A lab of her own: On gender and careers in science

[TruthSeeker]

According to a European Commission report in 2000, nearly half of graduate students in the life sciences are women, but few make it to the top. Women occupy fewer than 10% of top positions—equivalent to a full professorship—in the medical and natural sciences. Another comprehensive European report, "She Figures 2003," and similar analyses in the US show the same process of attrition. The studies debunk one popular explanation for such attrition—they found that the gender gap in the top echelons is not just a result of fewer women entering the field.

Women scientists are thought to drop out of science for two main reasons. First, many women, like Pastural, choose family over career when they find it difficult to juggle both. The second is the proverbial glass ceiling—an institutional matter that raises the thorny issue of discrimination.

Studies suggest that, like Belletti, as many as 50% of women scientists marry other scientists. When the pair's careers are at odds, the husband's career often comes first, surveys report .

All from this article

 

[Soapy Sam]

Truthseeker.
I think you can handle this objectively, so I'll stick my neck on the block. There seems no mention here of numerous other possibilities- eg (Takes deep breath and plunges in)-

*Men are actually better at science on average, for no social reason at all.
*Men are, individually, better at manipulating the academic system to get to the top.
*Men are, as a group, more likely to vote for someone they think they understand- and what man but a fool ever thought he understands a woman? So males stay on top of the academic system.

Now I'm not saying any of these is a true reason for the imbalance at the top of science, but they should be considered.
It is not good enough to simply assume that if women are not making it to the top it is because of unfair social factors.

(OK- now wait till I get under the table)....GO!

 

[The idea]

Men are actually better at science on average, for no social reason at all.

Maybe the distribution of ability in science differs for men and women. The average for men might be somewhat lower than the average for women, but there may be more men than women at the extremes. The competitors for scientific occupations are not 100% of the population. Only a small segment of the population is relevant.

It is not good enough to simply assume that if women are not making it to the top it is because of unfair social factors.

One could ask whether there are more men than women in prison because of unfair social factors.

 

[Fishboot]

Studies suggest that, like Belletti, as many as 50% of women scientists marry other scientists. When the pair's careers are at odds, the husband's career often comes first, surveys report .

I've always seen this as a big part of the problem - you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a male "hard science" professor who has married one of his female graduate students (purely anecdotal, if first hand, information). It's just part of the landscape of science education - and I don't really see how any of the parties are at fault.

 

[El Greco]

*Men are actually better at science on average, for no social reason at all.
*Men are, individually, better at manipulating the academic system to get to the top.
*Men are, as a group, more likely to vote for someone they think they understand- and what man but a fool ever thought he understands a woman? So males stay on top of the academic system.

I fully agree with everything this macho sexist phallocrat said

 

[bug_girl]

women outnumber male students in Undergraduate science degrees, and have better grades. I'd thought that differences in innate ability was a well flogged dead horse at this point.

Soapy, i think you are just trying to yank our chain.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Soapy Sam:

*Men are actually better at science on average, for no social reason at all.

It's possible, but do you have any evidence for this?

*Men are, individually, better at manipulating the academic system to get to the top.

It's possible. I won't ask for evidence because I find it hard to see how such evidence could even be gathered.

*Men are, as a group, more likely to vote for someone they think they understand- and what man but a fool ever thought he understands a woman? So males stay on top of the academic system.

While it might be true that men would vote for someone they understand, I suspect women would do the same. And I don't see any a priori reason why "someone they understand" shouldn't be a woman. Remember, we are not talking about understanding said person's behaviour in sex-related matters or the person's relation to shopping.

I know several women project managers and with my knowledge of their leadership abilities and organizational talents, I would vote for all of them if they were running for some type of post where voting was needed.

For me, they aren't women as such. They are just good Project Managers.

Now I'm not saying any of these is a true reason for the imbalance at the top of science, but they should be considered.
It is not good enough to simply assume that if women are not making it to the top it is because of unfair social factors.

I agree. I suspect that, as always, the family and children angle is the most important.

 

[TruthSeeker]

There are several other factors that have been identified. Studies have shown that women put more studies in each paper but men publish more papers. Women receive poorer teaching evaluations on average - if she is too feminine, the male students think she's stupid. If she is not feminine, they say she is too butch. In addition, women have more difficulty negotiating salaries and teaching loads with male deans. Finally, the starting salaries of junior faculty STILL show a disparity. The year I was hired, a man who was hired a month before me was offered several thousand more despite having fewer publications and no postdoc. I negotiated like a man (cheered on and coached by senior male colleagues) and ended up with the salary I deserved. When our salaries were made public information, some of the other junior female faculty were upset with me.

Links, if I can find them, after I eat my pizza

 

[DanishDynamite]

TruthSeeker:

There are several other factors that have been identified. Studies have shown that women put more studies in each paper but men publish more papers. Women receive poorer teaching evaluations on average - if she is too feminine, the male students think she's stupid. If she is not feminine, they say she is too butch. In addition, women have more difficulty negotiating salaries and teaching loads with male deans. Finally, the starting salaries of junior faculty STILL show a disparity. The year I was hired, a man who was hired a month before me was offered several thousand more despite having fewer publications and no postdoc. I negotiated like a man (cheered on and coached by senior male colleagues) and ended up with the salary I deserved. When our salaries were made public information, some of the other junior female faculty were upset with me.

Well, I don't know the whats or the wherefores within the academic world, but I don't really see why this would differ much from my background in a consulting engineering company.

In which country was the study you refer to made?

In regard to negotiating for salaries, I suspect that there may be both a cultural factor and a genetic factor at work. The cultural bit is the one which concerns interactions and expectations of women and men. In this country (Denmark) I feel that the detrimental views of women vs. men has been greatly reduced. The genetic factor is the aggresive tendency, which differs between men and women. Men are inherently more aggressive.

Links, if I can find them, after I eat my pizza

Bon appetite!

 

[geni]

Females outnumber males at undergraduate level? Why do I have to be in the year and subbject where this is not true (~50 males ~25 females and all the girls do forensics ) ?

 

[Soapy Sam]

Pizza, at midnight? (Well it is here). You might have sent some round.

No, I'm not quite just chain yanking, bug girl., or DD, read the post carefully. I don't seriously offer those suggestions as real facts, I'm just pointing out that wherever inequality of achievement is reported between the sexes, we now tend to automatically seek hidden social factors. Which may not exist.

We must be aware of our bias, including our new bias.

There are reasons women don't make it to the top as linebackers. They are not social reasons.

I think "The Idea" may be closest to the truth here. There really are differences in ability. The difference is unlikely to be a simplistic one, but a complex statistical one. Add THAT to social bias and we may start to understand the reasons.

There are other areas where women ought to excel but don't-or ought to be interested,(if they were like men), but are not. There are biological reasons for that. I don't know what they are. I doubt anyone does. But our education system, computer industry and many other things will never be truly egalitarian until we find out and adjust accordingly.

It should be realised that a society that truly provides equal education and training and opportunity will be one where success is largely determined genetically. We may decide that is not what we want either.


How was the pizza?

 

[TruthSeeker]

some more data from

here for information of gender differences in salary

Danish, the studies I know are American and Canadian although the OP presented some European data

And here is a very detailed report www.avcc.edu.au/policies_activities/university_management/uni_women_action_plan/Gender_Disparities_%2520Report_Jun03.pdf+academia+gender+disparity&hl=en&ie=UTF-8from Australia[/URL] which I just found and will read shortly.
The executive summary suggests the situation is similar.


And, it's almost a decade old, but an interesting article from

The Scientist

But that doesn't mean men are better scientists, Holton points out: "Men as a whole tend to optimize [the postdoctoral period] in one way, namely by writing a large number of articles, therefore putting themselves on the map as producers. Sometimes this is called 'salami slicing' [dividing a single study up into as many 'least publishable units' as possible] in the extreme.

"Women, we discovered-and this was quite unexpected to me-seemed somehow to put the eventual effect of publication rate secondary to their deep interest in doing good science no matter how long it must last. Therefore they turned out far fewer articles. But what we found was that these articles are much more cited than the ones that men do," and thus have a larger impact on the field. Among biologists surveyed in a pilot study by Sonnert, for example, articles by women averaged 22.4 citations, while articles by men were cited an average of 14.4 times.

edited because I messed up the formatting.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Pizza, at midnight? (Well it is here). You might have sent some round.

No, I'm not quite just chain yanking, bug girl., or DD, read the post carefully. I don't seriously offer those suggestions as real facts, I'm just pointing out that wherever inequality of achievement is reported between the sexes, we now tend to automatically seek hidden social factors. Which may not exist.

We must be aware of our bias, including our new bias.

There are reasons women don't make it to the top as linebackers. They are not social reasons.

I think "The Idea" may be closest to the truth here. There really are differences in ability. The difference is unlikely to be a simplistic one, but a complex statistical one. Add THAT to social bias and we may start to understand the reasons.

There are other areas where women ought to excel but don't-or ought to be interested,(if they were like men), but are not. There are biological reasons for that. I don't know what they are. I doubt anyone does. But our education system, computer industry and many other things will never be truly egalitarian until we find out and adjust accordingly.

It should be realised that a society that truly provides equal education and training and opportunity will be one where success is largely determined genetically. We may decide that is not what we want either.


How was the pizza?

The pizza was yummy and it's dinner time here

So, where's your evidence that the difference is one of ability? And how much of the difference would that account for?

 

[Soapy Sam]

Truthseeker. I repeat, I am making NO claims for difference in ability.

I'm saying two things, very simply-
1. Men and women are different (Vive la difference!)
2. In any research we must be aware of potential bias. Current bias says that given the same opportunities , men and women will do the same. I question that. The evidence you quote suggests I am correct to question it. (And I'm cheating, as I clearly have not had time to read it yet).
My point is that we have not yet established the question we are begging. Are men and women innately the same?

The difference need not be in ability or intelligence, or anything so simple to skew a complex effect like academic position distribution. Nor , after all the research, is it likely to be a simple pattern of difference (Nothing so simple as the average height difference for example.)

I suggest we be on guard when we assume from the start that men and women are equals. That's all.

And El Greco, thanks for the description. "Macho sexist phallocrat." I like that.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Sam,

Perhaps we are closer in agreement than I had first thought. Sorry if I misunderstood.

It seems highly likely to me that the gender disparity is multi-determined. I work differently than my male colleagues. We have different priorities and life values. The social roles and expectations they have are different than mine. I receive a different kind of support from the dean and from other colleagues. etc. etc.


I guess my question wasn't so much "are male and female academics the same?" but rather "why factors contribute to the apparent differences?" There is evidence for differences due to family responsibilities, publication patterns, insitutional biases. Undoubtedly there are other factors. That's what I'd like to hear about.

Thanks

 

[Soapy Sam]

I think one important matter in questions like this is where do we draw a line between an innate, individual factor and a social one.

Are women paid less because they are poor negotiators? Or do women negotiate less aggressively because society expects them to? Innate or social? Ed only knows how you answer that.

The incumbent has an advantage. DD asked why men in power would not vote for a woman? Because Academics are conservatives. The status quo will linger because of its own inertia . And it started male. Once it flips to female, there is nothing to stop it flipping all the way and staying there. Been in a primary school lately? See any male teachers? Headmistresses hire women. Sure they can give you good reasons. They may even be sincere. Same goes for the "Ivy covered professors in Ivy covered Halls." Inertia is a major factor.

Pregnancy- well. Innate quality. The obverse of the linebacker shortage.

Here's one to toss around. I work in a very largely male industry.
We have a lot of unloveable people. I actively dislike some men I work with . It does not affect how we work together though.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, that is not so among women: If they get on well, you have an unstoppable team; very robust, very flexible. If they don't get on well, you have a disaster.
(I'm open to correction. My experience as I say, is limited. I've had women agree with me on this though.)

Could it be that far from the mutually supportive people women are popularly supposed to be, that when the chips are down they are less suited to teamwork than men? This is an example of the sort of thing I mean when I suggest that a difference need not be in ability or intelligence to affect performance.

I can't help thinking of Rosalind Franklin, outside the pale of the gents' staffroom and the jovial camaraderie of "The Eagle"- call me a sad old romantic, but if she had been a man, would her's have been the third name on the Nobel? (Assuming she had lived).

Good Ed. It's nigh on quarter of two and I'm supposed to be off to Edinburgh at eight.
Evening, all.

 

[HopkinsMedStudent]

Women as a whole tend to compromise their careers by choice too, especially if they marry a man who is in a high powered occupation.

Take a look at husband-wife doctors who start families. A substantial portion of those couples decide that someone needs to stay home with the kids. Of the couples who choose that option, 99/100 have the woman stay at home while the man continues his occupation unabated.

 

[Tez]

women outnumber male students in Undergraduate science degrees, and have better grades. I'd thought that differences in innate ability was a well flogged dead horse at this point.

Soapy, i think you are just trying to yank our chain.

I'm quite happy to accept differences in innate ability. The question is rather whether there are inequities in innate ability. I do believe, based on significant experience, that there are differences in the type of math that women find intuitive over that which men do. We should see that as an oppourtunity.

FWIW I think that a fundamental problem with becoming a researcher in the hard sciences is that you must have an almost delusional level of self confidence, in addition to the requisite ability. For whatever reasons men seem, to me at least, to exhibit such in all walks of life to a greater extent than women.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Truthseeker-

"Herself" has an art class, so my departure is delayed.

You kept me awake last night. (Not the first time a woman has done that of course). I got to wondering: Could it be that "the difference" (a wild over simplification in itself) is less a property either of men or of women, but purely of their interaction?

A simple example-
Take two men in a lab. Introduce a woman. At some level, however deeply suppressed, we immediately have an unholy triangle. The two men will be attracted to the woman, to differing extents, as she will be to them. (On a scale from -1 to +1, zero being neither attraction nor repulsion). In most cases the attractions will all be fairly low, and will vary from day to day, but they will be there. Those (and all the other notions of relative status and attitude between men and women) are stresses on the relationships- including that between the two men.

(For instance, given current institutional sexual politics, most men will consciously alter the kind of language and behaviour they might display were she not there. This, we call "politeness".)
She will find their behaviour strained and artificial. So she has a choice- she can try to be "one of the boys", which may be alien to
her nature and is itself a concession to solve their problem, or she can be "herself", which is nice in theory but damn hard in practice, (We all have at least two "selves", one when we are alone and the one who appears when we interact with others),- or she can be consciously reserved, cool and businesslike. "A ballbreaker"). The point is that none of these people is behaving as they would were the others absent. This is social interaction.

Some of them will be very aware of this and stressed accordingly. Some will never even notice. This is variation, beloved of natural selection and its social variants.

A simple outcome might be one of the men, normally unambitious, pushing for promotion either to stay ahead of, or to impress the woman- who may be quite unaware of her effect.

Now upgrade this simplistic situation to a university full of people competing for jobs.
Behavioural , deterministic chaos.

What then follows is a sorting process. Those selected to reach the top are not selected by scientific or artistic ability, or by teaching skill, but by the fact of having the ability required to climb through that system , which may in part be higher resistance to social stress.

(Circular definition, but Darwinism often seems that way.)

Worse, there will always be such an effect. (Though it may select against other groups than women- for instance quiet, unaggressive men, who are probably also selected against now).

On a truly level playing field, those selected for success will be those with the ability to succeed on a level playing field. I don't know what social subset that group would be, but it won't contain many mountaineers. And it will be genetically determined, because all the social variables have been deliberately removed.

Bottom line- Do I think women are as intelligent as men? Of course I do. Two big bell curves with a massive common area and one or two oddballs at the edges. My point is that intelligence may have nothing whatsoever to do with academic, or other social selection.

For millennia, we have separated "mens work" from "women's work". We did so along lines of biological preference, and selection enhanced that preference in the process. Now, we are trying to undo that, in just a few generations. We must expect difficulties. We can't expect to get it right if we start from utopian social theories of egalitarianism. We need to understand how people differ.

If Darwin was right about sexual selection, men are the way they are because that's the way women wanted them. So it's all the ladies' fault anyway.

I'm off for the weekend to do the bidding of She-who-must-be-obeyed. And she is upset, because the model for the art class didn't show and they had to cancel. It's a dog's life for a man in a woman's world

 

[wipeout]

Bottom line- Do I think women are as intelligent as men? Of course I do. Two big bell curves with a massive common area and one or two oddballs at the edges. My point is that intelligence may have nothing whatsoever to do with academic, or other social selection.

Hmmm... but as is well-known, on IQ tests, the more of an oddball they are, the more of a chance they are male.

The IQ score of the average scientist is well below the level at which this could become important, however, so I'd dismiss it.