan Coyle, and Yupin Bae. 1990. On time to the
doctorate: A study of the increased time to complete doctorates in science and engineering. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 1994, 1997. Digest for Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. University of California. 1972. Women in the graduate sector ofthe University of California. Report of an Ad Hoc Committee of the Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs.
Bibliography
359
University of California-Los Angeles. 1972. Report of the chancel/orJs adpisory committee on the status ofwomen at UCLA. University of Michigan. 1994. Draft announcement for a career development fund for women faculty. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. University of Minnesota. 1978. Preliminary report on the status ofwomen faculty on the Twin Cities campus. Report prepared for TC-AAUP Committee W, by Charlotte Striebel. University of Tennessee. 1972. Taskforce on women. Report of the Task Force. Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why so slow? The adpancement of women. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Vetter, Betty M., and Eleanor L. Babco. 1997. Professional women and minorities. Washington, D.C.: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions offeminist ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wade, Nicholas. 1998. Primordial Cells Fuel Debate on Ethics. The New York Times, November 10, Fl-2. Ward, Kathryn B., and Linda Grant. 1995. Gender and academic publishing. In Higher education: Handbook oftheory and research, vol. 11, ed. A. E. Bayer and J. C. Smart. New York: Agathon. Wennerc\s, Christine, and Agnes Wold. 1997. Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature 387: 341-43. Wenzel, S. A., and C. Hollenshead. 1994. Tenured women faculty: Reasons for leaping one research unipersity. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 375 713. West, M. S. 1995. Women faculty: Frozen in time. Academe 81 (4): 26-29. Wolf, Marjory. 1974. Chinese women: Old skills in a new context. In Women, culture and society, ed. Louise Lamphere and Michelle Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wright, Rita, 1991. Women's labor and pottery production in prehistory. In Engendering Archaeology, ed. Gero and Conkey. Wunsch, M. A. 1994. Giving structure to experience: Mentoring strategies for women faculty. Initiatives 56 (1): 1-10.
360
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Xie, Yu, and Kimberlee A. Shauman. 1998. Sex differences in research productivity: New evidence about an old puzzle. American Sociological Review 63:847-870. Yale University. 1971. A report to the president. Report of the Committee on the Status of Professional Women at Yale. Zernike, Kate. 1999. MIT women win a fight against bias; in rare move, school admits discrimination. The Boston Globe March 21. Zuckerman, Harriet. 1977. Scientific elite. New York: Free Press. _ _ _. 1987. Persistence and change in the careers of men and women scientists and engineers. In Women: Their under-representation and career differentials in science and engineering, ed. L. S. Dix. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. _ _ _. 1991. The careers of men and women scientists: A review of current research. In The outer circle: Women in the scientific community, ed. Harriet Zuckerman, Jonathan R. Cole, and John T. Bruer. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. _ _ _,and Jonathan R. Cole. 1975. Women in American science. Minerva 13:82-102.
Index Abu-Lughod,Lila 270,273,337 Academe 53,211,213,215 Academe (journal) 32,45,47,51,82,327 Academic career(s) 41, 152, 166, 200, 293, 294,
330,334 and children 319-320, 321 high level 332 reasons for pursuing 62,91,291 climate 283-285 couples 54,295 hiring 33, 297-299 tenuring 33 discipline 25 field 25 freedom 326 location 146 marketplace 114, 123, 156, 161 medicine 227-229,235 sector 146 Access to daycare 33 to resources 23, 176, 193-195,
200,227,235,289,331,335
Accommodating couples 33,219-220,
295,333
Accountability 39, 223, 335 Achievement 293 of tenure 218 Adjunct faculty 33, 35, 82, 327, 329 Admissions college 212, 325 of veterans 4,212-213 Advising 59,60,76,94-95,217,
219,292,328 Advisor(s) of research 92, 94, 105, 328 Advocacy 223, 300 Affirmative action 36,213, 301, 326 enforcement of 232, 326 goals and timetables 31-32 plans 31,213,298,325-327 reports 32,36-37,48
Mrica 263, 267 Mrican women 263 Mrican-American women 211,217,
265,266 Age 70, 147, 160, 161, 178 and career 170,295 distribution 35 distribution of women faculty 60 pyramid 154-156, 165 Agency, of women 260 Aggression, male 250 Agriculture 36 Aguirre, A., Jr. 54, 79 Ahern, Nancy C. 12, 14,38,42,51, 160,
164,172,191,202
Aisenberg, N. 53, 79 Allison, Paul D. 164, 172, 173, 190,202 A1onro, Joseph 243 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 32, 33, 35 American Council of Education (ACE) 179,
184, 190, 191, 192
American College of Physicians (ACP) 227,
242
American Medical Colleges Project Committee on Increasing Women's Leadership in Academic Medicine 228 American Psychological Association (APA) 377-378 American research universities 1-3, 5, 8-9,
20-21, 113
competition from private, for-profit organizations 21 criticism 20-21 See also Universities, research Analytical tools of women's studies and feminist theory 249-252 Ancestral humans 250 Angell, James D. 20 Anthropology 179,251 and feminism 257-278 androcentric 256, 262 centrality of culture in 264-266
361
362 Anthropology, continued and colonialism 260 epistemology in 260, 262 foundational issues in 262, 263 Anzaldua, Gloria 268, 273 Archaeology gender studies in 247-256 Arenson, Karen W. 28, 30 Aristotle 22, 30 Arizona State University 43, 45, 49 Arredondo, Marisol 53 Arts and humanities 176, 179, 180-182, 186,198,199,200,328 Asad, Talal 260, 273 Assertiveness, female sexual 250 Association of American Medical Colleges 228 Association of American Universities 6 Assumptions 321 cultural 270 gendered 253,261 Astin, Helen S. 11, 53--79,91, 107, 164, 172,225,295,305,326-328,377 Attainment measures of 120 of tenure 218,326 Attitudes of faculty 61-64, 71, 93, 99-106 of women 61-68 toward women faculty 32,212 Attributions of success 102-105 Autonomy 69,86 offaculty 65,69,221 Availability data 37 pools 214-215 Average annual growth in proportions of women 35 Awards 222, 312 Babco, Eleanor 4,7, 14, 31,43,51, 53,81, 338,359 Baboons 250-251 Baccalaureate 20, 148, 281 Backlash 241 Bae, Yupin 8, 15 Baer, Joan vii Balmert, M. E 54, 80 Barber, Leslie A. 147, 172 Barriers to equality 211,213,215,217,219,221 towomen 42,257,285-290,327 Baseline data 217
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Bathon, Joan 227 Bayer, Alan E. 71,79,164, 172,293, 305 Bean,]. P. 65,81 Beane,W.293,294,307 Behar, Ruth 270, 273, 277 Behavioral sciences 123, 146, 149, 153, 158,159,170,248 Behymer, Charles E. 190,202 Beliefs offaculty 92,99-106 Bellas, Marcia L. 69,79,282,293,304, 305 Benefits job 312, 315, 316 of diverse faculty 224, 300 Veteran's 4 Bennett, Bessye B. viii Bensimon, E. M. 225 Bentley, Richard J. 190, 191,202,291, 305 Benz, Edward, Jr. 229 Berg, Helen M. 282, 286, 305 Bernard, Jessie 202 Bernard, Russell 274 Bernstein, Alison vii Beye, Penelope vii Bias epistemological 260 gender 32,38,69-70,230,288, 299,332 in evaluations 286 Bias, Wilma B. 243 Bickel, Janet 227,228, 242 Bielby, Denise 297, 305 Bielby, William T. 297,305 Binomial models 196 Biological clock 319, 322 essentialism 267 sciences 37,42, 127, 179,248 see also Life sciences Biotechnology 21 Blackburn, Robert T. 190, 191,202,291, 305 Blau, Francine 284, 295, 305 Bloch, Jean H. 262, 263, 273 Bloch,Maurice 262,263,273 Boas, Franz 264-265,273 Boice, R. 54, 80 Bollinger, Lee 222 Bordin,R. 212,213,225 Boundary intrusions 235 Boxer, Marilyn Jacoby 22, 29, 30, 258, 274 Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University 30
Index
Boyer, James L. 228,242 Bradford, Eva F. 291,309 Brand, Myles 21,30 Bridenthal, Renata 256 Bridgeman, Rae 275 Briscoe, Ann 248, 255 Brody, William 228 Brown University 45,47,50,377 Bruer, J. T. 107,203 Business 71,74,78, 179 Butler, Judith 260, 274 Butler, Nicholas Murray 20 Cabral, Robert 284,306 Cahow, C. Elton 242 Calderwood, Ann 54,79,81 California Institute of Technology (CalTech) 2,5,35,38,43,45,49 Campus, as workplace 314 Capacities interactional 105 of students 91,93, 100-103 Capital, human 328 Carbone, Kathryn M. 243 Career choices, gender differences in 62 development 221-222, 227-229, 237,240 outcomes 235 patterns 54 Career Development Fund for Women Faculty 217 Carnegie classification 3, 71, 112, 156, 158, 162-164, 166 Carnegie Commission on Higher Education 5--6,156,172 Carnegie Council for Policy Studies in Higher Education 6, 14 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 3,4,63,80 Carnegie Mellon University 44,47,48, 50,283 "Camegie-69" 179, 183, 190, 191, 198, 199 Carr,~ L. 227,228,243 Case Western Reserve University 44,47, 48,50 Categories of race 263 Causal model of publication productivity 177 Causality, reciprocal 178 Centrality of culture in anthropology 264-266
363 Chafe, William vi Chafetz, J. S. 107 chairman 213,229,238 Chamberlain, Mariam K. 7,8, 14, 53, 80,212,225 Change facilitating institutional 223, 315, 316, 334-336 organizational 227-242, 312, 315 Chatterjee, Piya 13,257, 331, 378 Chemistry 37-38,92,94,108,248 departments vii, 33, 48 Child and infunt care 23, 33, 68, 69, 234-235, 295, 315 on site 312,315,320 Childbearing 195, 216 Children effects on career 79, 319 effects on productivity 195 effects on salary 71 Civil rights laws 5,42 Civil Rights Act of 1964 5 Clark, Shirley M. 91, 107,293, 306 Class 233, 259 Clemente, Frank 186, 190,202 Clifford, Geraldine Joncich 212, 225 Clifford, James 270,274 Climates and attitudes 32, 42, 54, 92, 283-285 Co-authors, co-authorship 99 Coalitions, coalition building 223 Coggeshall, Porter E. 146, 173 Cognitive skills, female 250 Cohort(s) 112, 113, 119-124, 146, 149, 154-156, 218, 329 Coiner, Constance 319, 322 Cole, Jonathan 107, 152, 164, 166, 167, 172,174,176,195,202,203 Collaborations, collaborators and partnerships 242 College and University Personnel Association Foundation 312, 314, 316 College and University Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs 312, 317 College and University Work/Family Association 312-314, 320 College of Human Ecology, Cornell University 34 Colleges liberal arts 126, 190, 191,287 Collegiality 25 Collins, Patricia Hill 266, 274
364 Colonialism 260 Colorado State University 43,46,49 Columbia University 20, 44, 46, 50 Comaroff, Jean 263,274 Comaroff, John 263,274 Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard (CEWH) v, vi, vii, I, 300, 335, 377 Committee on Increasing Women's Leadership in Academic Medicine 228 Committee on the Education and Employment of Women in Science in Engineering 12, 15 Committee on the Status of Professional Women at Yale 33 Committee on the Status of Women, Indiana University 33 Committee on the Status of Women in the Economic Profession (CSWEP) 287 Committees on women faculty 33 Comparable wotth 222 Competition in primate society 249 for reproductive success 250 Composite measures 55,71 Comprehensive universities, institutions 126, 190 Computer science 94, 108, 109,283 Conference on Women in Research Universities 2 Congress, U.S. 20,254 Special Subcommittee on Education 6, 15 Conkey, Margaret 251, 252, 253, 255, 256 Conley, F. K 227, 243 Constituencies: faculty, staff, student 313 Constraints fiscal 39, 240 for women in academe 106,247,265, 327,332 institutional 333 Construction, of otherness 260, 262, 263,269 Controls, statistical 163 Convergence toward gender equality 157, 191, 194 Corcoran, Mary 91, 107,293, 306 Cornell University 20,34,37,38,44,46, 48,50,51,304 Counseling of students 59,60,76 Coyle, Susan 8, 15 Cress, Christine M. 11, 53, 219, 225, 326
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Criteria for promotion 12,36,229,231,234 for tenure 36, 163 Critical mass 241 Critiques feminist 21, 23, 258-272 theoretical 251 Cultural assumptions 270, 321 difference 258,259,263,268 patterns 242 theory 264 Culture(s) academic 24-26,91-92 Curie, Marie 247 Curtin, Phillip 263,274 Curtis, Anne McB. 242 CUWFA 312-314,316,320 CUWFANET 313 Data, data collection 27-28, 32-33, 54, 92,112 Davis, C. 107, 381 Davis, Diane E. 293, 305 Dawes Indian Act of 1887 264 Daycare. See Child and infant care DeAngelis, C. D. 227, 243 Deans, leadership by 334 Degrees baccalaureate 20, 147, 281 completion times 7-8, 178, 186,200 doctoral 19,20,53,93,108-109, Ill, 129,147,153,214,281 engineering 20, 112, 153 law 212 masters 281 medical 212 Deloria, Ella 273 Demographks 87, 154-156 Demson, Sandra viii Departmentchair 229,238 leadership by 334 Devaluing women's work 222, 283, 285-286 Development career 227-229,237,238 faculty 237,238,241 policy 223,224,314 di Leonardo, Micaela 261,269,270,271,274 Dickens, C. S. 53, 80 Dimmit, Cornelia vii Disciplinary differences in gender distribution 11, 37-38,48, 70,148
365
Index Disconnect, between faculty needs and family needs 318-322 Discrimination complaints 214 subtle 66, 67-68, 299-300 Distribution of women 31 by department 32,41,93 by field and rank 93 Diversity efforts 315 linked to Work-Family programs 315 Doctoral, doctorate degrees 19, 53,
92,109, Ill, 129, 153,217,281
Doctorate Records File 37, 112 Doherty, Elizabeth viii Dossiers, preparation of 334 Double-blind refereeing 288-289, 303 du Cros, Hilary 255 Dual-career couples 33, 219-220, 297,
298-299, 304 Duderstadt, James 215 Dugoni, Bernard 3 Duke University 37,38,44,47,50 Economics 179 Editors, bias of 288 Education 179 Ekstrom, Ruth B. 38,51 Elder care 216, 315, 316, 321 Eliot, Charles W. 20 Elmore, G. C. 54, 80 Emory University 43, 46, 48, 49 Employee Assistance Program 334 En~neering
36, 71, 78, Ill, 127, 179
Enslin, Elizabeth 270,274 Epistemological bias 260 Equal Credit Act 5 Etaugh, Claire 285, 306 Ethnographic research 257, 260, 264-266 Ethnography, "feminist" 264, 270, 271 Etienne,~ona
276
Etzkowitz, Henry 227,241,243 Evangelauf, Jean 3,4, 14 Evolutionary paradigms 261, 262 theories 251 Victorian theories 265 Executive Order 11246 5,214 Faculty 35, 54 adjunct 35,82,327,329 attitudes 71, 93, 99-106 autonomy 65,69
beliefs 99-106 characteristics of 55 development 237, 238, 242 holding faculty accountable 39 interactions with students 93,96-99, 105 minority 37,39,54,56,214,216,217,
220,290,299,300
part-time 35,295-297, 327, 329 rank 35 temporary 35, 327 Faculty Career Development Fund 217 Families and Work Institute 312, 314, 316 Family effect of on careers of academic women 72 friendly policies 33, 295, 312-316,
318, 319
paid leave 39, 320 responsibilities 71, 73 Family Care Resources Program 216 Federal regulation enforcement efforts 42 research support 3-4, 20 Fedigan, Laurence 249,255 Fedigan,Linda 249,250,251,255,256 Female cognitive skills 250 competition for reproductive success in primates 250 sexual assettiveness 250 social strategies 250 Feminism "hegemonic" 260,272 second wave 258-259 Feminist archaeologists 252-253 interventions 247 primatology 251 "Feminization" of higher education 212 Ferber, ~arianne A. 14, 54,80, 282,284,
285,286,287,288,291,292,295, 296,297,300,304,305,306,307, 308,332,333,336,378 Ferri, Vincent 103, 107 Fidell, L. S. 285, 306 Field 70-71 broad III differences in time to tenure 72 differences in publication 74 distribution(s) 37,41 male dominated 36 of specialization 108-109, 178, 179 Finkel, Susan K 54,80, 301, 306
366
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Finnegan, D. E. 54,80 Fiscal constraints 21, 39,240 Fischer, Michael 270, 276 Fishkin, Shelley Fisher 322 Flagship state universities 6, 10, 36 Flattau, Pamela Ebert 146, 172 Fletcher, Alice 264 Florida State University 43,46,49 Ford Foundation vii Fox, Mary Frank 11, 91, 92, 100, 103,
106,107,175,190,203,296, 307,326 Francomano, Clair A. 230, 233, 236, 243 Franklin, Melissa 248 Fraser, Nancy 260, 274 Freedom, intellectual 75 Freeman, Jo 307 French, Jeffrey 249,255 French, Marilyn vi Frequency of advising 59, 71, Fried, Linda P. 12, 42, 227, 228, 230, 236,
239,243,289,290,307,331 Friedan, Betty vi Friedman, Dana E. 311,314,317 Friedman, M. A. 243 Friend, Cynthia 248 Funding, research 3, 20, 92 Funds, set-aside 32 Gacs, Ute 274, 276 Gailey, Christine Ward 260,271, 274 Galbrarth, A. 241, 242 Galinski, Ellen 311, 317 Gelfond, Holly S. 30 Gender -based bias 32, 38, 230, 288, 300, 332 composition of research teams 92,
94-95
differences in beliefs 92 in career attainment 113, 151-152 in career choice 62 in professional goals 63, 65 in interests 59-60 in productivity 60, 74, 75 in promotion 164-165, 336 in rank 60, 147, 165-166 in rank and salary 32, 38,41,55,69 in salary 32, 38, 335 in satisfaction 65 in stress 66-67 in tenure status 70, 147
in values and attitudes 61-67,78 inequality 21 nature of 22-23 ratio(s) 41, 43-50 studies in archeology 247-248, 251-253 Gendered assumptions 253, 261 Georgetown University 35,38,40,43,
46,49
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) 35,44,46,49 Gero, Joan 252, 253, 255, 256 GI Bill 4,212 consequences of 212-213 Gilman, Daniel Coit 20 Gilman, Sander 263,274 Ginorio, A. B. 107 Glazer, U. S. 225 Goals and timetables 31-32 educational 63 of faculty 61, 63 personal and professional 63-65 Goldberger, Marvin L. 146, 172 Goldin, Claudia 286, 307 Gordon, Albert F. vii Gordon, Deborah 268, 270-272, 273,
275,277
Government initiatives 254 Graduate education 91-92, 101-105 Grannum, Peter A. T. 242 Grant, Linda 175,203 Graves, Philip E. 304, 307 Green, Carole 284, 306 Green, Edith 8 Greenwood, Ted vii Grievance procedures 302, 335 Grinker, Christopher 274 Gross, Paul 247,248,256 Grossberg, Larry 278 Grosz, B. J. 228, 243 Guillory, Liz 79 Hager, Lori 255 Haley-Oliphant, Ann E. 160, 172 Hall, David E. 190,202 Hall, G. Stanley 20 Hamburg, David A. 256 Harassment racial, sexual 26 Haraway, Donna 251,256,262,275 Harding, Sandra 262, 275 Hargens, Lowell 156,172, 195,203
367
Index Harrington, Mona 53,79 Harris, Ann Sutherland 8, 14 Hartnett, Rodney T. 91,107 Harvard University 1,2,20,36,44,46,47,
48, Il2, 248, 335 Chemistry Department vii Conference on Women in Research Universities vi, vii, 128 Hatfield, Elisabeth vii Haven, Elizabeth W. 5,14 Healy, Bernadine 253, 256 Heilman, M. E. 303, 307 HeUman, David 229 Helmreich, Robert 293, 294, 307 Helwig, A. L. 244 Hensel, N. 54,80 Hernandez, Carol 3Il,317 Higher education, history of 4-9, 20--21,
212-213 Higher Education Research Institute (HERl) 54,377,378 Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) 287,334,377 Hirsch, Joy 242 History 24,179 Hodges, Elaine 322 Hoffer, Thomas 3 HoUenshead, Carol 12,81,85, 2Il, 212,
225,300,307 Holton, Gerald 286,289,309 Homemakers, homemaking 293-295 hooks, bell 275 Hopkins, Joanna viii Hopkins, Nancy 2 Horch, Dwight H. 5, 14 Hornig, Donald viii Hornig, Lilli S. vi, 4, II, 14, 15,31,51,
213,225,282,284,290,304,307,325
Howard University 43,46,48,49 Howard-Bobiwash, Heather 258,275 Hrdy, Sarah 251, 256 Huber, Joan A. 285, 292, 306 Human capital 327 origins 247-254 Human Genome Project 254 Hurlbert, Jeanne 164, 173 Hurston, Zora Neale 265-266
Inferiority of women 23, 261 Initiatives for women 91, 314 government 254 systemic 228 Innovations of women potters 253 Institute for Scientific Information 146 Institutional change as opportunity for strengthening work/family 315 constraints 333 decision-making 39, 42, 319 Institutions, comprehensive 189-190 Intellectual freedom 68, 71, 75 Interaction faculty with students 93, 96-99, 105 orientation of 96, 105 Interdisciplinary approach 25 work 25,258 International differences in gender composition of professions 284 Investment in human capital 327-328 in relationships 250--251 Iowa State University 44, 46, 49 Isolation of women faculty 237-238 Ivy League universities 41 James, William 20--21,26,27,29, 30 Job satisfaction of women 54, 65 security 65 John Mary E. 271, 275 Johns Hopkins University 44,46,49,289,
320, 335 Department of Medicine 227-244,289 Departmental Office for Faculty Development 239 Provost's Committee on the Status of Women 231, 234, 243 Task Force 232, 233, 234, 236, 238 Johnson, Arlene A. 314,317 Johnsrud, L. K. 54, 80 Jones, Jo Ann 164,173,175 Jones, Lyle V. 146, 173 Jordanova, Ludmila J. 272,275 Judd, Ellen 257,259,275 Junior faculty, tenure process for 36, 234,
333-334 Imperialism 260--263, 272, 331 Index of Campus Work Family Initiatives 314 Indiana University-Bloomington 33,44,
46,49,51
Kanter, Rosabeth 303, 307 Kaplan, Caren 269,275 Kaschak, Ellyn 285,307
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
368 Kasley, Helen C. 285,306 Katz, J. 91, 107 Kazis, L. E. 227,228,243 Keesing, Roger M. 275 Kehoe, Monika 309 Keller, Evelyn Fox 262, 276 Kellogg, Catherine 213, 214 Kelly-Gadol, Joan 252, 256 Kemelgor, Carol 243 Kennedy, Donald 10, 15 Kenny, Shirley Strum 21, 250, 256 See also Strum, Shirley C. Khan, Aisha 276 "Killer ape" 250 Kinship studies 261 Koertge, Noretra 248, 256 Kolodny, Annette 30 Kolpin, Van W. 300, 304, 307 Koonz, Claudia 256 Korean War 213 Kom, William S. 53 Kuh, Charlotte V. 11, Ill, 329 Ladder faculty 37 ranks 82 Lamphere, Louise 261,265,267,276,
277,278 Land grant campuses, universities 36 Landes, Ruth 273 Law 7,82,212 productivity predictors 74, 75 UCLA case study 88 Lawler, Andrew 2,15 Lazarus, Barbara 14, 107, 325 Lazreg, Marnia 269,276 Leacock, Eleanor 271,276 Leadership 222, 237, 240-241, 338 campuses 314, 315 by deans and department heads 334 Leading universities women's status in 31, 327 Leap, Terry 7, 15 Leave maternity 216,295, 301, 332 parental 39,295,320, 322 sabbatical 316 Le Cat, Claude 249,256 Lecturers 57,82 Lecturers' Professional Development Grants 221 Lee, Stacey J. 23, 30
Legal pressures and hiring of women 7 Legislation civil rights laws 5, 42 Glbill 4 Morril Act 20 Lester, Richard 6, 15,293, 308 Levin, Sharon G. 188, 203 Levitt,Norman 247,248,256 Lewis, Darrell R. 172, 305 Lewis, Martin 248, 256 liberal arts colleges 126, 190, 191 library science 36 life sciences 37,48, 109, 113, 120, 154,
158, 168, 333 Lindburg, Donald G. 256 lindhohn, Jennifer 79 Lindzey, Gardner 146,173 literature 25,27,41, 179,212, 331 Lithic studies 252 lloyd, Genevieve 261,276 Loeb, Jane W. 54,80,291,297,298,
300,302,304,305,306,307,308, 333, 336 Logit models 160 Lomperis, A. M. T. 212, 225 Long, Janice 2, 15 Long, J. Scott 11,42, 128, 145, 172, 173, 175,182,188,190,196,202,203, 282,287,289,308,326-327,330 Longino, Helen 251, 256, 268, 276 Louisiana State University 44,46, 49 Lucker, G.W. 293, 294, 307
MacCormack, Carol 261, 274, 275, 276 MacDonald, Susan M. 227, 243 Maehr, P. 172, 202 Maher, B. A. 146, 172 Male aggression 250 dominance 23,251,269 Male investment in relationships 250-251 "Man-the-hunter" 252 "Man-the-toolmaker" 252 March, Tamar viii Marchand, James R. 304,307 Marcus, George 270, 274, 276 Marital status 71, 294-295 gender differences 64, 65 predictors of salary 71-73 productivity predictors 74-75 publication productivity 178 Marnin, Millie vii, viii
369
Index Marriage effects of on career success 79 Married women 297, 332 Marshall, Harvey 164, 173 Martin, Jane Roland 22 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
2,15,35,36,37,38,42,44,46,48,49, 286,318-322,321,331,335 Women Faculty Study 129 Maternity leave 216, 295, 301, 332 Mathematics 1, 11,283, 331 changes in status of women over time
113, 114, 129-130, 148, 149 career stage 121, 122, 139
comparison of research with other institutions 126, 127, 128 employment, types of institutions 158 employment in labor force 150,
153, 154
rank by cohort 115, 116, 117, 118,
119, 133-136 research university faculty by cohort 137 tenure status 123-124, 125,
131,132
tenure status by cohort and career stage 140-143 current status of women 37 national profile 58 publication productivity, see Productivity, gender differences time to tenure 77, 78 UCLA case study 88 Matriarchy 261 Matrilineal networks 250 Marthews, K 293, 294, 307 McCann, James C. 195, 203 McDowell, John M. 287,308 McGinnis, Robert 164, 173 McGuigan, Dorothy Gies 5, 15 McHenry, D. E. 108 McIlwee, Judith Samsom 149,173 Mead, Margaret 265, 273 Measures of change 31 Medical degrees 212, 282 Medical schools 156-159, 161, 163-164 Medicine academic 227-229 organizational/institutional change at JHU 227-242 veterinary 179 Mentoring 96-97,238,242,286-287,322 Meritocracy 26
Michigan State University 44, 46, 49 Mikell Gwendolyn 265,276 Milem, Jeffrey F. 293, 305 Millennium Project 378 Minh-ha, Trinh T. 260, 276 Minority fuculty 37, 39, 54, 290 Minority Faculty Development Fund 292 Mission-oriented science 254 Models 227 binomial 196 causal 177 logit 160 negative role 286 regression 147 rok 41,235-237,283,292,300 Modern Language Association (MLA) 286 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 267,269,276 Moore, Henrietta 277 Moraga, Cherrk 268, 273 Morella Commission 254 Morgen, Sandra 255 Morrill Act 20 Moskowitz, M. A. 227,228,243 Mothers 216,249,288,294,332-333 Mudimbe, Valentin 263, 277 Multifactorial interventions 241 Nadis, Steve 2, 15 Narayan, Kirin 270, 277 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 1, 12,
15,38
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 179,282,309 National Council for Research on Women 378 National Institutes of Health (NIH)
248-249,253
Office for Research for Women 248-249 National Research Council (NRC) 53,80,
92,108,109,128,380
National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctorate Records File 112, 173 National Survey of Higher Education 179 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty
70, 179-199
National Women's Studies Association 268, 277 Nattinger, A. B. 244 Natural Sciences 11,282,284 Neal, Homer 224 Nelson, Jack 256 Nelson, Lynn 256 Nelson, Margaret 255
370
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Nelson, Sarah 255 Neo-colonialism 260 Nettles, M. T. 70, 80 Neuschatz, Michael 243 New Mexico State University 44,46,50 New York University (NYU) 19-20, 35,
44,46,50 Newell, Barbara 222 Newman,Lou~e
264,265,273,277
Newman, Mary M. 243 North American Paleoindian research 252 North Carolina State University 44,47, 50 Northwestern University 44, 46, 49 Nurmng 36,82,179 Nussbaum, Martha 26, 30
Occupational segregation 221, 222 O'Farrell, Brigid 295, 306 O'Flaherty, Kathleen 164-173 Ohio State University 35,44,47, 50 O'Leary, Cathy 268,277 Olsen, D. 69,81 Olson, Keith W. 4,15 Olswang, Stephen G. 294, 301, 306 O'Neill, June 282, 308 Ong, Aihwa 269, 277 Opportunity costs 7,9 O'Reilly, Jane vii Orangutan 249 Oregon State University 38,44,47, 50 Organizational/institutional change family issues 311-322 innovative solutions 311, 318-322 leadership campus program features
315-316
general policy issues 282-283 academic climate 283-285 adoption and implementation of policies 299-300 elimination of barriers to progress
285-290
ensuring policy effectiveness 300-302 family and caregiving 293-299 historical review 281-282 promoting advancement 291-293 at Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine 227-242 elements of successful change 239-242 gender-based obstacle identification
233-236
interventions implemented 236-239 problem recognition, institutional interest in 230-233
short term results of departmental interventions 229-230 at University of Michigan 211-224 components of success 223-224 data sources 217-219 historical context 211-213 leadership 222 non-tenure track faculty and staff
221-222
policies 215-217 programs 220 research efforts and surveys 219-220 women faculty, proportions of
213-215
women's studies and 19-29 Orientation faculty/student 96 humanistic 68, 71 Otherness 260, 262, 263, 269 Palmer, Alice Freeman 213 Palmer, George 213 Paradigms evolutionary 261, 262 of knowledge 325 structuralist 262 Parental leave 39, 216, 295, 301, 320, 332 Parson, L.A. 54,81 Parsons, Elsie Clew 264-265,266 Parr-time faculty 35, 295-296, 311,
320, 329 Partners 71 employment of 39, 320 Patitu, C. L. 54, 81 Patriarchy 261, 264 in households in China 267 monogamous families 264 Pedagogy 23 student-centered 25,68,71, 75, 79, 328 Pelikan, Jaroslav 27,28, 30 Pennsylvania State University 44, 47, 50 Perkins, Linda M. 294, 308 Perna, L. W. 70, 80 Perrucci, Carolyn 255 Perrucci, Robert 164, 173 Petrovich, Janice vii Ph.D.s degrees 19,20-21,108-109 female 37,40-41 pool 53 Philosophy 179 European 262, 272 Physical sciences 74, 284, 329
371
Index
changes in status of women over time 113,114,129,148,149 career stage 121, 122, 139 comparison of research with other institutions 126, 127, 128 employment in labor force 150, 153,154 rank by cohort 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 133-136 research university faculty by cohort 137 tenure status 123-124, 125, 131, 132 tenure status by cohort and career stage 140-143 current status of women 37-38 degree completion times 8 doctoral education 94 national profile 58 productivity predictors 75 time to tenure 77 UCLA case study 88 "Pipeline" problems 8 Plans, affirmative action 31, 32, 213 Polachek, Solomon W. 284, 308 Policies affirmative action 33, 298, 325-327 development 223, 314 family-friendly 313, 316, 318, 319 recruitment 39 steady-state 35 work-family 33 Political science 33, 58, 302 Portland State University 378 Post-colonial feminist critique 266-272 Postdoctoral fellowship 37, 160 Portery, development of 253 Predictors of number of publications 55 of research productivity 55 of salary 55, 70 of time to tenure 70 Prejudice gender 26 racial 26 Prestige 68, 71, 73, 78 of university 146 Primates 249 Primatologists 248, 249 feminist 250-252 Primatology 247-256 Primitivism 262 Princeton University 2, 6, 44, 46, 50, 304
Private institutions 21 property 264, 267 Probationary period 33, 36, 162, 294 Productivity 12, 42 causal model of 177 effect of children on 319, 322 gender differences in 59-61, 70, 73-76, 175-198 Professors assistant 33-35, 38, 40-41, 56, 82-88 associate 33-35, 38, 82-88 full 33-35,37,38,40-41,71,82-88 Promotion criteria for 36,229,231,234 gender inequity in 32,39, 166,236, 238,334 Proportions average 35 of women 31-32, 33-51 P~chology 74,77,88,179,331 Publications productivity 60, 70, 73-76, 78,190,304,332 Purdue University 44, 46, 49 Pusey, Nathan 6 Quinnie, R. 241,242 Quotas 5 Raabe, Phyllis H. 296, 298, 308 Race/ethnicity 54, 56, 70, 72, 258, 266-272 Radcliffe College v Class ofl953 v Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study v Rand, Cynthia 227 Rank, academic 248,282-283, 285, 329; see also Tenure/tenure status changes in status of women over time 133-136 productivity 166, 167-168 type of institutions, jobs, and year of survey 169 current status of women 45-47 data sources 32 proportions of women faculty 33 doctoral education 94 gender comparisons, 1974--1995 164--166 JHUDM 229,236 national profile 56-57 percentage of women 2 predictors of productivity 74, 75, 76 predictors of salary 71, 72
372 Rank, academic, continued promotion, see Promotion publication productivity 178, 190 status of research universities after 1970s 9 UCLA study 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87 Ratios student-faculty 41 Rayman, P. M. 107 Recruitment and hiring 32, 33, 38-39, 285, 333; see also Employment affirmative action compliance timetables 31-32 factors in career decisions 9, 10 family and caregiving issues 314, 315 at JHUDM 232 legal pressures 7 nepotism rules 297-298, 332 productivity issues 289, 290 spouses and partners, see Spouses/ partners, employment placement, for at University of Michigan 218 wired 327 Regulations affirmative action 31 enforcement of 7,42, 149,214, 302, 327, 335 Religion 179 Reiman, Arnold S. 231, 243 Relocation assistance 315, 320 Representation of women in S&E 111 of women on faculties 34, 43-50, 53, 82-84, 93-94 Research funding 21 women's interests in 58-61 See also Universities, research Reskin, Barbara F. 160, 173, 186, 190, 195, 203,285,296,308 Rimsky, Cathy 314,317 Ritchie, J. Murdoch 242 Robertson, L. J. 65,81 Robinson, J. Gregg 149,173 Rockefeller University 44, 47, 50 Rosaldo, Michelle 261, 267, 276, 277, 278 Rosenfeld, Rachel A. 164, 173, 174 Ross, Andrew 248, 256 Rossi, Alice S. 53,79,81 Rossiter, Margaret W. 145, 148, 171, 174 Rouse, Cecilia 286,307 Rowell, Thelma 250, 256 Russo, Ann 276 Rutgers University 44, 46, 48, 50, 382
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Sabbatical leave 316 Sacks, Karen 267, 277 S~d,Edward 260,277 Salary and benefits 70-73,221, 296, 302, 304 gender or sex differences in 38, 57-58, 70, 281-282, 334 Sanderson, Allen R. 3,7,8, 15 Sandler, B. R. 54,81 Sandoval, Chela 277 Satisfaction job 62 levels of 42, 54,66 sources of 65-66 SavigJiano, Marta 277 Sax, Linda J. 53, 54, 81, 91, 107 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy 273 Schiebinger, Landa 13,247,256, 331 Schlesinger, Gabriella viii Schmertzler, Margaretta vi, vii Science and engineering degrees 20, 58, 111 Sciences 41, 42 and engineering 91,92, 108, 112, 146, 179, 321 behavioral 123, 146, 149, 153, 158,159,170,248 biological 37,42,78,129,179,248 computer 94, 108, 109,283 lire 120,146,158,168,331 physical 71,92, 108, 114, 120, 146, 179 political 179 social 37,71,78, 123, 146, 149,153, 158, 159, 176, 179 Scott, Elizabeth L. 12, 14, 38, 42, 51, 160, 164,172,191,202 Scott, Joan w. 260, 274 Second Wave of u.S. women's movement 258-260, 268 Selfa, Lance 3 Set-aside funds 32 Sex see also gender discrimination 5,6, 73 discrimination complaints 34 Sexual assertiveness, female 250 Shapiro, Ann vii Shauman, Kimberlee A. 12, 167, 174, 175,201,289,293,308,330-331 Shoben, El~ne 299,308 Shyrock, Henry S. 154, 174 Sicherman, Nachum 282, 308 Siegel, Jacob S. 154, 174 Simeone, A. 54,81 Simpson, Rae 14, 316, 318, 332
Index Singell, Larry D. 300,304,307 Slocum, Sally 252 Sloan Foundation, Alfred P. vii Small, Meredith 256 Smart, John C. 203, 282, 308 Smith, Abigail L. 242 Smith, Dorothy 268, 277 Smith, Janet Kiholm 287,308 Smith, Laurajane 255 Sociald~ 221,258,259,268,269,270,271 Social and behavioral sciences ll-12, 302 anthropology, see Anthropology bachelors and doctoral degrees compared with women faculty, by field 282 changes in status of women over time ll3, 130, 148, 149 career stage 121, 122, 139 comparison of research with other mstitutions 126, 127, 128 employment, types of mstitutions 158 employment in labor force ISO employment in labor force, full-time 154 employment in labor force, gender differences IS3 rank by cohort ll5, ll6, ll7, ll8, 133-136 research university faculty by cohort 138 tenure status 123--124, 125, 131, 132 tenure status by cohort and career stage 140--143 current status of women 37 national profile 58 primatology, archaeology, and human origins 247-254 publication productivity, see Productivity, gender differences time to tenure 77 UCLA case study 88 Societies 260, 267 tool-making 252 Sociobiology 251 Sociology 33,179,302,331 Solomon, Barbara Miller 148, 174 Sonnert,Gerhard 164,174,286,289,309 Sowell, Thomas 293, 309 Specialization, fields of 178 Spector, Janet 253, 255, 307 Speece, Karen 309 Spelman, Elizabeth 272, 278 Spence, Janet T. 293, 294, 307 Spencer, Mary L. 291, 309 Sperling, Susan 251, 256
373 Spitze, Glenna 292, 293, 306 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty 269, 278 Spouses/partners employment of 39, 297, 320 trailing 298, 299 Stacey, Judith 278 Stack, S. 289, 309 Stanford University 2,38,43,45,47,48, 283,309,334 State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo 44,47,50 at Stonybrook 44,47,50 Status 69, 71 and power 261 high 261 of women faculty 31-43,53-79, 82-88, ll3-ll9 Statutes, civil rights 42 Steady-state policy 9 Steiner, Richard 274 Steinkamp, M. W. 172, 202 Stephan, Paula E. 188, 203 Stimpson, Catharine R. vi, 10, 13, 19, 326 Stobo,JohnD.229,231-232,234,243 Stocking, George, Jr. 261,278 Stokes, Emma J. 227,243 Stoler, Ann 272, 278 Strategies for change 54, 217-219, 237 Strathem, Marilyn 274, 275, 276 Stress, sources of 65,66,67,68 Strober, Myra H. 54, 81 Strum, Shirley C. 21, 250, 256 See also Kenny, Shirley Strum Students demographics 54 female 92, 101-102 male 92, 101-102 undergraduate 71,91 Sullivan, Kathleen 14, 3ll, 318, 332 Survey of Doctorate Recipients 109, ll2-ll7, ll9, 121-124, 146 Survey of Earned Doctorates 112, 146 Systemic initiatives 228 lessons 228 Szafran, Robert F. 164, 174 Tack, M. W. 54, 81 Targets of opportunity 32, 39 Task Force on Women's Academic Careers m Medicme 244 Teaching and advising 59, 71, 217, 328 faculty attitudes 99-101 gender differences 59
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
374 Teclemariam, M. 128 Teiman, Michelle L. 287,288,306 Temple University 38, 45, 47, 48, 50 Temporary faculty 35, 159, 327 Tenure(d) 36-37,54,71 achievement of 218 clock 39, 316, 319, 322 criteria for 36, 163 female faculty 34, 70 gender differences in 32, 36, 54, 70,
76-77, 159-161, 162-163 status of women faculty 47-48,114 time to 70, 76-77 track 36, 114, 316, 319, 321 Tesch, B. J. 227,244 Texas A&M University 44,47,50 Third Wave feminism 258-259 Third World and postcolonial feminist critique 266-272 women 260, 267 Thompson, Randall 304, 307, 309 Tilly, Chris 296, 309 Time advising 60, 71, 76 counseling 59 teaching 59 to degree 7-8, 178, 186-187,200 Timetables and goals 31, 36 Title IX (Women's Educational Equity Act) 8 Tobin, Nancy vii Toolmaking societies 252, 253 Torres, Lourdes 276 Toutkoushian, Robert K 302, 303 Townsend, B. K 225 Trailing partner/spouse 294 Trinity College (D.C.) 377 Trow, Martin 91, 108, 201 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt 273, 278 Tuckman, Howard 8, 15 Tufts University 44,46,49 Turner, Trudy 254 Tymoczko, Maria viii Underhill, Ruth 273 Underrepresentation of women 124, 190,
193,284,334 University of Alabama 35, 43, 45, 49 University of Arizona 43,45,49, 378 University of Berlin 20 University of California 34,39,51 at Berkeley 2,34,36, 38,43,45,47,
48,49 at Davis 34, 43, 45, 49
at Irvine 43, 45, 49 at Los Angeles 34,43,45,49,51,
82-88,377 at Riverside 378 at San Diego 43, 46, 49 at Santa Barbara 43, 46, 48, 49 University of Chicago 44, 46, 49, 283 University of Cincinnati 44,47,50 University of Colorado 43, 46, 49 University of Connecticut 43, 46, 49 University of Florida 43,46,49 University of Georgia 44, 46, 48, 49 University of Hawaii at Manoa 44, 46, 49 University of Illinois at Chicago 44, 46, 48, 49 at Urbana-Champaign 44, 46, 49, 287,
298, 300, 378
University of Iowa 44, 46, 49 University of Kansas 44, 46, 49 University of Kt:ntucky 44, 46, 49 University of Maryland 44, 46, 49 School of Medicine Committee on Work and Family 243 University of Massachusetts at Amherst 37,
44,46,49
University of Miami 43,46,49 University of Michigan 2, 13, 211, 213, 215 at Ann Arbor 44,46,49,292,299,
309, 320 Career Development Fund for Women Faculty 217, 221, 292 Minority Faculty Development Fund 292 Center for Education of Women 211,
213,219,220
Center for Higher and Postsecondary Education 219 Childbearing and Dependent Care Policy 216 College of Literature, Science, and the
Arts 217 Commission for Women 214 Faculty Career Development Fund 217 Family Care Resources Program 216 Junior Women Faculty Network 220 Lecturer's Professional Development
Grants 221 Medical School 217 President's Advisory Commission on Women's Issues 215,222 Special Hiring and Recruitment Effort
(SHARE) 218 Women of Color in the Academy 220 Women's Studies Program 220
375
Index University of Minnesota 34 at Twin Cities 44, 46, 50 College of Technology 34 University of Missouri 44, 46, 50 University of Nebraska 44, 46, 50 University of New Mexico 33, 35, 44, 46, 50 University of North Carolina 44, 47,
48,50 University of Pennsylvania 2,45,47, 50,
300, 304
University of Pittsburgh 45,47,48, 50 University of Rochester 44,47,50 University of Southern California 43, 46, 49 University of Tennessee 34,45,47,50 Task Force on Women 34 University of Texas at Austin 45, 47, 48, 50 University of Utah 45,47,50 University of Virginia 45,47, 50 University of Washington 45,47,48,50 University of Wisconsin at Madison 45,47,
50 U niversity(ies) all-male 326 comprehensive 126, 189, 190 decision-making driven by cultural a~umptions
214, 319
doctorate-granting 92, 156, 161, 163 Ivy League 41 leading 31, 327 male-centered 326 privare 28,36,162,335 public 41 research 19-29, 31-43, 53, 54-63, 64, 65,67,70-72,74,75-77,81, Ill,
156,211,281,319,320,325 Research I (RU I) 3, 32, 35, 43-50, 88,
112, 146, 156, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 170, 330 Research II (RU II) 3, 88, 112, 156, 158, 159, 161 U.S. Congress 19,254 Special Subcommittee on Education 6 Utah State University 45, 47, 50 Uzzi, Brian 243 Valian, Virginia 22, 23, 26, 30, 43, 51,
303, 309 Valu~ 24-25,55,68,78,91 and attitudes 61-68, 71 Vanderbilt University 45,47, 50 Va~ar College 19 Veterans 4, 212 Veterinary medicine 7, 179 Vetter, Betty M. 31,43, 51, 53, 81
Virginia Commonwealth University 35, 36,
45,47,50 Virginia Polytechnic University 45, 47, 50 Visweswaran, Kamala 265, 266, 278 Voytuk, J. 128 Vulnerability of women faculty 240-241 Wade, Nicholas 29,30 Wagner, Elizabeth M. 243 Waldfogel, Jane 296, 306 Ward, Kathryn B. 175,203 Washington University 44, 46, 50 Wasser, Samuel 256 Waxman, Merle 242 Wayne State University 44,46,50 Weed, H. G. 227,228,243 Welch, Acey vii Wenner<\s, Christine 285, 309, 326,
336
Wenzel, S. A. 81,85,219,225 West VIrginia University 45,47, 50 West, M. S. 53, 82 Western feminism 266-272 Western Michigan University 287 Wheeler, Benjamin Ide 20 White, Andrew D. 20 Williams, Eleanor vii Williams, G. 251, 256 Williams, Sarah 252, 255 Wilson, Linda 222 Winkler, Anne E. 295,305 Wold, Agn~ 285,309,326,336 Wolf, Marjorie 267,278 Woman-Other 260 Woman/nature: man/culture 262 Women as propottion of assistant profe~ors 45,47, 57 associate professors 45-47 faculty 43-45, 53, 54, 55, 93 full professors 45-47, 57,81-88 Ph.D.s 53 tenured faculty 47 attitudes of 61-68,78, 79 barriers to 54,211-224,242,257,
285-290, 300, 327 in chemistry departments 1, 2, 48 constraints of 106, 156, 265, 267,
327, 332 distribution of by departments 48, 93-94 by rank 45-47, 57,93 by salary 49-50 endowed chair for 213
376 Women, continued isolation of 238 minority 211, 214, 218-219, 220-221, 268-269 proportion of degrees 108-109, 111, 147-149, 212, 281-283 recruiunent of 314-315 retention of 54 salaries as percentage of men's 49-50 in science and engineering 91 underrepresentation of 124, 190, 193, 284, 334 Women of Color in the Academy Project 220 Women's Caucus of the American Physical Society 1 colleges 19 education 19 status in research universities 31-43 studies 13, 20, 21 analytical tools from 252 and the research universtity 19-29 Wood, H. M. 244 Work load 216-217,219,292
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes Work/Family/Life Programs in Higher Education 311-317 penalty associated with using 316 Workforce, women in 37,311-312 Working conditions 65-67 World War II 4-5, 212, 303 effect on women's education 4, 5 Woyshner, Christine A. 30 Wright, Rita 253, 256 Wunsch, M. A. 54, 82 Wylie, Alison 255
JUe, Yu 12,167,174,175,201,203, 330-331, 383 Yale University 2, 19-20, 33, 35, 36,40,43,46,48,49 Yando, Regina vii Zemike, Kate 286 Zero publication rate 182-183 Zeros Table 1 Zuckerman, Harriet 91, 101, 107, 152, 160, 167, 174, 175, 176, 195, 202,203
Contributors EDITOR Lilli S. Hornig is the Research and Policy Analysis Consultant to the Committee for the Equality ofWomen at Harvard and the author of lTeritas and two previous reports on the Status ofWomen at Harvard. She was the founder of HERS (Higher Education Resource Services) and its director from 1972 to her retirement. During World War II she served as a staff scientist at Los Alamos, NM. She taught chemistry at Brown University and at Trinity College (DC), where she was department chair. She has served on various national research and policy panels, including a number of White House international science missions and on equal-opportunity advisory committees to the National Science Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She chaired the National Academy of Sciences' first Committee on the Education and Employment of Women in Science and Engineering. She also served on the National Academy of Sciences' Commission on Human Resources and as a consultant to the Office of Technology Assessment. She has been a long-term trustee ofthe Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, an Overseer of the Tufts University School of Engineering, and a member of the advisory committee to the Nurses' Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has lectured and written extensively on issues of human resource development and of women's higher education. She received her undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr and her Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University.
CONTRIBUTORS Helen S. Astin, a psychologist, is Professor ofHigher Education and Associate Director of the Higher Education Research Institute at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She served as associate provost of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA, as well as interim director of the UCLA Center for the Study ofWomen. She has been president of the Division of the Psychology of Women of the American Psychological 377
378
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
Association, a member of the board of the National Council for Research on Women and a member of the Committee on Women's Employment and Related Social Issues of the National Research Council. She has published numerous articles and eleven books, including Women ofInfluence,
Women of Vision: A Cross-generational study ofleaders and social change (1991), The Woman Doctorate in America (1969), Some Action of Her Own: The Adult Woman and Higher Education (1976), and Higher Education and the Disadvantaged Student (1972). In 1988, the American Psychological Association named her a Distinguished Leader for Women in Psychology. Piya Chatterjee is Associate Professor ofWomen's Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is also director ofWomen in Coalition at the University. Her on-going research is with plantation women and focuses on grassroots organizing, third world feminism, and the politics of international development. She is the recipient of the John Hope Franklin Center book prize, Duke University, for her book, A Time for
Tea: Women, Labor and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation (Duke University Press, 2001). She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Christine M. Cress is an Assistant Professor in the Postsecondary, Adult, and Continuing Education (PACE) Program at Portland State University. She received her Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is an Affiliated Scholar with the Higher Education Research Institute. She is also the project director for the Millennium Project: Enhancing Campus Climate for Academic Excellence, at the University of Arizona, a research and organizational change project that is focused on improving the work life of women faculty and faculty of color. She has an M.A. in higher education and organizational change from UCLA and an M.Ed. in student personnel administration from Western Washington University. Marianne A. Ferber is Professor Emerita ofEconomics and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is coauthor of The Economics of Women, Men, and Work (4th ed. 2002), editor of Women in the Labor Force (1998), co-editor of Work and Families (1991), and author of Beyond Economic Man (1993), Academic Couples (1997), and Nonstandard Work (2000). In addition she has published in economics, education, sociology and women's studies journals, and continues to serve on the editorial board of several journals. She is
Contributors
379
past president of the Midwest Economic Association and of the International Association for Feminist Economics. She obtained her undergraduate degree at McMaster University in Canada and her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Mary Frank Fox is Professor of Sociology in the School of History, Technology, and Society, and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Women, Science, & Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology. Her current research, supported by NSF, is a study of programs for women in science and engineering. Her publications, appearing in over 40 different scholarly journals and collections, include analyses of salary, publication productivity, research conduct, and educational and career patterns among scientists and academics. She is associate editor of Sex Roles and chair of the editorial board of the International Handbook ofScience and Technology Studies. She was a member ofthe National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences (NRC/NAS) study panel on Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists, and consultant to the NRC/NAS study panel on Gender Differences in Science. She is past president of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), and was chosen as SWS Feminist Lecturer 2000, an award that acknowledges her as a "prominent feminist scholar who has made a commitment to social change." She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. Linda P. Fried is Professor in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School ofMedicine and the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, and Director at the Center on Aging and Health. She is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Medicine and has served as a member of numerous editorial boards and advisory committees. Her research focuses on aging with an emphasis on the health of women. She has collaborated on the Women's Health and Aging Study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. Among the articles and chapters included in her many publications are Career Development for Women in Academic Medicine: Multiple interventions in one department of Medicine (with Francomano, MacDonald, Wagner, Stokes, Carbone, Bias, Newman & Stobo) and Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease in Women (with Becker). She received her undergraduate degree from the University ofWlSConsin, Madison, her medical degree from Bush Medical College, Chicago, and her M.P.H. in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Carol S. Hollenshead is Director ofthe University ofMichigan Center for the Education of Women and Chair of the University of Michigan's
380
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
President's Advisory Commission on Women's Issues. She has served as director/co-director ofnumerous research and intervention programs and was chair of the board of the National Council for Research on Women for two years. Recent endeavors include the Michigan Work-Life Study and the Women of Color in the Academy Project. She has lectured and published on many issues ofconcern to women and is active in a variety of education and professional organizations including the American Council on Education National Network of Women Leaders. She has edited
The Equity Equation: Fostering the Advancement ofWomen in the Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering (with Davis, Ginorio, Lazarus, and Rayman). Her most recent publication is Women and the MBA: Gateway to Opportunity, co-authored with Catalyst and Jeanne Wilt. Charlotte Kuh is Deputy Executive Director of the Policy and Global Mfairs Division in the National Research Council (NRC). She oversees the Board on Higher Education and Workforce, responsible for NRC studies on flows of science and engineering talent, graduate education and post-doctoral outcomes, and the assessment of quality of doctoral programs. She also oversees two programs that select over 300 post-doctoral fellows annually for positions in national laboratories as well as recipients of pre- and post-doctoral fellowships sponsored by Ford Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Previously she was director of the Graduate Record Examinations at the Educational Testing Service where she initiated the first computerization of a national admissions test and a program ofresearch designed to introduce measurement ofa broader range of student talents for use in graduate admissions. She was a manager at AT&T and taught at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Stanford. She served on a number of National Research Council study committees and on advisory committees for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Science Foundation, and the Law School at New York University. She is on the executive committee of the Council of Delegates of the American Council of Learned Societies. She received her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe and her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. Barbara Lazarus is Associate Provost at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where she is responsible for developing academic policies and supervising academic support programs for undergraduate and graduate students. She is also Adjunct Professor of Educational Anthropology with teaching appointments in the School of Public Policy and the Department of History. Her recent research focuses on gender in science and
Contributors
381
engineering in the United States and Asia. Her most recent books include Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants (with Ambrose, Dunkle, Nair & Harkus), The Equity Equation: Fostering the Advancement of Women in the Sciences) Mathematics and Engineering (with Davis, Ginorio, Hollenshead and Rayman)) Women)s Studies) Women's Lives (with Karlekar and the Committee for Women's Studies in Asia), and Woman's Guide to Navigating the Ph.D. in Engineering and Science (with Ritter and Ambrose). She received the WEPAN (Women in Engineering Program and Advocates Network) Founders Award in 2000, and in 2001 The Robert M. Doherty Award, CMU'S highest award for educational contributions to the community. She earned her undergraduate degree from Brown University and her doctoral degree in educational anthropology from University of Massachusetts. J. Scott Long is Chancellor's Professor in the Department ofSociology at Indiana University where he joined the faculty in 1989. Previously he was in the Department of Sociology and the Program in Statistics at Washington State University. He specializes in the sociology of science and statistical methods. He recently chaired a panel at the National Academy of Sciences to examine changes in the career experiences of male and female scientists over the past twenty years. The results of this study are published as From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences In the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers. His current research, in collaboration with Eliza Pavalko, is an NIH funded study of work and health among mid-life women. He is the author of three monographs, several edited books, and numerous articles. His most recent book, Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables, was published in 1997. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals in statistics and sociology, and was editor of Sociological Methods and Research) from 1987 to 1994. He received a B.A. from Juniata College and a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell. Londa Schiebinger is Edwin E. Sparks Professor of History of Science at Pennsylvania State University. She is author of The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (1989), the prize-winning Nature)s Body: Gender in the Making ofModern Science (1993), and Has Feminism Changed Science? (1999). She is also editor of Feminism and the Body (2000), and co-editor with Angela Creager and Elizabeth Lunbeck of Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science) Technology) and Medicine (2001 ). She is the first woman historian to win the prestigious international Alexander von Humboldtforschungspreis and served as a senior research
382
Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes
fellow at the Berlin Max-Planck Institut fUr Wissenschaftsgeschichte during the 1999/2000 academic year. Her current research explores gender in the European voyages of scientific discovery. Kimberlee A. Shauman is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Her main areas ofinterest are social stratification, family and kinship, demography, sociology of education, and quantitative methodology. Her research focuses on gender differences in educational and occupational trajectories with particular attention to the causal effects of family characteristics. She is currently working with Yu Xie on a book that examines, from a life course perspective, the underrepresentation ofwomen in science. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan. A. Rae Simpson is Administrator of Parenting Programs at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT) providing parent education and a wide range of family resources for the MIT community. She is also Founding Chair of the National Parenting Education Network and Chief Consultant to the Parenting Project within the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is the author of The Visible Scientists (under her former name, Rae Goodell), and two MacArthur Foundation sponsored reports, The Role ofthe Mass Media in Parenting Education, and Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action. She has published numerous popular and scholarly articles in such publications as the New York Times and the Columbia Journalism Review. She received her Ph.D. in communication research from Stanford University. Catharine R. Stimpson is University Professor and Dean ofthe Graduate School ofArts and Science at New York University. She is also chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and 2001 president of the Association of Graduate Schools. She is on the board of the International Longevity Center, a member of the boards of several educational institutions and a past member ofthe board ofPBS. Previously she was University Professor at Rutgers where she was also Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education. She served as director of the Fellows Program at the MacArthur Foundation, president of the Modern Language Association, and chair ofthe New York State Council for the Humanities, the National Council for Research on Women and the Ms. Magazine board ofscholars. She was the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and the first director of the Women's Center at Barnard College.
Contributors
383
She is the author of seven books and over 150 monographs, essays, stories, and reviews in such publications as Transatlantic Review, The Nation, and The New York Times Book Review. She has written a novel, Class Notes, and is currently working on a book about Gertrude Stein. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College, Cambridge University, and Columbia University. She holds numerous honorary degrees and was recipient of both Fulbright and Rockefeller Humanities Fellowships. Kathleen Sullivan recently retired as Director ofthe WorkLife Office at Stanford University. The Office oversees all the childcare programs at Stanford and provides training, dependent care resource and referral, and personal consultations for faculty, staff, and students who wish assistance in balancing their work, family, and personal lives. She is also a founding member and past president of the College and University Work/Family Association. Prior to going to Stanford as director of Child and Family Services in 1989, she spent 17 years at Arizona State University as the director of Child Laboratory Programs for the college of Liberal Arts. She now resides in Flagstaff, Arizona and is active nationally as a speaker on child development, early childhood education, and work-life issues and programs. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona and a graduate degree in special education from Arizona State University. Yu Xie is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Sociology and Associate Chair ofthe Department ofSociology at the University ofMichigan. He is also affiliated with the Department of Statistics as well as the Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center ofthe Institute for Social Research. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, and sociology ofscience. He recently published a book with Daniel Powers on statistical methods for categorical data analysis, and is currently completing a book with Kimberlee Shauman on the career processes and outcomes ofwomen in science. He was deputy editor of the American Sociological Review and is associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He received his undergraduate degree in engineering from Shanghai University of Technology and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.