Associate of American Colleges and Universities
ISSUE TOPIC:Rethinking Scientific Pedagogies The current issue of On Campus with Women examines ways to improve student retention and engagement in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The issue explores how feminist pedagogies, by connecting academic learning and personal experience, can transform cultures and classrooms to be more inclusive and hospitable to all students, particularly women across races and ethnicities whose participation in certain fields remains low. READ MORE
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM®) Program for Women
In this month’s letter, Dr. Rick Valachovic, Executive Director of the American Dental Education Association, talks with graduates of the only in-depth national program that focuses on leadership development for women faculty in academic medicine, dentistry, and public health.
From 0 to 13 in 13 Years: ELAM’s Impressive Track Record in Preparing Women for Leadership
The Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM®) Program for Women is now in its thirteenth year preparing women faculty in academic health centers for senior executive leadership positions, and the results are striking. Thirteen U.S. dental schools, almost a quarter of the total, can boast women deans today, and close to 600 ELAM graduates are waiting in the wings, ready to move into senior leadership in U.S. and Canadian schools of dentistry, medicine, dentistry, and public health.
Headquartered at the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the ELAM program has achieved a high level of success by maintaining a steady focus on three principal goals: to advance women to leadership positions, to support and sustain women who attain leadership positions, and ultimately to change the culture of academic health care so that the contributions of women are recognized and valued.
What makes ELAM special? According to Rosalyn Richman, the program’s co-director, ELAM is more intensive and goes into greater depth than other leadership programs. The program now focuses exclusively on medicine, dentistry, and public health. Its three-session format gives Fellows a chance to apply their learning throughout the fellowship year. Classes are broken down into geographically related peer-learning communities that communicate regularly, sometimes monthly, both during and after the fellowship year. Alumnae interact directly at ADEA and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) meetings, through collaborative grants and projects, and at group-initiated reunions and retreats.
The program also places a heavy emphasis on ensuring that Fellows succeed once they return to their institutions. ELAM requires a commitment on the part of the sponsoring institution to provide Fellows with opportunities that can be a springboard to the next level of leadership, and supervising deans must attend a forum on emerging issues at the close of the fellowship year so that they, too, have a direct experience of the program.
“For some of these deans, it’s the first time they’ve sat in a high-level meeting where half the participants are women. It’s really a cultural immersion,” says Roz. One dean was so excited by what he saw that he is now serving on the ELAM faculty.
ELAM also gives participants insights into how administrators and policymakers think. Dr. Sharon Turner, Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry and an ELAM participant in the early years, welcomed this broader perspective.
“Before I became a dean, I never paid attention to what was going on at the state legislative level or at the national level,” says Sharon. “Now I understand that it’s not just a matter of how good the school is. The states must balance competing interests, and they need to take a pragmatic approach to funding our institutions.”
This is Sharon’s eleventh year as a dean, first at Oregon Health & Science University and now at the University of Kentucky. Sharon values the ELAM program for giving her the confidence to apply for the dean’s position and a network of women with good judgment and similar experience, which she can use as a sounding board. That continuing connection with the program has prompted Sharon to serve as both a Board member and President of SELAM, the alumnae association founded by ELAM graduates.
ELAM dental graduates have played key roles in SELAM’s leadership and have proven to be effective recruiters for ELAM. In fact, Roz Richman reports that alumnae bonds are so strong that she is in touch with all but a handful of the program’s 570 graduates.
ELAM was started in 1996 as a program for women in medical education under the leadership of our colleague Dr. D. Walter Cohen, who was then Chancellor of Drexel University College of Medicine. Women in dental education were invited to participate on a limited basis the following year, thanks in part to the efforts of Dr. Jeanne Sinkford, Associate Executive Director and Director of the ADEA Center for Equity and Diversity. She remembers well the challenges that women in our community faced at that time. “In the larger community of health sciences, women’s leadership in dental education needed to be developed. We didn’t have many women associate deans. Some women were assistants to the dean, but their titles did not represent their value to their institutions. We thought about having a separate women’s leadership program, but I felt that medical and dental education should be together so that emerging leaders could have a chance to meet and develop their skills in a competitive arena.”
ELAM agreed, and ADEA nominated two candidates for a pilot effort to include women in dental education: Dr. Lisa A. Tedesco and Professor Pamela Zarkowski. At that time, Lisa was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Today she is Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost, Academic Affairs-Graduate Studies, at Emory University in Atlanta. Pam, an attorney and dental hygienist by education, has been Executive Associate Dean of the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) School of Dentistry and currently serves as Acting Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at UDM.
Today women from dental education compete with women in medicine and public health for ELAM’s 48 available slots, almost double the number in its inaugural class. Since the program’s inception, 43 dental Fellows from 34 dental schools (or 61% of all U.S. dental schools) have participated in ELAM. Comparatively, 530 Fellows from 111 U.S. medical schools (87%) and five Canadian medical schools (29%) have taken part. We hope that all U.S. dental schools will have ELAM Fellows on campus in the not too distant future.
Although proportionally fewer women in dentistry have gone through the program, their successes have been striking. Of the first six original dental Fellows, three have made become deans and one is a provost. Today 22% percent of U.S. dental schools have women deans, compared to 12% of U.S. allopathic medical schools. And while no ELAM graduates have become the chief elected officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, two dental Fellows, Lisa Tedesco and Pam Zarkowski, have served as President of ADEA. It’s also worth noting that 26% of all the women deans serving in U.S. schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health are ELAM alumnae. That’s an impressive track record.
Jeanne Sinkford believes that the timing of the program was fortuitous. “Ten years ago, we did not have the women with the credentials, preparation, and willingness to apply for these positions. We've had a lot of deanships open in recent years, and thanks to ELAM, many of these positions have been filled by women.”
Lisa Tedesco also credits ELAM’s efforts to foster women’s leadership with helping to create a rich pipeline of women that institutions can draw from when looking to recruit top academic talent.
“In the health professions and in academia, careers are tremendously intensive,” Lisa adds. “Over the last decade, we’ve seen the development of clinical and research ladders in health professions education. This has come about because of programs and organizations working to make academia more welcoming to women, and ELAM can take credit for part of that.” This is a promising development, especially in light of the fact that academic health centers have been slow to catch up with the corporate world when it comes to providing the kind of flexibility that might draw women and young people to academic careers.
Dr. Sandra Andrieu has been at Louisiana State University (LSU) since her days as a dental hygiene student. She was the first dental hygienist at the LSU School of Dentistry to earn a Ph.D., and in 1994, she became the first woman to be promoted to the senior ranks of the dental school when she was named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at that institution. Although another woman served as Dean of Educational Services for a few years, today Sandra remains the only woman in her school in a senior leadership role.
Sandra learned about ELAM when she began attending ADEA meetings. There she met other women academic deans, and that’s when she says “the light bulb went off. I had the preparation and the opportunity to serve as an academic dean, but I lacked mentors and guidance.” Early on she was invited to attend a SELAM reception, and there she found role models among the ELAM alums.
“They were amazing. They opened my eyes and, without even knowing it at first, they became my mentors.” Today Sandra is also an ELAM Fellow. Despite the fact that she began her fellowship only days after being evacuated from Hurricane Gustav, she left the first session invigorated.
“I had a narrow focus regarding my future, but after meeting with my ELAM mentor, I realized I have a broad array of options in higher education.” ELAM’s superb reputation provides an entrée for its Fellows in the upper echelons of academia and government. Sandra especially looks forward to the opportunity ELAM provides to meet with senior administrators throughout her university and on the boards that oversee higher education in her state.
The relationships between ELAM alums can be transformative, not only for individual Fellows, but for their institutions as well. Jeanne Sinkford agrees. "We know that our women leaders are human capital that enrich our academic communities and contribute to a more inclusive environment for all students and faculty." Indeed, ELAM aspires to create a “critical mass” of women in high-level leadership positions in academic health centers so that the culture of those institutions will begin to evolve in ways that support women’s inclusion at the highest levels.
One campus where ELAM’s impact is very much in evidence is the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). Dr. Connie Drisko is a 2001 ELAM alum and Dean of MCG’s School of Dentistry. MCG has six ELAM alums, three in dentistry and three in medicine, with a fourth on the way. Four of the campus’s five deans are women, as are many of the vice presidents.
Many of you know that Connie is Chair of the ADEA Women’s Affairs Advisory Committee, which serves as the screening committee for ELAM dental Fellows. She tells me that ELAM alums have been extraordinarily supportive of each other during the recruitment process on her campus, but she’d like to see them do more. “We have a strong network at MCG. That has potential, but we haven't fully leveraged that potential yet.”
“Each of us in leadership has a responsibility to mentor and bring along the next generation. It’s clear that consciously promoting and mentoring women has had a positive effect. How much longer will we need to do that? I don't know, but it didn't just happen on its own.”
Of course women’s leadership does not need to stop at the decanal level. Kathy Atchison, a 2005 ELAM dental Fellow, serves as Vice Provost for Intellectual Property and Industry Relations and as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California at Los Angeles. Sandra Andrieu is contemplating a range of possibilities in higher education, and Sharon Turner can envision a day when she might relocate to Washington, D.C., to work on health policy. Many women also choose to take advantage of other competitive programs, such as the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowships Program.
For a list of other leadership programs open to women in dental education, visit the ADEA Center for Equity and Diversity website. It also includes a complete list of ADEA’s ELAM alums.
Richard W. Valachovic, D.M.D., M.P.H.Executive Directorvalachovicr@adea.org
From 0 to 13 in 13 Years: ELAM’s Impressive Track Record in Preparing Women for Leadership
The Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM®) Program for Women is now in its thirteenth year preparing women faculty in academic health centers for senior executive leadership positions, and the results are striking. Thirteen U.S. dental schools, almost a quarter of the total, can boast women deans today, and close to 600 ELAM graduates are waiting in the wings, ready to move into senior leadership in U.S. and Canadian schools of dentistry, medicine, dentistry, and public health.
Headquartered at the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the ELAM program has achieved a high level of success by maintaining a steady focus on three principal goals: to advance women to leadership positions, to support and sustain women who attain leadership positions, and ultimately to change the culture of academic health care so that the contributions of women are recognized and valued.
What makes ELAM special? According to Rosalyn Richman, the program’s co-director, ELAM is more intensive and goes into greater depth than other leadership programs. The program now focuses exclusively on medicine, dentistry, and public health. Its three-session format gives Fellows a chance to apply their learning throughout the fellowship year. Classes are broken down into geographically related peer-learning communities that communicate regularly, sometimes monthly, both during and after the fellowship year. Alumnae interact directly at ADEA and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) meetings, through collaborative grants and projects, and at group-initiated reunions and retreats.
The program also places a heavy emphasis on ensuring that Fellows succeed once they return to their institutions. ELAM requires a commitment on the part of the sponsoring institution to provide Fellows with opportunities that can be a springboard to the next level of leadership, and supervising deans must attend a forum on emerging issues at the close of the fellowship year so that they, too, have a direct experience of the program.
“For some of these deans, it’s the first time they’ve sat in a high-level meeting where half the participants are women. It’s really a cultural immersion,” says Roz. One dean was so excited by what he saw that he is now serving on the ELAM faculty.
ELAM also gives participants insights into how administrators and policymakers think. Dr. Sharon Turner, Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry and an ELAM participant in the early years, welcomed this broader perspective.
“Before I became a dean, I never paid attention to what was going on at the state legislative level or at the national level,” says Sharon. “Now I understand that it’s not just a matter of how good the school is. The states must balance competing interests, and they need to take a pragmatic approach to funding our institutions.”
This is Sharon’s eleventh year as a dean, first at Oregon Health & Science University and now at the University of Kentucky. Sharon values the ELAM program for giving her the confidence to apply for the dean’s position and a network of women with good judgment and similar experience, which she can use as a sounding board. That continuing connection with the program has prompted Sharon to serve as both a Board member and President of SELAM, the alumnae association founded by ELAM graduates.
ELAM dental graduates have played key roles in SELAM’s leadership and have proven to be effective recruiters for ELAM. In fact, Roz Richman reports that alumnae bonds are so strong that she is in touch with all but a handful of the program’s 570 graduates.
ELAM was started in 1996 as a program for women in medical education under the leadership of our colleague Dr. D. Walter Cohen, who was then Chancellor of Drexel University College of Medicine. Women in dental education were invited to participate on a limited basis the following year, thanks in part to the efforts of Dr. Jeanne Sinkford, Associate Executive Director and Director of the ADEA Center for Equity and Diversity. She remembers well the challenges that women in our community faced at that time. “In the larger community of health sciences, women’s leadership in dental education needed to be developed. We didn’t have many women associate deans. Some women were assistants to the dean, but their titles did not represent their value to their institutions. We thought about having a separate women’s leadership program, but I felt that medical and dental education should be together so that emerging leaders could have a chance to meet and develop their skills in a competitive arena.”
ELAM agreed, and ADEA nominated two candidates for a pilot effort to include women in dental education: Dr. Lisa A. Tedesco and Professor Pamela Zarkowski. At that time, Lisa was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Today she is Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost, Academic Affairs-Graduate Studies, at Emory University in Atlanta. Pam, an attorney and dental hygienist by education, has been Executive Associate Dean of the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) School of Dentistry and currently serves as Acting Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at UDM.
Today women from dental education compete with women in medicine and public health for ELAM’s 48 available slots, almost double the number in its inaugural class. Since the program’s inception, 43 dental Fellows from 34 dental schools (or 61% of all U.S. dental schools) have participated in ELAM. Comparatively, 530 Fellows from 111 U.S. medical schools (87%) and five Canadian medical schools (29%) have taken part. We hope that all U.S. dental schools will have ELAM Fellows on campus in the not too distant future.
Although proportionally fewer women in dentistry have gone through the program, their successes have been striking. Of the first six original dental Fellows, three have made become deans and one is a provost. Today 22% percent of U.S. dental schools have women deans, compared to 12% of U.S. allopathic medical schools. And while no ELAM graduates have become the chief elected officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, two dental Fellows, Lisa Tedesco and Pam Zarkowski, have served as President of ADEA. It’s also worth noting that 26% of all the women deans serving in U.S. schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health are ELAM alumnae. That’s an impressive track record.
Jeanne Sinkford believes that the timing of the program was fortuitous. “Ten years ago, we did not have the women with the credentials, preparation, and willingness to apply for these positions. We've had a lot of deanships open in recent years, and thanks to ELAM, many of these positions have been filled by women.”
Lisa Tedesco also credits ELAM’s efforts to foster women’s leadership with helping to create a rich pipeline of women that institutions can draw from when looking to recruit top academic talent.
“In the health professions and in academia, careers are tremendously intensive,” Lisa adds. “Over the last decade, we’ve seen the development of clinical and research ladders in health professions education. This has come about because of programs and organizations working to make academia more welcoming to women, and ELAM can take credit for part of that.” This is a promising development, especially in light of the fact that academic health centers have been slow to catch up with the corporate world when it comes to providing the kind of flexibility that might draw women and young people to academic careers.
Dr. Sandra Andrieu has been at Louisiana State University (LSU) since her days as a dental hygiene student. She was the first dental hygienist at the LSU School of Dentistry to earn a Ph.D., and in 1994, she became the first woman to be promoted to the senior ranks of the dental school when she was named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at that institution. Although another woman served as Dean of Educational Services for a few years, today Sandra remains the only woman in her school in a senior leadership role.
Sandra learned about ELAM when she began attending ADEA meetings. There she met other women academic deans, and that’s when she says “the light bulb went off. I had the preparation and the opportunity to serve as an academic dean, but I lacked mentors and guidance.” Early on she was invited to attend a SELAM reception, and there she found role models among the ELAM alums.
“They were amazing. They opened my eyes and, without even knowing it at first, they became my mentors.” Today Sandra is also an ELAM Fellow. Despite the fact that she began her fellowship only days after being evacuated from Hurricane Gustav, she left the first session invigorated.
“I had a narrow focus regarding my future, but after meeting with my ELAM mentor, I realized I have a broad array of options in higher education.” ELAM’s superb reputation provides an entrée for its Fellows in the upper echelons of academia and government. Sandra especially looks forward to the opportunity ELAM provides to meet with senior administrators throughout her university and on the boards that oversee higher education in her state.
The relationships between ELAM alums can be transformative, not only for individual Fellows, but for their institutions as well. Jeanne Sinkford agrees. "We know that our women leaders are human capital that enrich our academic communities and contribute to a more inclusive environment for all students and faculty." Indeed, ELAM aspires to create a “critical mass” of women in high-level leadership positions in academic health centers so that the culture of those institutions will begin to evolve in ways that support women’s inclusion at the highest levels.
One campus where ELAM’s impact is very much in evidence is the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). Dr. Connie Drisko is a 2001 ELAM alum and Dean of MCG’s School of Dentistry. MCG has six ELAM alums, three in dentistry and three in medicine, with a fourth on the way. Four of the campus’s five deans are women, as are many of the vice presidents.
Many of you know that Connie is Chair of the ADEA Women’s Affairs Advisory Committee, which serves as the screening committee for ELAM dental Fellows. She tells me that ELAM alums have been extraordinarily supportive of each other during the recruitment process on her campus, but she’d like to see them do more. “We have a strong network at MCG. That has potential, but we haven't fully leveraged that potential yet.”
“Each of us in leadership has a responsibility to mentor and bring along the next generation. It’s clear that consciously promoting and mentoring women has had a positive effect. How much longer will we need to do that? I don't know, but it didn't just happen on its own.”
Of course women’s leadership does not need to stop at the decanal level. Kathy Atchison, a 2005 ELAM dental Fellow, serves as Vice Provost for Intellectual Property and Industry Relations and as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California at Los Angeles. Sandra Andrieu is contemplating a range of possibilities in higher education, and Sharon Turner can envision a day when she might relocate to Washington, D.C., to work on health policy. Many women also choose to take advantage of other competitive programs, such as the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowships Program.
For a list of other leadership programs open to women in dental education, visit the ADEA Center for Equity and Diversity website. It also includes a complete list of ADEA’s ELAM alums.
Richard W. Valachovic, D.M.D., M.P.H.Executive Directorvalachovicr@adea.org
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Female Professors at U. of Texas-Austin Earn $9,000 Less Than Male Peers
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Daily Report
November 5, 2008
Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues.
Those are among the findings of a new report on gender issues affecting the faculty that was written by a 22-member panel created by the university’s provost in 2007.
In a news release issued this week, the university said the provost, Steven W. Leslie, had accepted the panel’s recommendation that the university develop a five- to 10-year plan to reduce or eliminate gender inequity on its faculty.
The panel also found that more women than men at Texas left before winning tenure, and of those who stayed a smaller proportion of women than men achieved tenure within seven years. Thirty-six percent of women hired as assistant professors in 1997 had earned tenure and been promoted to associate professor within seven years, compared with 56 percent of men. The task force also conducted a survey of faculty members that found that 14 percent of female professors said they had been sexually harassed.
Gender inequities in the professoriate have been a major concern for other prominent universities — most notably Harvard University, which has had a poor record of offering tenure to women, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which nearly a decade ago conducted a gender-equity review like the one at Texas and found similar results. —Robin WilsonPosted on Wednesday November 5, 2008 Permalink
Comments
My own experience with these studies is that the inequities are always demonstrated in the aggregate, that is, typically part of a flawed regression equation that precisely measures income and ambiguously measures productivity. When we said, fine, let’s address the individual cases where a particular woman is underpaid and the specific reasons why, the opposition melted away, presumably because the unaggregated cases didn’t seem as clear as the situation taken as a whole. The lesson I took from this is that inequities are best handled on a case-by-case basis, rather than part of a far-flung study that cannot correctly process the predictor variables.
— kp Nov 5, 12:59 PM #
“Unaggreggated cases didn’t seem as clear …” Sounds like gobbledook from the notoriously sexist economics department, where sex ratios are usually about 25:1, male to female. In 1982, I wrote a similar expose about underpaid female faculty at my university. Nothing has changed, not even the wornout arguments about “human capital,” she had a baby and wrote one less article, she failed to bargain hard upon entry (code for we took advantage of her when we hired her), she served on too many committees (which her chair required) and didn’t write enough at promotion time (while she provided gazillion hours in service) … familiar sexist CRAP. Equal pay for equal work PERIOD. No apologies. No excuses. Women are valuable and vital to academia. Indeed, without underpaying female faculty the budget might have to cut into the football department. OOOh let’s not go there. And while making less money she got little or no pay/support when she had a baby. Would have been better to have a heart attack, 6 to 12 weeks paid, supportive colleagues, in the middle of a semester no less. Class action lawsuit and enforcement of federal legislation are the only solution.
— Dr. Mo Nov 5, 04:04 PM #
Were these findings corrected for confounding variables like, oh, academic specialty?
— Take Back the U! Nov 5, 04:13 PM #
Don’t worry. Obama will fix it all.
— IG Nov 5, 04:29 PM #
Why do so many of the comments on Chronicle articles sound as if they come from cranky old white men? Are they the only ones not busy with really useful academic activities?
— johntee Nov 5, 04:47 PM #
so kp (#1)….what you are trying to say is that female professors are not as “productive” as their male counter-parts? Please give us the benefits of your analysis of black, asian & hispanic instructors too. We want to know if you’re also a bigot or just a chauvinist pig.
— Gary Nov 5, 05:04 PM #
I was expressly told that I couldn’t negotiate salary by a member of the administration. Later, I discovered that a male colleague did not receive this response and negotiated a higher starting salary. All I can say is that I learned a valuable lesson-take what they offer and add 5K to 9K to it. Then, if they reject your counter-offer, decide whether you really want the job or not. Part of the solution to gender pay inequity has to come from women standing up for their own worth and taking the risks that stance implies. Men do it all the time.
— J.D. Nov 5, 05:34 PM #
It’s always interesting to read comments from people who did not even bother to click on the link and read the report. All of your concerns are explicitly addressed therein.
Yes, they did control for discipline. No, they did not control for productivity, even though most of the wage gap was concentrated among the most productive faculty.
The gender pay gap was only statistically significant at the full professor level, and for non-tenure track instructors.
The report also speculates that female faculty use leaves of absence more than males, which extends their time to promotion. However, child care is not a significant factor.
Some of the human capital controls do reduce the wage gap.
Read the report. Unless statistically modeling is “gobbledy-gook” to you, in which case your predetermined ideological knee-jerk response is probably the best you can muster.
— tb Nov 5, 05:51 PM #
As my kindegarten teacher used to say, let’s play nice boys and girls!
— Innocent By-Stander Nov 6, 08:34 AM #
Ditto #2 and #6…#7 so true, but when I did negotiate like a man I was told that people would see me as a department destroying shrew…I decided I needed the money (and I only got half of what I asked for). I am very productive, still underpaid, and apparently a shrew.
— DJ Nov 6, 08:51 AM #
I would find it hard to believe that within a given discipline there was any department where women were earning anything less than men.
I don’t find any comparisons withing disciplines within this study. Could it be that these comparisons destroy the conclusions.
More fair studies are cited at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GenderSalaryDifferences
— Robert E. Jensen Nov 6, 09:17 AM #
Get DOWN, Dr. Mo!Tell it like it is.
— Ginger Nov 6, 09:52 AM #
The study is very vague about controlling for differences by discipline. It would have been much better had the study showed us differences is in starting salaries between men and women by discipline. If there were differences here it’s time to get a pit bull lawyer.It would’ve been nice to make similar gender comparisons among full professors after factoring out the super-salaried endowed professorships. Where there may be differences is in the associate professor ranks, especially if there are “permanent” associate professors who are tenured but have not been promoted for ten or more years. I think it might be more fair in this case to compare salary differences between men and women by discipline in the year of promotion to full professorships. If there are differences here it would be very disturbing.
November 5, 2008
Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues.
Those are among the findings of a new report on gender issues affecting the faculty that was written by a 22-member panel created by the university’s provost in 2007.
In a news release issued this week, the university said the provost, Steven W. Leslie, had accepted the panel’s recommendation that the university develop a five- to 10-year plan to reduce or eliminate gender inequity on its faculty.
The panel also found that more women than men at Texas left before winning tenure, and of those who stayed a smaller proportion of women than men achieved tenure within seven years. Thirty-six percent of women hired as assistant professors in 1997 had earned tenure and been promoted to associate professor within seven years, compared with 56 percent of men. The task force also conducted a survey of faculty members that found that 14 percent of female professors said they had been sexually harassed.
Gender inequities in the professoriate have been a major concern for other prominent universities — most notably Harvard University, which has had a poor record of offering tenure to women, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which nearly a decade ago conducted a gender-equity review like the one at Texas and found similar results. —Robin WilsonPosted on Wednesday November 5, 2008 Permalink
Comments
My own experience with these studies is that the inequities are always demonstrated in the aggregate, that is, typically part of a flawed regression equation that precisely measures income and ambiguously measures productivity. When we said, fine, let’s address the individual cases where a particular woman is underpaid and the specific reasons why, the opposition melted away, presumably because the unaggregated cases didn’t seem as clear as the situation taken as a whole. The lesson I took from this is that inequities are best handled on a case-by-case basis, rather than part of a far-flung study that cannot correctly process the predictor variables.
— kp Nov 5, 12:59 PM #
“Unaggreggated cases didn’t seem as clear …” Sounds like gobbledook from the notoriously sexist economics department, where sex ratios are usually about 25:1, male to female. In 1982, I wrote a similar expose about underpaid female faculty at my university. Nothing has changed, not even the wornout arguments about “human capital,” she had a baby and wrote one less article, she failed to bargain hard upon entry (code for we took advantage of her when we hired her), she served on too many committees (which her chair required) and didn’t write enough at promotion time (while she provided gazillion hours in service) … familiar sexist CRAP. Equal pay for equal work PERIOD. No apologies. No excuses. Women are valuable and vital to academia. Indeed, without underpaying female faculty the budget might have to cut into the football department. OOOh let’s not go there. And while making less money she got little or no pay/support when she had a baby. Would have been better to have a heart attack, 6 to 12 weeks paid, supportive colleagues, in the middle of a semester no less. Class action lawsuit and enforcement of federal legislation are the only solution.
— Dr. Mo Nov 5, 04:04 PM #
Were these findings corrected for confounding variables like, oh, academic specialty?
— Take Back the U! Nov 5, 04:13 PM #
Don’t worry. Obama will fix it all.
— IG Nov 5, 04:29 PM #
Why do so many of the comments on Chronicle articles sound as if they come from cranky old white men? Are they the only ones not busy with really useful academic activities?
— johntee Nov 5, 04:47 PM #
so kp (#1)….what you are trying to say is that female professors are not as “productive” as their male counter-parts? Please give us the benefits of your analysis of black, asian & hispanic instructors too. We want to know if you’re also a bigot or just a chauvinist pig.
— Gary Nov 5, 05:04 PM #
I was expressly told that I couldn’t negotiate salary by a member of the administration. Later, I discovered that a male colleague did not receive this response and negotiated a higher starting salary. All I can say is that I learned a valuable lesson-take what they offer and add 5K to 9K to it. Then, if they reject your counter-offer, decide whether you really want the job or not. Part of the solution to gender pay inequity has to come from women standing up for their own worth and taking the risks that stance implies. Men do it all the time.
— J.D. Nov 5, 05:34 PM #
It’s always interesting to read comments from people who did not even bother to click on the link and read the report. All of your concerns are explicitly addressed therein.
Yes, they did control for discipline. No, they did not control for productivity, even though most of the wage gap was concentrated among the most productive faculty.
The gender pay gap was only statistically significant at the full professor level, and for non-tenure track instructors.
The report also speculates that female faculty use leaves of absence more than males, which extends their time to promotion. However, child care is not a significant factor.
Some of the human capital controls do reduce the wage gap.
Read the report. Unless statistically modeling is “gobbledy-gook” to you, in which case your predetermined ideological knee-jerk response is probably the best you can muster.
— tb Nov 5, 05:51 PM #
As my kindegarten teacher used to say, let’s play nice boys and girls!
— Innocent By-Stander Nov 6, 08:34 AM #
Ditto #2 and #6…#7 so true, but when I did negotiate like a man I was told that people would see me as a department destroying shrew…I decided I needed the money (and I only got half of what I asked for). I am very productive, still underpaid, and apparently a shrew.
— DJ Nov 6, 08:51 AM #
I would find it hard to believe that within a given discipline there was any department where women were earning anything less than men.
I don’t find any comparisons withing disciplines within this study. Could it be that these comparisons destroy the conclusions.
More fair studies are cited at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GenderSalaryDifferences
— Robert E. Jensen Nov 6, 09:17 AM #
Get DOWN, Dr. Mo!Tell it like it is.
— Ginger Nov 6, 09:52 AM #
The study is very vague about controlling for differences by discipline. It would have been much better had the study showed us differences is in starting salaries between men and women by discipline. If there were differences here it’s time to get a pit bull lawyer.It would’ve been nice to make similar gender comparisons among full professors after factoring out the super-salaried endowed professorships. Where there may be differences is in the associate professor ranks, especially if there are “permanent” associate professors who are tenured but have not been promoted for ten or more years. I think it might be more fair in this case to compare salary differences between men and women by discipline in the year of promotion to full professorships. If there are differences here it would be very disturbing.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Do Babies Matter in Science?
A true measure of gender equity in academe would look at both the career and family outcomes of female Ph.D.'s
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By MARY ANN MASON
Federal investigators of Title IX, the law that forbids sexual discrimination in education, have only recently discovered that there may be a problem for women in science.
Investigators for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Energy have been inspecting several campuses for potential Title IX violations in mathematics, science, and engineering departments (The Chronicle, January 20, 2006). The New York Times revisited the issue this summer and found that, "So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven't had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members."
Evidence of the problems women face pursuing careers in academic science shouldn't be hard to find.
Look around the campus of any large research university. In most humanities and social-science disciplines, departments are blooming with female graduate students where there would have been few 30 years ago. But in math, engineering, and the physical sciences, the numbers remain embarrassingly low. In 2006, women received 28 percent of the doctorates awarded in the physical sciences, including computer science and math, and only 20 percent of those awarded in engineering. But that is great progress compared with 20 years ago when the numbers were often too small to register statistically.
The great loss is the absence of women on the faculty in those fields, because those are the women who have walked the whole walk.
Only 10 percent of faculty members in physics are women, the American Institute of Physics found in 2005, in a study that prompted the Title IX investigation. Less than half of the women who earn Ph.D's. in these challenging fields continue through to positions in academic research.
So far, as the Times article reported this summer, scientists seem to be telling Title IX investigators that the problem in academe is not so much discrimination as a lack of interest.
While proponents of women in science say there is evidence of discrimination in certain fields, the article said, "The quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's."
Some researchers quoted in the article found that "information technology workers (more often men) especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers (more often women) in other occupations preferred dealing with people." Susan Pinker, in her book, The Sexual Paradox, argues that "the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming that they don't know what they want." She said her interviews with women who had abandoned successful careers in science and engineering convinced her that they chose other careers because they lost interest in science.
I would invite Title IX investigators to talk directly to graduate students and postdocs in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering to find out what discrimination looks like.
You will find women like Jennifer Mitchell, a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. When Eve Mason Ekman (my daughter) and I interviewed Mitchell for our 2007 book, Mothers on the Fast Track, Mitchell told us, "I don't think I'll ever do a tenure-track job, and people were very upfront about that when I had my child."
You'll also find women like Sherry M.J. Towers, a particle physicist and a postdoctoral fellow, who had a baby and was effectively blacklisted by her adviser (The Chronicle, November 11, 2005). When she was pregnant, she said, her adviser refused to write a letter of recommendation for her unless she returned to work almost immediately. She did return, and he still refused. She received no interviews for any of the positions to which she applied.
Discrimination against job candidates who are pregnant or have children is a very real part of gender discrimination. Some scientists may believe that women who have families cannot be serious scientists because academic science demands exclusive attention to research. But they do not hold the same beliefs about male scientists with kids. In fact, research shows that male scientists are far more likely to have children than female scientists; two years after their Ph.D.'s, nearly 50 percent of men, but only 30 percent of women, had children.
Women in science and math learn that truth early on. When I was dean of the graduate division at Berkeley, my staff members and I studied thousands of graduate students and faculty members to learn more about the effects of family formation on the careers of Ph.D.'s. Our project — "Do Babies Matter?" — traced the career tracks of academic men and women through their doctoral years to retirement. We found firm evidence that the lack of family-friendly policies turns away both men and women, but far more often the women, from careers in academic research.
That is true across all disciplines, but more notably in the physical sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics, where the number of women is small to begin with.
Women who do pursue careers in academic science pay a high price for playing the game. Nationally, "married with children" is the academic-success formula for men, but the opposite is true for women, for whom there is a serious "baby gap." Among scientists who achieved tenure, 72 percent of the men are married with children as opposed to only 50 percent of women. Is that gender equity?
Federal investigators, when counting heads, shouldn't just consider the number of women who have succeeded in academic research. A true measure of gender equity in academe would look at both the career and family outcomes of female Ph.D.'s. We call that two-pronged measure the "baby-gap test," because it takes into account both the gap in professional outcomes for women with children compared with men and the gap in family formation for academically successful women.
Investigators need to ask not only how many women are professors and deans relative to their male counterparts, but also how many women with children are in high places compared with men with children. Viewing the situation in that way reveals that women have much further to go to achieve gender equity than we think.
Subtle maternal discrimination is difficult to deal with, but concrete measures, such as parental leave, child care, and other support at both the student and faculty levels, would go far to reduce this unnecessary loss.
Mary Ann Mason is a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic and Family Security and author of Mothers on the Fast Track (Oxford University Press). She will write regularly on work and family issues for our Balancing Act column. She invites readers to send questions or personal concerns about those issues, and she will answer your questions in a future column.
E-mail your comments to careers@chronicle.com or to mamason@law.berkeley.edu.
To read previous Balancing Act columns, see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/balancing_act
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By MARY ANN MASON
Federal investigators of Title IX, the law that forbids sexual discrimination in education, have only recently discovered that there may be a problem for women in science.
Investigators for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Energy have been inspecting several campuses for potential Title IX violations in mathematics, science, and engineering departments (The Chronicle, January 20, 2006). The New York Times revisited the issue this summer and found that, "So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven't had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members."
Evidence of the problems women face pursuing careers in academic science shouldn't be hard to find.
Look around the campus of any large research university. In most humanities and social-science disciplines, departments are blooming with female graduate students where there would have been few 30 years ago. But in math, engineering, and the physical sciences, the numbers remain embarrassingly low. In 2006, women received 28 percent of the doctorates awarded in the physical sciences, including computer science and math, and only 20 percent of those awarded in engineering. But that is great progress compared with 20 years ago when the numbers were often too small to register statistically.
The great loss is the absence of women on the faculty in those fields, because those are the women who have walked the whole walk.
Only 10 percent of faculty members in physics are women, the American Institute of Physics found in 2005, in a study that prompted the Title IX investigation. Less than half of the women who earn Ph.D's. in these challenging fields continue through to positions in academic research.
So far, as the Times article reported this summer, scientists seem to be telling Title IX investigators that the problem in academe is not so much discrimination as a lack of interest.
While proponents of women in science say there is evidence of discrimination in certain fields, the article said, "The quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's."
Some researchers quoted in the article found that "information technology workers (more often men) especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers (more often women) in other occupations preferred dealing with people." Susan Pinker, in her book, The Sexual Paradox, argues that "the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming that they don't know what they want." She said her interviews with women who had abandoned successful careers in science and engineering convinced her that they chose other careers because they lost interest in science.
I would invite Title IX investigators to talk directly to graduate students and postdocs in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering to find out what discrimination looks like.
You will find women like Jennifer Mitchell, a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. When Eve Mason Ekman (my daughter) and I interviewed Mitchell for our 2007 book, Mothers on the Fast Track, Mitchell told us, "I don't think I'll ever do a tenure-track job, and people were very upfront about that when I had my child."
You'll also find women like Sherry M.J. Towers, a particle physicist and a postdoctoral fellow, who had a baby and was effectively blacklisted by her adviser (The Chronicle, November 11, 2005). When she was pregnant, she said, her adviser refused to write a letter of recommendation for her unless she returned to work almost immediately. She did return, and he still refused. She received no interviews for any of the positions to which she applied.
Discrimination against job candidates who are pregnant or have children is a very real part of gender discrimination. Some scientists may believe that women who have families cannot be serious scientists because academic science demands exclusive attention to research. But they do not hold the same beliefs about male scientists with kids. In fact, research shows that male scientists are far more likely to have children than female scientists; two years after their Ph.D.'s, nearly 50 percent of men, but only 30 percent of women, had children.
Women in science and math learn that truth early on. When I was dean of the graduate division at Berkeley, my staff members and I studied thousands of graduate students and faculty members to learn more about the effects of family formation on the careers of Ph.D.'s. Our project — "Do Babies Matter?" — traced the career tracks of academic men and women through their doctoral years to retirement. We found firm evidence that the lack of family-friendly policies turns away both men and women, but far more often the women, from careers in academic research.
That is true across all disciplines, but more notably in the physical sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics, where the number of women is small to begin with.
Women who do pursue careers in academic science pay a high price for playing the game. Nationally, "married with children" is the academic-success formula for men, but the opposite is true for women, for whom there is a serious "baby gap." Among scientists who achieved tenure, 72 percent of the men are married with children as opposed to only 50 percent of women. Is that gender equity?
Federal investigators, when counting heads, shouldn't just consider the number of women who have succeeded in academic research. A true measure of gender equity in academe would look at both the career and family outcomes of female Ph.D.'s. We call that two-pronged measure the "baby-gap test," because it takes into account both the gap in professional outcomes for women with children compared with men and the gap in family formation for academically successful women.
Investigators need to ask not only how many women are professors and deans relative to their male counterparts, but also how many women with children are in high places compared with men with children. Viewing the situation in that way reveals that women have much further to go to achieve gender equity than we think.
Subtle maternal discrimination is difficult to deal with, but concrete measures, such as parental leave, child care, and other support at both the student and faculty levels, would go far to reduce this unnecessary loss.
Mary Ann Mason is a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic and Family Security and author of Mothers on the Fast Track (Oxford University Press). She will write regularly on work and family issues for our Balancing Act column. She invites readers to send questions or personal concerns about those issues, and she will answer your questions in a future column.
E-mail your comments to careers@chronicle.com or to mamason@law.berkeley.edu.
To read previous Balancing Act columns, see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/balancing_act
Women Accuse Rutgers Political-Science Department of Bias and Hostility
By KATE MOSER
Female faculty members and graduate students in Rutgers University at New Brunswick's political-science department feel unfairly compensated and shut out of leadership positions by their male counterparts, says an internal university report obtained by The Chronicle. In at least one case, a woman has been afraid to complain about sexual harassment because of worries about retaliation.
"We were often shocked to hear that the kind of discriminatory attitudes that, sadly, were prevalent in much of the academy decades ago and that have long been unacceptable in our own departments are apparently still prevalent in political science," concludes the July report, put together by a faculty committee convened by top administration officials. Several faculty members have taken the additional step of filing a complaint with New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General.
Historically, political science has been one of the most male-dominated disciplines among the social sciences, and observers say that may contribute to a culture of bias.
Reviewing a variety of salary data, the committee uncovered "evidence of subtle and not-so-subtle bias against women in the department," leading committee members to recommend that the university "take decisive action to remedy the departmental culture," the report says.
Douglas Greenberg, the university's new dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, told The Chronicle that the report has been at the top of his agenda since his first day on the job in August. No steps have been taken yet to deal with the report's findings. Mr. Greenberg said he wanted to fully understand the "very serious charges" in the report before he acts.
The matter surfaced officially in April 2007, when some of the female faculty members in the department lodged a formal complaint with the then-dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, citing inequalities in compensation. The school examined the complaint but found no evidence of unequal pay. Female faculty members disputed that conclusion and followed up with a letter to the university's president, Richard L. McCormick, in May 2007.
After the dean's office had analyzed the claims and concluded that they were unfounded, in December Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs, assembled the investigative committee. Four faculty members from a variety of disciplines across the university sat on the committee, which conducted its investigation from late fall of 2007 to June 2008.
Gatherings of Men
Their report cites many acts of exclusion, such as a longstanding Tuesday dinner regularly held by male senior faculty members. The report found that many in the department considered the dinner an unofficial decision-making venue to which women were not invited. Emeriti professors, all male and some of them former chairmen, still have offices in the department and shape the culture there, the committee also says. The report describes a feeling within the department that the subdiscipline of women and politics isn't valued highly, exacerbating the gender-equity problems.
The report stops short of delving into allegations of "a long-term and persistent pattern of sexual harassment" but does describe two issues, based on interviews with faculty members: at least one graduate student who "is said to be 'terrified of retaliation' if she lodges a complaint" and at least one male faculty member described by women interviewed by the committee as a "creep."
The committee summed up a pervasive impression of behavior in the department as a culture of a cliquish group of senior men. "Members of this club apparently have no clue about modern norms of what is acceptable in the workplace," the report says.
Unhappy because the university did not immediately respond to the report, five political-science faculty members at Rutgers filed complaints of differential compensation, based on gender, with the civil-rights division of the state attorney general's office on August 13. The division was informed on September 29 that the parties involved decided to participate in private mediation, said Lee Moore, a spokesman for that office.
Mr. Greenberg said he could not comment on the question of mediation. Faculty members who lodged the complaint with the state did not respond to The Chronicle's phone and e-mail messages.
Political science and international relations, along with economics, are traditionally among the most male-dominated fields in the social sciences. Women earned 38.5 percent of total political-science and international-relations doctoral degrees granted in the United States in 2006, compared with 30.4 percent in 1996, according to the most recent survey of earned doctorates by the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago.
A Broader Pattern
Across disciplines, female faculty members continue to lag behind men in pay, particularly at doctoral universities, where their average salaries are 78.1 percent of their male colleagues', according to the most recent study on gender equity in the professoriate, which was conducted in 2006 by the American Association of University Professors (The Chronicle, November 3, 2006).
"It's an issue we've been seeing in the last couple of years again," said John W. Curtis, the AAUP's director of research and public policy and an author of that report. "There's an attitude that this is something we've taken care of already, but the data indicate otherwise."
The Rutgers committee comes to a less definitive conclusion on what the data say about the alleged gender inequity in faculty salaries, though it does conclude that the department's gender bias is reflected in salaries, particularly at the associate-professor level. In one example the report provides, female associate professors earned 82 percent of what their male counterparts made during the 2006-7 academic year. One senior female faculty member in the department was earning $113,029 after 35 years at Rutgers, the report says, compared with a senior male faculty member who was earning $123,359 after 16 years at the university.
During the 2007-8 academic year, the School of Arts and Sciences "took aggressive steps to correct several of the most blatant examples of salary inequity for women faculty members," the report says.
Many universities respond to allegations of gender inequity in pay by considering individual cases, Mr. Curtis said. But that approach doesn't change the way promotion decisions are made or how starting salaries are determined, he said: "It doesn't fix the underlying structure."
http://chronicle.com
Section: The FacultyVolume 55, Issue 8, Page A14
Female faculty members and graduate students in Rutgers University at New Brunswick's political-science department feel unfairly compensated and shut out of leadership positions by their male counterparts, says an internal university report obtained by The Chronicle. In at least one case, a woman has been afraid to complain about sexual harassment because of worries about retaliation.
"We were often shocked to hear that the kind of discriminatory attitudes that, sadly, were prevalent in much of the academy decades ago and that have long been unacceptable in our own departments are apparently still prevalent in political science," concludes the July report, put together by a faculty committee convened by top administration officials. Several faculty members have taken the additional step of filing a complaint with New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General.
Historically, political science has been one of the most male-dominated disciplines among the social sciences, and observers say that may contribute to a culture of bias.
Reviewing a variety of salary data, the committee uncovered "evidence of subtle and not-so-subtle bias against women in the department," leading committee members to recommend that the university "take decisive action to remedy the departmental culture," the report says.
Douglas Greenberg, the university's new dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, told The Chronicle that the report has been at the top of his agenda since his first day on the job in August. No steps have been taken yet to deal with the report's findings. Mr. Greenberg said he wanted to fully understand the "very serious charges" in the report before he acts.
The matter surfaced officially in April 2007, when some of the female faculty members in the department lodged a formal complaint with the then-dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, citing inequalities in compensation. The school examined the complaint but found no evidence of unequal pay. Female faculty members disputed that conclusion and followed up with a letter to the university's president, Richard L. McCormick, in May 2007.
After the dean's office had analyzed the claims and concluded that they were unfounded, in December Philip Furmanski, executive vice president for academic affairs, assembled the investigative committee. Four faculty members from a variety of disciplines across the university sat on the committee, which conducted its investigation from late fall of 2007 to June 2008.
Gatherings of Men
Their report cites many acts of exclusion, such as a longstanding Tuesday dinner regularly held by male senior faculty members. The report found that many in the department considered the dinner an unofficial decision-making venue to which women were not invited. Emeriti professors, all male and some of them former chairmen, still have offices in the department and shape the culture there, the committee also says. The report describes a feeling within the department that the subdiscipline of women and politics isn't valued highly, exacerbating the gender-equity problems.
The report stops short of delving into allegations of "a long-term and persistent pattern of sexual harassment" but does describe two issues, based on interviews with faculty members: at least one graduate student who "is said to be 'terrified of retaliation' if she lodges a complaint" and at least one male faculty member described by women interviewed by the committee as a "creep."
The committee summed up a pervasive impression of behavior in the department as a culture of a cliquish group of senior men. "Members of this club apparently have no clue about modern norms of what is acceptable in the workplace," the report says.
Unhappy because the university did not immediately respond to the report, five political-science faculty members at Rutgers filed complaints of differential compensation, based on gender, with the civil-rights division of the state attorney general's office on August 13. The division was informed on September 29 that the parties involved decided to participate in private mediation, said Lee Moore, a spokesman for that office.
Mr. Greenberg said he could not comment on the question of mediation. Faculty members who lodged the complaint with the state did not respond to The Chronicle's phone and e-mail messages.
Political science and international relations, along with economics, are traditionally among the most male-dominated fields in the social sciences. Women earned 38.5 percent of total political-science and international-relations doctoral degrees granted in the United States in 2006, compared with 30.4 percent in 1996, according to the most recent survey of earned doctorates by the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago.
A Broader Pattern
Across disciplines, female faculty members continue to lag behind men in pay, particularly at doctoral universities, where their average salaries are 78.1 percent of their male colleagues', according to the most recent study on gender equity in the professoriate, which was conducted in 2006 by the American Association of University Professors (The Chronicle, November 3, 2006).
"It's an issue we've been seeing in the last couple of years again," said John W. Curtis, the AAUP's director of research and public policy and an author of that report. "There's an attitude that this is something we've taken care of already, but the data indicate otherwise."
The Rutgers committee comes to a less definitive conclusion on what the data say about the alleged gender inequity in faculty salaries, though it does conclude that the department's gender bias is reflected in salaries, particularly at the associate-professor level. In one example the report provides, female associate professors earned 82 percent of what their male counterparts made during the 2006-7 academic year. One senior female faculty member in the department was earning $113,029 after 35 years at Rutgers, the report says, compared with a senior male faculty member who was earning $123,359 after 16 years at the university.
During the 2007-8 academic year, the School of Arts and Sciences "took aggressive steps to correct several of the most blatant examples of salary inequity for women faculty members," the report says.
Many universities respond to allegations of gender inequity in pay by considering individual cases, Mr. Curtis said. But that approach doesn't change the way promotion decisions are made or how starting salaries are determined, he said: "It doesn't fix the underlying structure."
http://chronicle.com
Section: The FacultyVolume 55, Issue 8, Page A14
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Prizes for women. Progress for women?
It Could Go Either WayOctober 15, 2008
Janet Stemwedel discusses three German prizes for women in science that are only open to female researchers who have children. She wonders if that requirement implies that to be fulfilled women have to be mothers, or if it shows that serious women scientists can also be mothers. Suzanne Franks weighs in, saying, "Complaining about the awards is aiming our wrath at the wrong target. The proper target is the structural inequalities that leave women mostly responsible for raising the next generation and caring for the sick and elderly, without that labor being recognized and/or valued."
Prizes for women. Progress for women?
Category: Globalizing science * Social issues * Tribe of Science * Women and sciencePosted on: October 9, 2008 12:01 PM, by Janet D. Stemwedel
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with kids. (The rationale for this is that childcare options in Germany are not as good as they should be for working mothers, so women scientists with kids need special support.)
I was chatting about these awards with some woman friends of mine with science backgrounds, and there were some mixed views of these awards.
On the one hand, children are labor-intensive (as is science), so help caring for children is a good thing. But in theory at least, this would also be an issue for male scientists with kids.
It's possible to interpret scholarships like this as saying that no woman, remarkable scientist or not, could be completely fulfilled if she is not also a mother. Is this a social pressure that really needs to be reinforced with cash prizes?
On the other hand, it is still not uncommon for women in science to feel like having kids will be taken as definitive evidence that they weren't really serious about being great scientists -- because if they were, they would never sacrifice the time and energy children require, but would devote all of that to their research. (For some reason, kids aren't counted against the seriousness of male scientists in quite the same way. Maybe it is still assumed that they have wives who will carry the burden of the care-work so their husbands can attend to the mind-work.)
In the grand scheme of things, three prizes don't accomplish much more than helping three female scientists in Germany piece together some of the additional resources they need to take care of their kids and their scientific careers. Real change would be more structural, whether in terms of societal support of childrearing more generally, societal acceptance that not having kids is a perfectly reasonable choice, scientific workplaces that recognize that even scientists might have important things in their lives beyond their scientific work, etc., etc.
But until real change comes, what kind of message does an award like this send to you? Do you think it's a step in the right direction, or does it entrench assumptions that ought to be abandoned?
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2008/10/prizes_for_women_progress_for.php
What's Wrong With These Scholarships?
Category: Daily Struggles * Manifestoes * Naming Experience * Why There Are No Women in SciencePosted on: October 14, 2008 9:52 PM, by Zuska
Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science writes about prizes for women:
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with kids...On the one hand, children are labor-intensive (as is science), so help caring for children is a good thing. But in theory at least, this would also be an issue for male scientists with kids.
It's possible to interpret scholarships like this as saying that no woman, remarkable scientist or not, could be completely fulfilled if she is not also a mother. Is this a social pressure that really needs to be reinforced with cash prizes?
On the other hand, it is still not uncommon for women in science to feel like having kids will be taken as definitive evidence that they weren't really serious about being great scientists -- because if they were, they would never sacrifice the time and energy children require, but would devote all of that to their research...
...[W]hat kind of message does an award like this send to you? Do you think it's a step in the right direction, or does it entrench assumptions that ought to be abandoned?
Here are my thoughts in response.
I have no patience with those who would constrain the value of women's lives to their reproductive capacity. But neither do I worry about a few tiny bits of funding going to women researchers with kids. It isn't a few scholarships that support the notion that women ought to have kids. In fact you could argue the opposite, that a scholarship for a woman with kids undermines the notion that the only thing a woman ought to be doing is have kids. We need to value the choices of women who want to have kids AND a career. We might well argue that working to establish affordable, accessible daycare for all parents would be a more effective way to achieve this than to provide individual solutions for a few elite women but that's another story.The fact is that the way things are now, women still have primary responsibility for childcare, and academic science still operates in a way to disadvantage people (mostly women) who have to devote large amounts of time to childcare. The L'Oreal awards are an attempt to mitigate these circumstances. It might be cool if the award was revised to allow support for women involved in any major family care situation - elder care, say, as well as child care. But complaining about the awards is aiming our wrath at the wrong target. The proper target is the structural inequalities that leave women mostly responsible for raising the next generation and caring for the sick and elderly, without that labor being recognized and/or valued. On the one hand, we have massive societal pressure on women to have kids and to obtain their complete identity through motherhood, while on the other hand we have massive societal denial that the work of motherhood is in any way an important societal function. It is seen as a purely individual choice and private matter and therefore society has no obligation to help those who are having kids. The problem, as I see it, with something like the L'Oreal scholarships is that they are just a band-aid. They are an acknowledgment of a widespread culture that sees child-rearing, or indeed any life event requiring one's time and attention, as an undesirable infringement upon work. They don't challenge or change this norm; they merely offer a coping strategy for a few lucky individual women. Band-aids aren't bad, but they aren't transformational change, either.
Yes, it needs to be okay for women not to be mothers. But it also needs to be okay for women to be mothers AND have careers. Or, to be only mothers and have that work seen as an important part of contributing to society. All three choices need to be equally valid, equally valued, equally viable. No one of them can be truly a choice for any woman until and unless all three are really truly a choice. No matter what we do it isn't valued and we end up vilified by someone. Vilified by conservatives if we choose career and motherhood for supposedly harming the kids; vilified by some feminists if we choose only motherhood, for being retrograde and setting back the cause of women; vilified if we choose not to have children in favor of a career as somehow being unnatural women who can never really be fulfilled. There is no choice a woman can make that is neutral, or positive. Criticizing some initiative that attempts to help a subset of women navigate the impossible set of "choices" before them misses the wider problem, which is the system that sets up the impossible choices to begin with.
We absolutely have to fight for our freedom not to have kids if we don't want to, and not to be defined solely by our ability to bear children. But our antagonists in that fight are not women who chose to have children, or some foundation that throws some money their way. There isn't just one way to win this fight. Over here we battle for the right of mothers to have careers. Over there we battle for the right of women not to be defined by childbearing. Multiple strategies, multiple fronts, multiple fights going on all the time. It's a false dichotomy to think that you have to be opposed to support for working mothers if you are also for support for women not to be defined by reproductive biology.
I will say this, however. I do think that the somewhat excessive focus on childcare issues in the gender-and-science arena is not a good thing. The implication sometimes is almost as if the ONLY issue facing women in science is childcare. This completely ignores all the problems faced by women who do not have children, and all the problems women with children face that have nothing to do with them having children. It also produces the nagging feeling that if those darn women would just stop insisting upon having kids and a demanding science career, there wouldn't be an issue. You know, everything in science is good, except we have to make special accommodations for those demanding baby mamas, who don't realize they really ought to go home and stop bothering all the rest of us who've devoted our lives to science. It makes it seem like the problem is those darn reproducing women, not the structure of science, or the misplaced values of society.
In this regard it's good to see the way that some of the NSF ADVANCE programs deal with this issue. For example, the University of Washington ADVANCE program has a Transitional Support Program that is available to women and men, and that posits childcare as just one of an array of life issues for which a faculty member might need some extra help. Rather than the extremes of either ignoring or singling out childcare, it normalizes childcare as just one of many parts of life that people have to deal with while managing their careers. By being open to women and men, the program also makes clear that it does not view responsibility for such life issues as solely belonging to women. That's a good start.
Janet Stemwedel discusses three German prizes for women in science that are only open to female researchers who have children. She wonders if that requirement implies that to be fulfilled women have to be mothers, or if it shows that serious women scientists can also be mothers. Suzanne Franks weighs in, saying, "Complaining about the awards is aiming our wrath at the wrong target. The proper target is the structural inequalities that leave women mostly responsible for raising the next generation and caring for the sick and elderly, without that labor being recognized and/or valued."
Prizes for women. Progress for women?
Category: Globalizing science * Social issues * Tribe of Science * Women and sciencePosted on: October 9, 2008 12:01 PM, by Janet D. Stemwedel
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with kids. (The rationale for this is that childcare options in Germany are not as good as they should be for working mothers, so women scientists with kids need special support.)
I was chatting about these awards with some woman friends of mine with science backgrounds, and there were some mixed views of these awards.
On the one hand, children are labor-intensive (as is science), so help caring for children is a good thing. But in theory at least, this would also be an issue for male scientists with kids.
It's possible to interpret scholarships like this as saying that no woman, remarkable scientist or not, could be completely fulfilled if she is not also a mother. Is this a social pressure that really needs to be reinforced with cash prizes?
On the other hand, it is still not uncommon for women in science to feel like having kids will be taken as definitive evidence that they weren't really serious about being great scientists -- because if they were, they would never sacrifice the time and energy children require, but would devote all of that to their research. (For some reason, kids aren't counted against the seriousness of male scientists in quite the same way. Maybe it is still assumed that they have wives who will carry the burden of the care-work so their husbands can attend to the mind-work.)
In the grand scheme of things, three prizes don't accomplish much more than helping three female scientists in Germany piece together some of the additional resources they need to take care of their kids and their scientific careers. Real change would be more structural, whether in terms of societal support of childrearing more generally, societal acceptance that not having kids is a perfectly reasonable choice, scientific workplaces that recognize that even scientists might have important things in their lives beyond their scientific work, etc., etc.
But until real change comes, what kind of message does an award like this send to you? Do you think it's a step in the right direction, or does it entrench assumptions that ought to be abandoned?
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2008/10/prizes_for_women_progress_for.php
What's Wrong With These Scholarships?
Category: Daily Struggles * Manifestoes * Naming Experience * Why There Are No Women in SciencePosted on: October 14, 2008 9:52 PM, by Zuska
Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science writes about prizes for women:
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with kids...On the one hand, children are labor-intensive (as is science), so help caring for children is a good thing. But in theory at least, this would also be an issue for male scientists with kids.
It's possible to interpret scholarships like this as saying that no woman, remarkable scientist or not, could be completely fulfilled if she is not also a mother. Is this a social pressure that really needs to be reinforced with cash prizes?
On the other hand, it is still not uncommon for women in science to feel like having kids will be taken as definitive evidence that they weren't really serious about being great scientists -- because if they were, they would never sacrifice the time and energy children require, but would devote all of that to their research...
...[W]hat kind of message does an award like this send to you? Do you think it's a step in the right direction, or does it entrench assumptions that ought to be abandoned?
Here are my thoughts in response.
I have no patience with those who would constrain the value of women's lives to their reproductive capacity. But neither do I worry about a few tiny bits of funding going to women researchers with kids. It isn't a few scholarships that support the notion that women ought to have kids. In fact you could argue the opposite, that a scholarship for a woman with kids undermines the notion that the only thing a woman ought to be doing is have kids. We need to value the choices of women who want to have kids AND a career. We might well argue that working to establish affordable, accessible daycare for all parents would be a more effective way to achieve this than to provide individual solutions for a few elite women but that's another story.The fact is that the way things are now, women still have primary responsibility for childcare, and academic science still operates in a way to disadvantage people (mostly women) who have to devote large amounts of time to childcare. The L'Oreal awards are an attempt to mitigate these circumstances. It might be cool if the award was revised to allow support for women involved in any major family care situation - elder care, say, as well as child care. But complaining about the awards is aiming our wrath at the wrong target. The proper target is the structural inequalities that leave women mostly responsible for raising the next generation and caring for the sick and elderly, without that labor being recognized and/or valued. On the one hand, we have massive societal pressure on women to have kids and to obtain their complete identity through motherhood, while on the other hand we have massive societal denial that the work of motherhood is in any way an important societal function. It is seen as a purely individual choice and private matter and therefore society has no obligation to help those who are having kids. The problem, as I see it, with something like the L'Oreal scholarships is that they are just a band-aid. They are an acknowledgment of a widespread culture that sees child-rearing, or indeed any life event requiring one's time and attention, as an undesirable infringement upon work. They don't challenge or change this norm; they merely offer a coping strategy for a few lucky individual women. Band-aids aren't bad, but they aren't transformational change, either.
Yes, it needs to be okay for women not to be mothers. But it also needs to be okay for women to be mothers AND have careers. Or, to be only mothers and have that work seen as an important part of contributing to society. All three choices need to be equally valid, equally valued, equally viable. No one of them can be truly a choice for any woman until and unless all three are really truly a choice. No matter what we do it isn't valued and we end up vilified by someone. Vilified by conservatives if we choose career and motherhood for supposedly harming the kids; vilified by some feminists if we choose only motherhood, for being retrograde and setting back the cause of women; vilified if we choose not to have children in favor of a career as somehow being unnatural women who can never really be fulfilled. There is no choice a woman can make that is neutral, or positive. Criticizing some initiative that attempts to help a subset of women navigate the impossible set of "choices" before them misses the wider problem, which is the system that sets up the impossible choices to begin with.
We absolutely have to fight for our freedom not to have kids if we don't want to, and not to be defined solely by our ability to bear children. But our antagonists in that fight are not women who chose to have children, or some foundation that throws some money their way. There isn't just one way to win this fight. Over here we battle for the right of mothers to have careers. Over there we battle for the right of women not to be defined by childbearing. Multiple strategies, multiple fronts, multiple fights going on all the time. It's a false dichotomy to think that you have to be opposed to support for working mothers if you are also for support for women not to be defined by reproductive biology.
I will say this, however. I do think that the somewhat excessive focus on childcare issues in the gender-and-science arena is not a good thing. The implication sometimes is almost as if the ONLY issue facing women in science is childcare. This completely ignores all the problems faced by women who do not have children, and all the problems women with children face that have nothing to do with them having children. It also produces the nagging feeling that if those darn women would just stop insisting upon having kids and a demanding science career, there wouldn't be an issue. You know, everything in science is good, except we have to make special accommodations for those demanding baby mamas, who don't realize they really ought to go home and stop bothering all the rest of us who've devoted our lives to science. It makes it seem like the problem is those darn reproducing women, not the structure of science, or the misplaced values of society.
In this regard it's good to see the way that some of the NSF ADVANCE programs deal with this issue. For example, the University of Washington ADVANCE program has a Transitional Support Program that is available to women and men, and that posits childcare as just one of an array of life issues for which a faculty member might need some extra help. Rather than the extremes of either ignoring or singling out childcare, it normalizes childcare as just one of many parts of life that people have to deal with while managing their careers. By being open to women and men, the program also makes clear that it does not view responsibility for such life issues as solely belonging to women. That's a good start.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Opening Opportunities for Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)
Visit AAUW's new website on STEM.
There are many projects devoted to increasing the number of girls interested in STEM across the country, and the premise of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) is that these programs could be more effective if they worked together.
Often, individuals working on one "girls in STEM" project are unaware of similar projects nearby. The goal of the NGCP is to facilitate collaboration among projects so that they can share resources, work together, and learn from one another. A big part of the National Girls Collaborative Project is the creation of a Program Directory of these girl-serving projects. You can find the Program Directory here.
The Program Directory allows organizations interested in creating more opportunities for girls in STEM to register and learn about similar organizations in their area. Another big part of the NGCP is the mini-grant program. NGCP will make $1000 mini-grants available to collaborations of 2 or more participating programs who apply through the Program Directory.
For example, if one organization has meeting space with computers available, and another organization has mentors and girls available, the two organizations both register in the program directory and then apply for a $1000 mini-grant to help pay for the costs of their joint event.
The NGCP is now accepting applications for mini-grants! Click here for more information on mini-grants.
Click here for a list of mini-grants awarded from September, 2007 - May, 2008.
The NGCP will also provide research-based promising practices in informal learning environments and evaluation and assessment to the participating programs to help further advance the work of these girl-serving projects.
AAUW members across the country are acting as Regional Liaisons for the National Girls Collaborative Project. These Regional Liaisons help the people involved in the NGCP to make connections — to one another, to resources on gender equity, and to AAUW.
There are many projects devoted to increasing the number of girls interested in STEM across the country, and the premise of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) is that these programs could be more effective if they worked together.
Often, individuals working on one "girls in STEM" project are unaware of similar projects nearby. The goal of the NGCP is to facilitate collaboration among projects so that they can share resources, work together, and learn from one another. A big part of the National Girls Collaborative Project is the creation of a Program Directory of these girl-serving projects. You can find the Program Directory here.
The Program Directory allows organizations interested in creating more opportunities for girls in STEM to register and learn about similar organizations in their area. Another big part of the NGCP is the mini-grant program. NGCP will make $1000 mini-grants available to collaborations of 2 or more participating programs who apply through the Program Directory.
For example, if one organization has meeting space with computers available, and another organization has mentors and girls available, the two organizations both register in the program directory and then apply for a $1000 mini-grant to help pay for the costs of their joint event.
The NGCP is now accepting applications for mini-grants! Click here for more information on mini-grants.
Click here for a list of mini-grants awarded from September, 2007 - May, 2008.
The NGCP will also provide research-based promising practices in informal learning environments and evaluation and assessment to the participating programs to help further advance the work of these girl-serving projects.
AAUW members across the country are acting as Regional Liaisons for the National Girls Collaborative Project. These Regional Liaisons help the people involved in the NGCP to make connections — to one another, to resources on gender equity, and to AAUW.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Lab Is Her Kingdom
The Lab Is Her Kingdom
October 2008 By Matthew Dublin
To try and encapsulate in a few sentences what Mary-Claire King has done, not only for genomics and female scientists around the world, but for the human race, is a futile pursuit. Clearly, this is one woman who needs no introduction, but it behooves us to mention a few key achievements for which King will surely be remembered in years to come.
To say that her career started with a bang is an understatement. In 1973 at the University of California, Berkeley, King published her doctoral dissertation - and it landed on the cover of Science. In it, she demonstrated through comparative protein analysis that the humans and chimpanzees are 99 percent genetically identical. Since the early 1980s, King used her skills to spearhead efforts fighting human rights abuses in South American, Asia, and Europe with a method she developed that used mitochondrial DNA and HLA-serotyping markers. In 1990, while at Berkeley, King developed techniques that led to the discovery of the BRCA1 gene, which is now well known to be strongly implicated in breast and ovarian cancer.
But King, currently a professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, says that her graduate studies did not begin without some struggles. In fact, King says she grew frustrated while first attempting to complete her graduate work on the Berkeley campus during those wild and wooly days of the late 1960s, with the constant presence of the US Army and local police. "From the time I started graduate school and finished, it was long and fraught," King says. "I ended up dropping out in the middle and going to work for Ralph Nader and then coming back."
Upon returning, she began working in the lab of the late Allan Wilson, whom she credits with informing her on the finer points of running a successful lab. It is worth noting that it was Wilson who convinced King to stay at Berkeley and continue working on her PhD, rather than taking a job offer with Nader in Washington, DC. "Working with Allan was transformative. He was always focused on the science and focused on the data, and he allowed one to free oneself of all the insecurities," she says. "It didn't make failed experiments any less discouraging, but it did mean that you weren't being judged as a person, you just needed to do the experiment again."
She also says Wilson was great when it came to listening to what everyone in the lab had to say. The ability to hear what the people in one's lab are saying and try to give useful feedback is enormously important, she says - and it's something she is still trying to perfect in her own work to this day.
Confidence and funding
King says that the key characteristics she looks for in young researchers aiming to join her lab are curiosity and a strong work ethic. "Background can be learned and techniques can be taught, but only to a receptive person who is curious and is prepared to put in the time when experiments don't work," she says. "Those are the most valuable types of people I've found since doing this since 1974."
A key element of being a good leader is bringing home the proverbial bacon, and the ability to do so is one thing King makes an effort to instill in her postdocs as they venture out into the world. "Clearly you can't run a lab if you can't bring in the money, and the primary job of the lab director is to bring in the money and let the postdocs and students have at it," she says. "So you need to give them a sense of where the money is buried, and not to get discouraged when it takes multiple rounds to get it."
Eric Lynch, co-founder of Sound Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company focusing on drug discovery for the auditory system, remembers his time with King fondly. "She instilled in me a desire to take on really hard problems and pursue the answers doggedly despite the critics and status quo," he says. "She definitely gave me confidence in myself as a researcher and let me know that the results mattered. ... She was also an inspiration on how to build research teams."
One event during his stay in the King lab was particularly memorable: the presentation of the team's findings for BRCA1 at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "I went up to the podium showing a slide with a razor blade and a pulsed field gel. I then proceeded to explain how YACs could be gel isolated in sufficient quantity for radio labeling and screening of cDNA libraries - oh, and here are all the genes we found," he says. "People were pretty surprised and supportive, and with all of the genomic sequencing taking hold and the enamorization of exon trapping, here was the King lab getting it out and getting results."
King feels that it is important for would-be researchers to understand what being in a lab is all about, and that it's so much more than just science. "Very few people outside of experimental science recognize what a lab culture is. It's somewhere a cross between a kibbutz and a family, and it's very hard to convey to people who don't live it," she says. "The combination of the closeness day to day, the transition of people coming out and new people coming in so that people start as newbies and then end up mentoring other people, it's a very special kind of culture."
Naming Names
King says that more than 50 postdocs and graduate students have passed through her lab. Here are just a few of those who were lucky enough to do so.
Lori FriedmanDuring her time with King, Friedman was hard at work helping her mentor to further elucidate the role of BRCA1 in breast and ovarian cancers. After completing her graduate studies in 1995 and landing several fellowships, she eventually headed to her current position, director of cancer signaling and translational oncology at Genentech.
Jeff HallKing remembers former graduate student Jeff Hall fondly as the one who helped map BRCA1. After leaving academia, Hall jumped the fence to industry, serving as the vice president and director of several biotech companies. He is currently vice president of cell biology at Genoptix Medical Laboratory.
Jeanette McCarthyThis former King lab member is now focused on the dyslipidemia associated with chronic hepatitis C virus infection. McCarthy is currently an associate professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
Ruth OttmanOttman's primary research area is genetic epidemiology and research designs for testing gene-environment interaction, methods for collection of valid family history data, and approaches to assessing familial aggregation. She is a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Nancy SpinnerSpinner left the King lab after finishing her PhD in 1984 and went on to focus her efforts on identifying genes that cause congenital diseases. Currently, she is a professor of pediatrics and genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Elizabeth SwisherSince her time as a grad student in King's lab, Swisher has continued to work on breast and ovarian cancers - both independently and with King. She is now an associate professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Washington.
© Copyright 2008 GenomeWeb Daily News. All rights Reserved.
October 2008 By Matthew Dublin
To try and encapsulate in a few sentences what Mary-Claire King has done, not only for genomics and female scientists around the world, but for the human race, is a futile pursuit. Clearly, this is one woman who needs no introduction, but it behooves us to mention a few key achievements for which King will surely be remembered in years to come.
To say that her career started with a bang is an understatement. In 1973 at the University of California, Berkeley, King published her doctoral dissertation - and it landed on the cover of Science. In it, she demonstrated through comparative protein analysis that the humans and chimpanzees are 99 percent genetically identical. Since the early 1980s, King used her skills to spearhead efforts fighting human rights abuses in South American, Asia, and Europe with a method she developed that used mitochondrial DNA and HLA-serotyping markers. In 1990, while at Berkeley, King developed techniques that led to the discovery of the BRCA1 gene, which is now well known to be strongly implicated in breast and ovarian cancer.
But King, currently a professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, says that her graduate studies did not begin without some struggles. In fact, King says she grew frustrated while first attempting to complete her graduate work on the Berkeley campus during those wild and wooly days of the late 1960s, with the constant presence of the US Army and local police. "From the time I started graduate school and finished, it was long and fraught," King says. "I ended up dropping out in the middle and going to work for Ralph Nader and then coming back."
Upon returning, she began working in the lab of the late Allan Wilson, whom she credits with informing her on the finer points of running a successful lab. It is worth noting that it was Wilson who convinced King to stay at Berkeley and continue working on her PhD, rather than taking a job offer with Nader in Washington, DC. "Working with Allan was transformative. He was always focused on the science and focused on the data, and he allowed one to free oneself of all the insecurities," she says. "It didn't make failed experiments any less discouraging, but it did mean that you weren't being judged as a person, you just needed to do the experiment again."
She also says Wilson was great when it came to listening to what everyone in the lab had to say. The ability to hear what the people in one's lab are saying and try to give useful feedback is enormously important, she says - and it's something she is still trying to perfect in her own work to this day.
Confidence and funding
King says that the key characteristics she looks for in young researchers aiming to join her lab are curiosity and a strong work ethic. "Background can be learned and techniques can be taught, but only to a receptive person who is curious and is prepared to put in the time when experiments don't work," she says. "Those are the most valuable types of people I've found since doing this since 1974."
A key element of being a good leader is bringing home the proverbial bacon, and the ability to do so is one thing King makes an effort to instill in her postdocs as they venture out into the world. "Clearly you can't run a lab if you can't bring in the money, and the primary job of the lab director is to bring in the money and let the postdocs and students have at it," she says. "So you need to give them a sense of where the money is buried, and not to get discouraged when it takes multiple rounds to get it."
Eric Lynch, co-founder of Sound Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company focusing on drug discovery for the auditory system, remembers his time with King fondly. "She instilled in me a desire to take on really hard problems and pursue the answers doggedly despite the critics and status quo," he says. "She definitely gave me confidence in myself as a researcher and let me know that the results mattered. ... She was also an inspiration on how to build research teams."
One event during his stay in the King lab was particularly memorable: the presentation of the team's findings for BRCA1 at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "I went up to the podium showing a slide with a razor blade and a pulsed field gel. I then proceeded to explain how YACs could be gel isolated in sufficient quantity for radio labeling and screening of cDNA libraries - oh, and here are all the genes we found," he says. "People were pretty surprised and supportive, and with all of the genomic sequencing taking hold and the enamorization of exon trapping, here was the King lab getting it out and getting results."
King feels that it is important for would-be researchers to understand what being in a lab is all about, and that it's so much more than just science. "Very few people outside of experimental science recognize what a lab culture is. It's somewhere a cross between a kibbutz and a family, and it's very hard to convey to people who don't live it," she says. "The combination of the closeness day to day, the transition of people coming out and new people coming in so that people start as newbies and then end up mentoring other people, it's a very special kind of culture."
Naming Names
King says that more than 50 postdocs and graduate students have passed through her lab. Here are just a few of those who were lucky enough to do so.
Lori FriedmanDuring her time with King, Friedman was hard at work helping her mentor to further elucidate the role of BRCA1 in breast and ovarian cancers. After completing her graduate studies in 1995 and landing several fellowships, she eventually headed to her current position, director of cancer signaling and translational oncology at Genentech.
Jeff HallKing remembers former graduate student Jeff Hall fondly as the one who helped map BRCA1. After leaving academia, Hall jumped the fence to industry, serving as the vice president and director of several biotech companies. He is currently vice president of cell biology at Genoptix Medical Laboratory.
Jeanette McCarthyThis former King lab member is now focused on the dyslipidemia associated with chronic hepatitis C virus infection. McCarthy is currently an associate professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
Ruth OttmanOttman's primary research area is genetic epidemiology and research designs for testing gene-environment interaction, methods for collection of valid family history data, and approaches to assessing familial aggregation. She is a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Nancy SpinnerSpinner left the King lab after finishing her PhD in 1984 and went on to focus her efforts on identifying genes that cause congenital diseases. Currently, she is a professor of pediatrics and genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Elizabeth SwisherSince her time as a grad student in King's lab, Swisher has continued to work on breast and ovarian cancers - both independently and with King. She is now an associate professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Washington.
© Copyright 2008 GenomeWeb Daily News. All rights Reserved.
Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds
October 10, 2008
Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds
By SARA RIMER
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times
In 1998, Melanie Wood at 16 became the first girl on the USA Mathematical Olympiad team. Today, at 27, Ms. Wood is a doctoral candidate in mathematics at Princeton University.
Jodi Hilton for The New York Times
Since Ms. Wood's first, Sherry Gong, 19, now a sophomore at Harvard, has also won gold medals on the United States team.
Steven Dunbar
Alison Miller, 22, a recent Harvard graduate, was also a gold medal recipient for the U.S. team.
The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.
The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math - the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers - they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls - and boys, for that matter - from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
"We're living in a culture that is telling girls you can't do math - that's telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math," said the study's lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world's most-demanding math competitions. "Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, 'If I'm not an Asian or a nerd, I'd better not be on the math team.' Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they're not even trying."
Many studies have examined and debated gender differences and math, but most rely on the results of the SAT and other standardized tests, Dr. Mertz and many mathematicians say. But those tests were never intended to measure the dazzling creativity, insight and reasoning skills required to solve math problems at the highest levels, Dr. Mertz and others say.
Dr. Mertz asserts that the new study is the first to examine data from the most difficult math competitions for young people, including the USA and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. For winners of these competitions, the Michael Phelpses and Kobe Bryants of math, getting an 800 on the math SAT is routine. The study found that many students from the United States in these competitions are immigrants or children of immigrants from countries where education in mathematics is prized and mathematical talent is thought to be widely distributed and able to be cultivated through hard work and persistence.
The International Olympiad, which began in Romania in 1959, is considered to be the world's toughest math competition for high school students. About 500 students from as many as 95 countries compete each year, with contestants solving six problems in nine hours. (Question 5 from the 1996 test was famously difficult, with only six students out of several hundred able to solve it fully.)
The United States has competed in the Olympiad since 1974. Its six-member teams are selected over years of high-level contests, and trained during intensive summer math camps.
One two-time Olympiad gold medalist, 22-year-old Daniel M. Kane, now a graduate student at Harvard, is the son of Dr. Mertz and her husband, Jonathan M. Kane, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin, and a co-author of the study. The other two co-authors are Joseph A. Gallian, a math professor at the University of Minnesota and president of the Mathematical Association of America, and Titu Andreescu, a professor of math education at the University of Texas at Dallas and a former leader of the United States Olympiad team.
All members of the United States team were boys until 1998, when 16-year-old Melanie Wood, a cheerleader, student newspaper editor and math whiz from a public high school in Indianapolis, made the team. She won a silver medal, missing the gold by a single point. Since then, two female high school students, Alison Miller, from upstate New York, and Sherry Gong, whose parents emigrated to the United States from China, have made the United States team (they both won gold).
By comparison, relatively small Bulgaria has sent 21 girls to the competition since 1959 (six since 1988), according to the study, and since 1974 the highly ranked Bulgarian, East German/German and Soviet Union/Russian IMO teams have included 9, 10 and 13 girls respectively. "What most of these countries have in common," the study says, "are rigorous national mathematics curricula along with cultures and educational systems that value, encourage and support students who excel in mathematics."
Ms. Wood is now 27 and completing her doctorate in math at Princeton University. "There's just a stigma in this country about math being really hard and feared, and people who do it being strange," she said in a telephone interview. "It's particularly hard for girls, especially at the ages when people start doing competitions. If you look at schools, there is often a social group of nerdy boys. There's that image of what it is to be a nerdy boy in mathematics. It's still in some way socially unacceptable for boys, but at least it's a position and it's clearly defined."
Ms. Miller, who is 22 and recently graduated from Harvard, and Ms. Gong, 19 and a Harvard sophomore, both cite Ms. Wood as their role model. Ms. Wood and Ms. Miller helped coach the United States girls' team that began competing in the Girls' Math Olympiad in China two years ago. Thirteen girls from the United States have competed in the last two years, according to the study, and all are of Asian descent except one, Jennifer Iglesias.
The leader of those two teams, and of the United States Olympiad team is Zuming Feng, who grew up in China and teaches math at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Dr. Feng says that in China math is regarded as an essential skill that everyone should try to develop at some level. Parents in China, he said, view math as parents in the United States do baseball, hockey and soccer.
"Here everybody plays baseball," Dr. Feng said. "Everybody throws a few balls, regardless of whether you're good at it, or not. If you don't play well, it's O.K. Everybody gives you a few claps. But people don't treat math that way."
A big part of the problem, Dr. Mertz and others say, is that while the young math Olympians are wooed by elite colleges like Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the country's leading hedge fund firms, they are mostly invisible to the public.
"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."
Ana Caraiani, 23 and a graduate student in math at Harvard, is a two-time Romanian International Olympiad gold medalist. "In Romania, math is not considered as something you need to be a nerd to do," Ms. Caraiani said. "Math is about being smart. It's about having intuition. It's about being creative."
Still, she says, it was not easy excelling in mathematics as a girl in Romania. In 2001, in fact, she was the first girl to make the country's Olympiad team in 25 years.
Related
International Mathematical Olympiad (imo-official.org)
Math Olympiad archives (unl.edu)
2008 Questions (unl.edu, PDF)
2008 Solutions (unl.edu, PDF)
Girls Math Olympiad 2007 (msri.org)
Op-Ed: Girls Math Olympiad 2008 blog (msri.org)
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Presidential Candidates' Positions on Science Issues
September 16, 2008
Presidential Candidates' Positions on Science Issues
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Both presidential candidates have now issued answers to a series of questions about science policy, Senator Barack Obama having done so in late August and Senator John McCain on Monday.
Their responses show clear areas of agreement on such apple-pie issues as ocean health, as well as sharp contrasts, as when Mr. Obama stresses the role of government and Mr. McCain that of business in addressing some of the nation's main challenges.
What follows is a digest of their answers, as posted by Science Debate 2008. The private group, in an effort endorsed by leading scientific organizations, has worked since November to get candidates to articulate positions on science policy. The full answers are at www.sciencedebate2008.com.
INNOVATION Mr. Obama calls for doubling federal budgets for basic research over a decade and supports broadband Internet connections "for all Americans." Mr. McCain stresses policies to provide "broad pools of capital, low taxes and incentives for research in America," as well as the streamlining of "burdensome regulations." Mr. McCain also said Congress, "under my guiding hand," adopted wireless policies that "spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and WiFi technology."
CLIMATE CHANGE Both candidates talk of human activities' warming the planet, with Mr. McCain saying that they "threaten disastrous changes" and Mr. Obama that "they are influencing the global climate." In terms of 1990 levels of carbon emissions, Mr. McCain would ultimately have the nation's output drop by 60 percent and Mr. Obama by 80 percent.
ENERGY Mr. Obama would increase federal investment in clean energy by $150 billion over a decade, including research on alternative fuels and conservation. Mr. McCain would speed the building of 45 new reactors and make government "an ally but not an arbiter" in developing alternative energy sources.
EDUCATION Both candidates advocate policies to develop a highly skilled workforce, partly with cash incentives for teachers. Mr. McCain would put $250 million into a program to help states expand online education.
NATIONAL SECURITY Mr. Obama would put his administration "on a path" to doubling federal spending on basic defense research. Mr. McCain is much less specific, speaking of ensuring "that America retains the edge."
GENETICS RESEARCH Both laud the potential benefits and point out the social dangers, with Mr. Obama saying he backed the recently passed Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Mr. McCain speaks of "a new green revolution" in food development.
STEM CELLS Both support federal financing for embryonic stem cell research.
SPACE Both candidates say they want to revitalize space exploration, with Mr. McCain calling for "new technologies to take Americans to the Moon, Mars and beyond." He also suggests possibly extending the space shuttle's life. Mr. Obama would re-establish a White House Space Council to coordinate all the nation's space efforts, including ones intended to aid understanding of climate change and expand "our reach into the heavens."
SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY Both implicitly fault President Bush, whom critics have assailed as weakening the federal advisory apparatus and politicizing scientific panels. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Presidential Candidates' Positions on Science Issues
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Both presidential candidates have now issued answers to a series of questions about science policy, Senator Barack Obama having done so in late August and Senator John McCain on Monday.
Their responses show clear areas of agreement on such apple-pie issues as ocean health, as well as sharp contrasts, as when Mr. Obama stresses the role of government and Mr. McCain that of business in addressing some of the nation's main challenges.
What follows is a digest of their answers, as posted by Science Debate 2008. The private group, in an effort endorsed by leading scientific organizations, has worked since November to get candidates to articulate positions on science policy. The full answers are at www.sciencedebate2008.com.
INNOVATION Mr. Obama calls for doubling federal budgets for basic research over a decade and supports broadband Internet connections "for all Americans." Mr. McCain stresses policies to provide "broad pools of capital, low taxes and incentives for research in America," as well as the streamlining of "burdensome regulations." Mr. McCain also said Congress, "under my guiding hand," adopted wireless policies that "spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and WiFi technology."
CLIMATE CHANGE Both candidates talk of human activities' warming the planet, with Mr. McCain saying that they "threaten disastrous changes" and Mr. Obama that "they are influencing the global climate." In terms of 1990 levels of carbon emissions, Mr. McCain would ultimately have the nation's output drop by 60 percent and Mr. Obama by 80 percent.
ENERGY Mr. Obama would increase federal investment in clean energy by $150 billion over a decade, including research on alternative fuels and conservation. Mr. McCain would speed the building of 45 new reactors and make government "an ally but not an arbiter" in developing alternative energy sources.
EDUCATION Both candidates advocate policies to develop a highly skilled workforce, partly with cash incentives for teachers. Mr. McCain would put $250 million into a program to help states expand online education.
NATIONAL SECURITY Mr. Obama would put his administration "on a path" to doubling federal spending on basic defense research. Mr. McCain is much less specific, speaking of ensuring "that America retains the edge."
GENETICS RESEARCH Both laud the potential benefits and point out the social dangers, with Mr. Obama saying he backed the recently passed Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Mr. McCain speaks of "a new green revolution" in food development.
STEM CELLS Both support federal financing for embryonic stem cell research.
SPACE Both candidates say they want to revitalize space exploration, with Mr. McCain calling for "new technologies to take Americans to the Moon, Mars and beyond." He also suggests possibly extending the space shuttle's life. Mr. Obama would re-establish a White House Space Council to coordinate all the nation's space efforts, including ones intended to aid understanding of climate change and expand "our reach into the heavens."
SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY Both implicitly fault President Bush, whom critics have assailed as weakening the federal advisory apparatus and politicizing scientific panels. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Monday, September 15, 2008
A Matter of Degrees
Preliminary results from a 7-year project to improve Ph.D. completion rates at U.S. and Canadian universities indicate that whites, men, and international students are more likely to complete their degrees than women, other ethnic groups, and domestic students. That's what experts have long suspected. But there are also some surprising differences, according to a report this month from the Council of Graduate Schools. African-Americans have the greatest variance in completion rates by discipline, for example, although the numbers are too small to be statistically significant. Although 60% complete life sciences degrees in a 10-year period (the same as for whites), only 37% do so in math and the physical sciences. The project, funded by Pfizer Inc. and the Ford Foundation, supports additional data analysis as well as a range of interventions by 29 institutions--from additional mentoring to increased research opportunities--aimed at helping more students complete their degrees.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol321/issue5895/s-scope.dtl
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol321/issue5895/s-scope.dtl
Thursday, September 11, 2008
AAUW Gains Special Consultative Status with U.N. Council
WASHINGTON – AAUW has gained special consultative status at the United Nations with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which initiates reports, makes recommendations, and promotes respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
For many years, AAUW has had a U.N. representative attending select meetings and monitoring issues affecting women and girls. The new designation allows AAUW to participate in international conferences, sign on to NGO statements, and share AAUW’s expertise.
“We closely follow a variety of international issues ranging from girls’ education to women’s economic security to human rights to women in peacekeeping,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “This new status will strengthen AAUW’s presence globally and provide us with greater opportunities to engage in U.N.-related activities and initiatives that break through barriers for women and girls.”
AAUW has a proud history in global affairs that includes awarding more than 2,200 international fellowships to women from more than 130 countries and partnering with leading international humanitarian organizations on initiatives to empower women.
Next year, AAUW will actively advocate for women at the 53rd session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.
“AAUW can now advocate more effectively and support policies aimed at strengthening gender equality, especially in the areas of the economic, social, political, and reproductive health rights of women and girls,” said Carolyn Donovan, AAUW’s U.N. representative.
Currently, AAUW is encouraging its branches to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 and to continue supporting ratification of the women’s rights treaty—the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
“AAUW members have long supported our efforts, from hosting international visitors to initiating forums and symposia on global issues pertinent to women and girls,” said Gloria L. Blackwell, AAUW’s director of fellowships, grants, and international programs. “We are thrilled that our role is expanding.”
For many years, AAUW has had a U.N. representative attending select meetings and monitoring issues affecting women and girls. The new designation allows AAUW to participate in international conferences, sign on to NGO statements, and share AAUW’s expertise.
“We closely follow a variety of international issues ranging from girls’ education to women’s economic security to human rights to women in peacekeeping,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “This new status will strengthen AAUW’s presence globally and provide us with greater opportunities to engage in U.N.-related activities and initiatives that break through barriers for women and girls.”
AAUW has a proud history in global affairs that includes awarding more than 2,200 international fellowships to women from more than 130 countries and partnering with leading international humanitarian organizations on initiatives to empower women.
Next year, AAUW will actively advocate for women at the 53rd session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.
“AAUW can now advocate more effectively and support policies aimed at strengthening gender equality, especially in the areas of the economic, social, political, and reproductive health rights of women and girls,” said Carolyn Donovan, AAUW’s U.N. representative.
Currently, AAUW is encouraging its branches to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 and to continue supporting ratification of the women’s rights treaty—the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
“AAUW members have long supported our efforts, from hosting international visitors to initiating forums and symposia on global issues pertinent to women and girls,” said Gloria L. Blackwell, AAUW’s director of fellowships, grants, and international programs. “We are thrilled that our role is expanding.”
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office
August 31, 2008
Preoccupations
Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office
By HANNAH SELIGSON
Hannah Seligson says perfectionism can stop women from taking risks.
I WAS born in 1982 - about 20 years after the women's rights movement began. Growing up in what many have called a post-feminist culture, I did not really experience institutional gender bias. "Girl power" was celebrated, and I felt that all doors were open to me.
When I was in college, the female students excelled academically, sometimes running laps around their male counterparts. Women easily ascended to school leadership positions and prestigious internships. In my graduating class (more than half of which was female) there was a feeling of camaraderie, a sense that we were helping each other succeed.
Then I left the egalitarianism of the classroom for the cubicle, and everything changed. The realization that the knowledge and skills acquired in school don't always translate at the office is something that all college graduates, men and women, must face. But for women, I have found, the adjustment tends to be much harder. It was certainly hard for me - I lasted only nine months in my first job out of college.
Inspired by my own rocky entrance into the work world, I decided to interview other young women and discovered that many of them, like me, were facing a steep workplace learning curve. What was it, I wondered, that was making our first career steps so wobbly when we had been so accomplished and self-assured in school?
Every workplace is different, but certain patterns began to emerge. I experienced and heard of instances when some women, instead of helping a new female colleague, tried to undermine her. Rather than giving "the new girl" the tools to succeed, they might try to sabotage her advancement.
I saw some men, raised in a different era, who refused to take young women seriously, focused on their appearance and gave them the least desirable assignments. Even in this day and age, I saw women becoming "assistant-ized"- saddled with all the coffee runs and photocopying.
Some workplaces are more sexist than others. A woman should never accept a job offer without first finding out whether the odds are already stacked against her. This background check will assess how a potential employer treats its female employees, how many women are in leadership positions and whether there is a history of pay discrimination or sexual harassment.
But outside forces are only part of the story. I have also seen young women - myself included - getting in the way of their own success. I have found that we need to build a new arsenal of skills to mitigate some of our more "feminine" tendencies. Having lived in a cocoon of equality in college, we may have neglected these vital, real-world skills.
In my own case, I realized that I needed to develop a thick skin, feel comfortable promoting myself, learn how to negotiate, stop being a perfectionist and create a professional network - abilities that men are just more likely to have already.
The more traditionally "feminine" trait of sensitivity, while often appreciated, is not always an asset in the work world. I have spent too much time being rattled by terse e-mail from editors, agents who have told me that I'd never get a book deal, and bosses who have berated me as not being "detail-oriented." I think that in order to break through any kind of glass ceiling, or simply to get through the day, you have to become impervious to the daily gruffness that's a part of any job.
I used to think that perfection was the pathway to success. Not so, according to women I have interviewed who have reached the apex of their professions. Rather, it can lead to paralysis. Women, I have found, can let perfectionism stop them from speaking up or taking risks. For men, especially if they are thick-skinned, the thought of someone telling them "no" tends not to be viewed as earth-shattering.
One tactic I've found useful in getting over the perfectionist tendency is a shock therapy called soliciting feedback. Not only does it demystify what your boss thinks about you, but it also gives you the data to become a more valuable employee.
The other dose of shock therapy I've undergone is reprogramming my brain to think that, yes, girls do brag. I've indoctrinated myself with the idea that my job is a two-part process. One part is actually doing the work and the second part is talking about it, preferably in bottom-line terms.
The old-boys' club proves that men have long known that a professional network is imperative to success. Women don't have as much of a tradition of business networking ("Do you want to go grab a beer?" doesn't quite roll off our tongues) and, understandably, they may feel awkward or clueless about how to do it.
I can tell you that it doesn't work to go up to someone and say, "Will you be my mentor?" That's the workplace equivalent of "Will you be my boyfriend?" A more organic approach - saying something like, "Can I pick your brain about some ways to transition out of my entry-level position in the next year?" - has been much more effective for me.
Young women also need to learn how to speak salary, a language that many men already seem to know. Coming into the work force, I thought that, just as my professor had given me the grade I deserved on my political science midterm, my company would pay me what I "deserved."
RECENTLY I had a conversation with a male friend, a reporter in his mid-20s, about how hard it is to ask for money and negotiate for raises. He looked puzzled that I'd have an aversion to something that he does with ease, telling me: "When I want a raise, I just ask for it. And even if they say no, I'll keep asking for it."
The American Association of University Women found that men who are a year out of college make 20 percent more in weekly pay than their female co-workers do. Why? Because my friend and scores of other young men understand the central tenet of a bigger paycheck: ask and you shall receive.
The pay disparity speaks to a larger issue that women, coming directly out of the colleges that nurtured and rewarded them and gave them every advantage, may have trouble grasping. For me, it was crystallized in a comment made to me by Myra Hart, a retired senior faculty member at Harvard Business School who studies women as entrepreneurs:
"By and large women believe that
the workplace is a meritocracy, and it isn't."
Hannah Seligson, a freelance journalist, is the author of "New Girl on the Job: Advice From the Trenches" (Citadel Press).
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Preoccupations
Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office
By HANNAH SELIGSON
Hannah Seligson says perfectionism can stop women from taking risks.
I WAS born in 1982 - about 20 years after the women's rights movement began. Growing up in what many have called a post-feminist culture, I did not really experience institutional gender bias. "Girl power" was celebrated, and I felt that all doors were open to me.
When I was in college, the female students excelled academically, sometimes running laps around their male counterparts. Women easily ascended to school leadership positions and prestigious internships. In my graduating class (more than half of which was female) there was a feeling of camaraderie, a sense that we were helping each other succeed.
Then I left the egalitarianism of the classroom for the cubicle, and everything changed. The realization that the knowledge and skills acquired in school don't always translate at the office is something that all college graduates, men and women, must face. But for women, I have found, the adjustment tends to be much harder. It was certainly hard for me - I lasted only nine months in my first job out of college.
Inspired by my own rocky entrance into the work world, I decided to interview other young women and discovered that many of them, like me, were facing a steep workplace learning curve. What was it, I wondered, that was making our first career steps so wobbly when we had been so accomplished and self-assured in school?
Every workplace is different, but certain patterns began to emerge. I experienced and heard of instances when some women, instead of helping a new female colleague, tried to undermine her. Rather than giving "the new girl" the tools to succeed, they might try to sabotage her advancement.
I saw some men, raised in a different era, who refused to take young women seriously, focused on their appearance and gave them the least desirable assignments. Even in this day and age, I saw women becoming "assistant-ized"- saddled with all the coffee runs and photocopying.
Some workplaces are more sexist than others. A woman should never accept a job offer without first finding out whether the odds are already stacked against her. This background check will assess how a potential employer treats its female employees, how many women are in leadership positions and whether there is a history of pay discrimination or sexual harassment.
But outside forces are only part of the story. I have also seen young women - myself included - getting in the way of their own success. I have found that we need to build a new arsenal of skills to mitigate some of our more "feminine" tendencies. Having lived in a cocoon of equality in college, we may have neglected these vital, real-world skills.
In my own case, I realized that I needed to develop a thick skin, feel comfortable promoting myself, learn how to negotiate, stop being a perfectionist and create a professional network - abilities that men are just more likely to have already.
The more traditionally "feminine" trait of sensitivity, while often appreciated, is not always an asset in the work world. I have spent too much time being rattled by terse e-mail from editors, agents who have told me that I'd never get a book deal, and bosses who have berated me as not being "detail-oriented." I think that in order to break through any kind of glass ceiling, or simply to get through the day, you have to become impervious to the daily gruffness that's a part of any job.
I used to think that perfection was the pathway to success. Not so, according to women I have interviewed who have reached the apex of their professions. Rather, it can lead to paralysis. Women, I have found, can let perfectionism stop them from speaking up or taking risks. For men, especially if they are thick-skinned, the thought of someone telling them "no" tends not to be viewed as earth-shattering.
One tactic I've found useful in getting over the perfectionist tendency is a shock therapy called soliciting feedback. Not only does it demystify what your boss thinks about you, but it also gives you the data to become a more valuable employee.
The other dose of shock therapy I've undergone is reprogramming my brain to think that, yes, girls do brag. I've indoctrinated myself with the idea that my job is a two-part process. One part is actually doing the work and the second part is talking about it, preferably in bottom-line terms.
The old-boys' club proves that men have long known that a professional network is imperative to success. Women don't have as much of a tradition of business networking ("Do you want to go grab a beer?" doesn't quite roll off our tongues) and, understandably, they may feel awkward or clueless about how to do it.
I can tell you that it doesn't work to go up to someone and say, "Will you be my mentor?" That's the workplace equivalent of "Will you be my boyfriend?" A more organic approach - saying something like, "Can I pick your brain about some ways to transition out of my entry-level position in the next year?" - has been much more effective for me.
Young women also need to learn how to speak salary, a language that many men already seem to know. Coming into the work force, I thought that, just as my professor had given me the grade I deserved on my political science midterm, my company would pay me what I "deserved."
RECENTLY I had a conversation with a male friend, a reporter in his mid-20s, about how hard it is to ask for money and negotiate for raises. He looked puzzled that I'd have an aversion to something that he does with ease, telling me: "When I want a raise, I just ask for it. And even if they say no, I'll keep asking for it."
The American Association of University Women found that men who are a year out of college make 20 percent more in weekly pay than their female co-workers do. Why? Because my friend and scores of other young men understand the central tenet of a bigger paycheck: ask and you shall receive.
The pay disparity speaks to a larger issue that women, coming directly out of the colleges that nurtured and rewarded them and gave them every advantage, may have trouble grasping. For me, it was crystallized in a comment made to me by Myra Hart, a retired senior faculty member at Harvard Business School who studies women as entrepreneurs:
"By and large women believe that
the workplace is a meritocracy, and it isn't."
Hannah Seligson, a freelance journalist, is the author of "New Girl on the Job: Advice From the Trenches" (Citadel Press).
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Leadership Opportunities for Students
Dear AAUW College/University Partner Representative:
Please share the following leadership opportunity and attached announcement with students, administrators, and relevant faculty, such as staff at women’s and career centers, at your institution.
AAUW is now accepting applications for its Student Advisory Council (SAC) for the academic year 2008-09.
With AAUW’s focus on breaking down the economic and educational barriers women and girls face, SAC members provide essential firsthand accounts of student needs and ideas for combating sex discrimination to AAUW staff through monthly conference calls.
SAC members also have many opportunities to develop as leaders and gain valuable résumé-building experience. For example, students will develop women’s equity events on their campuses and in their communities and assist in planning the annual National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, held each June in Washington, D.C. At the conference, student advisers play essential roles in helping lead programs, introduce speakers, encourage networking among attendees, and ensure that the conference runs smoothly.
Applicants must be current students at two- or four-year accredited institutions and have at least a 2.75 GPA, leadership experience, an interest in women’s issues, and the ability to fulfill the necessary time commitment.
Applications must be submitted to lti@aauw.org by September 26, 2008. Complete details and application materials are available online.
Contact lti@aauw.org or 202/785-7719 for more information.
Sincerely,
Linda D. Hallman, CAE
AAUW Executive Director
Please share the following leadership opportunity and attached announcement with students, administrators, and relevant faculty, such as staff at women’s and career centers, at your institution.
AAUW is now accepting applications for its Student Advisory Council (SAC) for the academic year 2008-09.
With AAUW’s focus on breaking down the economic and educational barriers women and girls face, SAC members provide essential firsthand accounts of student needs and ideas for combating sex discrimination to AAUW staff through monthly conference calls.
SAC members also have many opportunities to develop as leaders and gain valuable résumé-building experience. For example, students will develop women’s equity events on their campuses and in their communities and assist in planning the annual National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, held each June in Washington, D.C. At the conference, student advisers play essential roles in helping lead programs, introduce speakers, encourage networking among attendees, and ensure that the conference runs smoothly.
Applicants must be current students at two- or four-year accredited institutions and have at least a 2.75 GPA, leadership experience, an interest in women’s issues, and the ability to fulfill the necessary time commitment.
Applications must be submitted to lti@aauw.org by September 26, 2008. Complete details and application materials are available online.
Contact lti@aauw.org or 202/785-7719 for more information.
Sincerely,
Linda D. Hallman, CAE
AAUW Executive Director
Friday, August 8, 2008
Olivia Judson: A Natural Selection
July 22, 2008, 7:44 pm
A Natural Selection
(The fourth part in a series celebrating Charles Darwin.)
Last week, I discussed how evolutionary biology has changed since 1859, the year Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species.” But the subject of evolution isn’t the only thing that’s changed since then. There’s been plenty of actual evolution, too. For although we tend to think of evolutionary change as being something that only takes place over the course of millions of years, it isn’t. It’s going on here, now, all around us. So, this week, I thought I’d round up some examples of recent evolutionary change in nature. (What do I mean by recent? Within the last 40 years.)
I’m not intending to be comprehensive — that would take a book or two. Instead, I want to sketch a few examples of natural selection that have caught my fancy, and through them consider different aspects of evolutionary change, and what it takes to show it.
Galápagos finches. No discussion of evolution in nature would be complete without mention of the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.
Every year since 1973, large numbers of medium ground finches (Geospiza fortis) living on the island of Daphne Major have been marked, weighed and measured, and so have their chicks. In these finches, survival largely depends on the ability to open seeds; this depends on beak size. Bigger beaks allow the opening of larger seeds. How many seeds there are depends on the weather; some years seeds of all sizes are abundant, and the finches thrive. In other years, most seeds are scarce, and many birds die. Large-scale death affects the genetic make-up of the population, because both beak size and body size has a large genetic component. If all the birds with smaller than average beaks die in a given year, they take their genes with them.
Over the course of 30 years, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly. But they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. Instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next.
As the abundance of different seeds fluctuated, so too did the beak sizes. One year, larger beaks were more successful; then it was smaller beaks. Over time, the average shape of the beak kept shifting, but it did so in an unpredictable, erratic sort of way, like a drunk man staggering about. Thus, some of the most dramatic changes were later reversed, and if beaks had only been measured at the beginning and at the end of the thirty years, the total amount of evolutionary change would have been underestimated. (Beak size has continued to evolve: the arrival on the island of a competitor for large seeds has subsequently favored small beak sizes in Geospiza fortis. Many individuals with larger beaks starved to death.)
Field mustard. Between 2000 and 2004, southern California had a severe drought. For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing. Since flowering time has a large genetic component, a drought — by favoring plants that flower earlier — could cause an evolutionary shift towards early flowering.
Has it?
Yes. The beauty of plants is that they make seeds — small packets of genes that can be stored for a period. This means that the genes of the past can, in principle, be compared directly with the genes of today. And an experiment in which field mustard plants grown from seeds collected in 1997 and in 2004 were planted together, under controlled conditions, showed clear differences in flowering times: the plants from 2004 flowered significantly earlier.
Moreover, in both years, seeds were collected from two sites, one where the soil is sandy and doesn’t hold water well, and the other where the soil stays wet for longer. As you’d expect, plants from the dry site showed a more dramatic shift than plants from the wet site. In the course of just 7 years, then, natural selection caused the plants to evolve an earlier flowering time.
Croatian lizards. In 1971, five pairs of adult wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were brought to the tiny Croatian island of Pod Mrčaru from the nearby island of Pod Kopište. These five pairs have since given rise to a thriving lizard population — and one that has developed some interesting differences from the lizards that live on Kopište.
Lizards on Mrčaru now have larger heads and stronger bites than those living on Kopište, and they eat far more in the way of leaves and other plant material. Whereas the diet of native Kopište lizards is only about 7 percent plant matter, Mrčaru lizards are much more prone to a vegetarian habit. In spring, their diet is about 34 percent from plants; in summer that almost doubles, to 61 percent.
Plants are hard for animals to digest, and most plant-eaters rely on micro-organisms to help them. They also, typically, have complicated stomachs — think of the fermentation chambers in a cow, or the enlarged crop of that strange leaf-eating bird, the hoatzin. Intriguingly, the Mrčaru lizards appear to have evolved something similar. Their stomachs now have cecal valves, which divide the stomach into compartments, allowing for slower digestion and fermentation. Cecal valves are rare among lizards and snakes: fewer than 1 percent of species have them. At the same time, the Mrčaru lizards have acquired some novel micro-organisms in their guts (but whether these are helping break down plant fibers, or are some sort of sinister parasite, remains to be seen).
This study is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across. It suggests that arrival in a new environment can result in dramatic changes to an organism within fewer than 40 lifetimes. But so far, the basis of these various changes remains unknown: there’s an outside possibility that they are induced by leaf eating, and are thus due to the environment rather than genetics. (This seems unlikely — even lizards that are just hatched, and haven’t had a chance to do much eating, have the valves. But without doing the genetics, we can’t be sure; until that has been looked at, the changes cannot definitely be attributed to natural selection.) For now, natural selection for efficient plant-eating is the main suspect for this whole suite of changes, but the case is not yet closed.
Other examples. I don’t have space to go into other examples in detail, but to give a sense of what else is out there, here’s a partial list.
The fruit fly Drosophila subobscura has been evolving bigger wings in higher latitudes in North and South America; mosquitoes that live in pitcher plants hunker down for the winter later in the year than they used to; in a forest in southern England, great tits have been shrinking (great tits are songbirds).
Double the time frame to the past 80 years, and I’d have to add many more; of these, my favorite is the decline in head size of Australian frog-eating snakes in response to the arrival of poisonous toads in 1935 (a smaller head makes it harder to eat a deadly toad). And I haven’t even begun to mention the countless examples of pests that have evolved resistance to pesticides and bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics, nor the thousands of laboratory experiments showing evolution in the simple environments of test tubes and petri dishes. Also omitted: several examples of new species that are in the process of forming (I want to look at these in a future column).
In short, evolution never takes a vacation: it’s going on all the time.
Yet we tend not to notice it. Why? The finches can help us here. That study tells us two things. First, from one year to the next, even the most dramatic changes are, to our eyes, small — which is to say, you have to measure them to detect them. The reason is that although birds differ from one another in their abilities to handle the various seeds, the differences are subtle. It’s not as if one bird has a beak 100 times mightier than another’s. When you add to this the tendency of natural selection to jerk around, it’s no surprise that we often don’t notice evolution as it happens. It also sheds light on why changes in the fossil record often appear to be slow: these studies show that change can be continual without really getting far from the starting point. Second, getting data as good as that is hard work. Most datasets are not so complete or robust.
At least one other lesson can be drawn from all these studies. Natural selection has its most dramatic effects when an organism’s environment is perturbed in some sustained way — prolonged droughts, the arrival of species that compete for food, warmer winters, the use of pesticides. If we humans continue to increase our impact on the globe, we’re likely to see lots more evolution. And soon.
**********
NOTES:
For beak size in Galápagos finches, see Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2002. “Unpredictable evolution in a 30-year study of Darwin’s finches.” Science 296: 707-711 and Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2006. “Evolution of character displacement in Darwin’s finches.” Science 313: 224-226. For evolution of flowering time in field mustard, and for its genetic basis, see Franks, S. J., Sim, S. and Weis, A. E. 2007. “Rapid evolution of flowering time by an annual plant in response to a climate fluctuation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 1278-1282. For the evolution of cecal valves in Croatian lizards, see Herrel, A. et al 2008. “Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105: 4792-4795.
For wing size in fruit flies, see Huey, R. B. et al 2000. “Rapid evolution of a geographic cline in size in an introduced fly.” Science 287: 308-309 and Gilchrist, G. W. et al 2004. “A time series of evolution in action: a latitudinal cline in wing size in South American Drosophila subobscura.” Evolution 58: 768-780. For hunkering down time in mosquitoes, see Bradshaw, W. E. and Holzapfel, C. M. 2001. “Genetic shift in photoperiodic response correlated with global warming.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 14509-14511. For body size in great tits, see Garant, D. et al 2005. “Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population.” Nature 433: 60-65. For head size in Australian snakes, see Phillips, B. L. and Shine, R. 2004. “Adapting to an invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 17150-17155.
Many thanks to Dan Haydon, Gideon Lichfield and Jonathan Swire for insights, comments and suggestions.
A Natural Selection
(The fourth part in a series celebrating Charles Darwin.)
Last week, I discussed how evolutionary biology has changed since 1859, the year Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species.” But the subject of evolution isn’t the only thing that’s changed since then. There’s been plenty of actual evolution, too. For although we tend to think of evolutionary change as being something that only takes place over the course of millions of years, it isn’t. It’s going on here, now, all around us. So, this week, I thought I’d round up some examples of recent evolutionary change in nature. (What do I mean by recent? Within the last 40 years.)
I’m not intending to be comprehensive — that would take a book or two. Instead, I want to sketch a few examples of natural selection that have caught my fancy, and through them consider different aspects of evolutionary change, and what it takes to show it.
Galápagos finches. No discussion of evolution in nature would be complete without mention of the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.
Every year since 1973, large numbers of medium ground finches (Geospiza fortis) living on the island of Daphne Major have been marked, weighed and measured, and so have their chicks. In these finches, survival largely depends on the ability to open seeds; this depends on beak size. Bigger beaks allow the opening of larger seeds. How many seeds there are depends on the weather; some years seeds of all sizes are abundant, and the finches thrive. In other years, most seeds are scarce, and many birds die. Large-scale death affects the genetic make-up of the population, because both beak size and body size has a large genetic component. If all the birds with smaller than average beaks die in a given year, they take their genes with them.
Over the course of 30 years, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly. But they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. Instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next.
As the abundance of different seeds fluctuated, so too did the beak sizes. One year, larger beaks were more successful; then it was smaller beaks. Over time, the average shape of the beak kept shifting, but it did so in an unpredictable, erratic sort of way, like a drunk man staggering about. Thus, some of the most dramatic changes were later reversed, and if beaks had only been measured at the beginning and at the end of the thirty years, the total amount of evolutionary change would have been underestimated. (Beak size has continued to evolve: the arrival on the island of a competitor for large seeds has subsequently favored small beak sizes in Geospiza fortis. Many individuals with larger beaks starved to death.)
Field mustard. Between 2000 and 2004, southern California had a severe drought. For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing. Since flowering time has a large genetic component, a drought — by favoring plants that flower earlier — could cause an evolutionary shift towards early flowering.
Has it?
Yes. The beauty of plants is that they make seeds — small packets of genes that can be stored for a period. This means that the genes of the past can, in principle, be compared directly with the genes of today. And an experiment in which field mustard plants grown from seeds collected in 1997 and in 2004 were planted together, under controlled conditions, showed clear differences in flowering times: the plants from 2004 flowered significantly earlier.
Moreover, in both years, seeds were collected from two sites, one where the soil is sandy and doesn’t hold water well, and the other where the soil stays wet for longer. As you’d expect, plants from the dry site showed a more dramatic shift than plants from the wet site. In the course of just 7 years, then, natural selection caused the plants to evolve an earlier flowering time.
Croatian lizards. In 1971, five pairs of adult wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were brought to the tiny Croatian island of Pod Mrčaru from the nearby island of Pod Kopište. These five pairs have since given rise to a thriving lizard population — and one that has developed some interesting differences from the lizards that live on Kopište.
Lizards on Mrčaru now have larger heads and stronger bites than those living on Kopište, and they eat far more in the way of leaves and other plant material. Whereas the diet of native Kopište lizards is only about 7 percent plant matter, Mrčaru lizards are much more prone to a vegetarian habit. In spring, their diet is about 34 percent from plants; in summer that almost doubles, to 61 percent.
Plants are hard for animals to digest, and most plant-eaters rely on micro-organisms to help them. They also, typically, have complicated stomachs — think of the fermentation chambers in a cow, or the enlarged crop of that strange leaf-eating bird, the hoatzin. Intriguingly, the Mrčaru lizards appear to have evolved something similar. Their stomachs now have cecal valves, which divide the stomach into compartments, allowing for slower digestion and fermentation. Cecal valves are rare among lizards and snakes: fewer than 1 percent of species have them. At the same time, the Mrčaru lizards have acquired some novel micro-organisms in their guts (but whether these are helping break down plant fibers, or are some sort of sinister parasite, remains to be seen).
This study is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across. It suggests that arrival in a new environment can result in dramatic changes to an organism within fewer than 40 lifetimes. But so far, the basis of these various changes remains unknown: there’s an outside possibility that they are induced by leaf eating, and are thus due to the environment rather than genetics. (This seems unlikely — even lizards that are just hatched, and haven’t had a chance to do much eating, have the valves. But without doing the genetics, we can’t be sure; until that has been looked at, the changes cannot definitely be attributed to natural selection.) For now, natural selection for efficient plant-eating is the main suspect for this whole suite of changes, but the case is not yet closed.
Other examples. I don’t have space to go into other examples in detail, but to give a sense of what else is out there, here’s a partial list.
The fruit fly Drosophila subobscura has been evolving bigger wings in higher latitudes in North and South America; mosquitoes that live in pitcher plants hunker down for the winter later in the year than they used to; in a forest in southern England, great tits have been shrinking (great tits are songbirds).
Double the time frame to the past 80 years, and I’d have to add many more; of these, my favorite is the decline in head size of Australian frog-eating snakes in response to the arrival of poisonous toads in 1935 (a smaller head makes it harder to eat a deadly toad). And I haven’t even begun to mention the countless examples of pests that have evolved resistance to pesticides and bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics, nor the thousands of laboratory experiments showing evolution in the simple environments of test tubes and petri dishes. Also omitted: several examples of new species that are in the process of forming (I want to look at these in a future column).
In short, evolution never takes a vacation: it’s going on all the time.
Yet we tend not to notice it. Why? The finches can help us here. That study tells us two things. First, from one year to the next, even the most dramatic changes are, to our eyes, small — which is to say, you have to measure them to detect them. The reason is that although birds differ from one another in their abilities to handle the various seeds, the differences are subtle. It’s not as if one bird has a beak 100 times mightier than another’s. When you add to this the tendency of natural selection to jerk around, it’s no surprise that we often don’t notice evolution as it happens. It also sheds light on why changes in the fossil record often appear to be slow: these studies show that change can be continual without really getting far from the starting point. Second, getting data as good as that is hard work. Most datasets are not so complete or robust.
At least one other lesson can be drawn from all these studies. Natural selection has its most dramatic effects when an organism’s environment is perturbed in some sustained way — prolonged droughts, the arrival of species that compete for food, warmer winters, the use of pesticides. If we humans continue to increase our impact on the globe, we’re likely to see lots more evolution. And soon.
**********
NOTES:
For beak size in Galápagos finches, see Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2002. “Unpredictable evolution in a 30-year study of Darwin’s finches.” Science 296: 707-711 and Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2006. “Evolution of character displacement in Darwin’s finches.” Science 313: 224-226. For evolution of flowering time in field mustard, and for its genetic basis, see Franks, S. J., Sim, S. and Weis, A. E. 2007. “Rapid evolution of flowering time by an annual plant in response to a climate fluctuation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 1278-1282. For the evolution of cecal valves in Croatian lizards, see Herrel, A. et al 2008. “Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105: 4792-4795.
For wing size in fruit flies, see Huey, R. B. et al 2000. “Rapid evolution of a geographic cline in size in an introduced fly.” Science 287: 308-309 and Gilchrist, G. W. et al 2004. “A time series of evolution in action: a latitudinal cline in wing size in South American Drosophila subobscura.” Evolution 58: 768-780. For hunkering down time in mosquitoes, see Bradshaw, W. E. and Holzapfel, C. M. 2001. “Genetic shift in photoperiodic response correlated with global warming.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 14509-14511. For body size in great tits, see Garant, D. et al 2005. “Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population.” Nature 433: 60-65. For head size in Australian snakes, see Phillips, B. L. and Shine, R. 2004. “Adapting to an invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 17150-17155.
Many thanks to Dan Haydon, Gideon Lichfield and Jonathan Swire for insights, comments and suggestions.
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