Wednesday, February 25, 2009

In Science and Technology, Efforts to Lure Women Back

It will come as no surprise that many career re-entry programs, designed to help at-home mothers return to the work force, are disappearing, victims of hard times among the Wall Street firms and banks that led the so-called on-ramping trend.

But a new bright spot is emerging. Small, innovative return-to-work programs are springing up in other sectors -- specifically in science, engineering and technology. Prospects for long-term job growth in these fields are relatively good, and many employers expect a talent shortage, partly because of high quit rates among experienced women.
Honeywell, General Electric, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and even the British government have all launched programs to provide women scientists, engineers and technicians the tools they need to jump-start stalled careers. Some of the new programs provide only training, coaching, networking and referrals, while others offer actual jobs with lower return-to-work barriers through special training or mentoring.
"Even in this troubled labor market, their prospects are good," says Carol Fishman Cohen, a career re-entry consultant, of women in these fields. Government contractors, engineering-related businesses and other employers that stand to benefit from the government's economic-stimulus plan, in particular, are faring relatively well, adds Ms. Cohen, co-founder of iRelaunch.com, a Web site for professionals, employers and universities.
Rachelle Berk, Northborough, Mass., a nuclear engineer and a student in a "Career Reengineering" retraining program offered by MIT, is among those who stand to gain. The MIT program, now in its third year, is instilling the confidence she needs to return to work after four years at home with her children, now 3 and 6, says Ms. Berk, who hopes to find work developing sustainable-energy sources. "It was exactly what I needed," she says of the MIT program. Dawna Levenson, director of the 10-month program, sees enrollment expanding to 24 as early as next fall, up from 10 currently.
The new efforts aim to counteract a "brain drain" caused by the exodus of large numbers of women from these fields in the prime of their careers. While 41% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technicians in lower-tier jobs are female, more than half eventually quit midcareer, based on research by the Center for Work-Life Policy's Sylvia Hewlett and others, published last year in the Harvard Business Review. Women in these fields face isolation, extreme job pressures and long hours; they often become most discouraged about 10 years into their careers -- just as family pressures also tend to intensify.

Still, after years at home, many women scientists and engineers yearn to return to research and development. Last November, Honeywell launched a hiring program with an extensive training and mentoring component for engineers who have been out of the work force, in partnership with the Society of Women Engineers. The company has received hundreds of resumes and plans to begin hiring soon, says Lee Woodward, a vice president. Among the applicants: Karen English, an Alpharetta, Ga., product-development scientist. After six years at home with her daughter, now 12, Ms. English is excited about her prospects; "everything looks possible," she says.
BBN Technologies, a 700-employee research concern in Cambridge, Mass., is stepping up recruiting efforts to lure at-home professionals back to work, with plans to start holding luncheons for ex-employees this year, says Susan Wuellner, vice president, human resources. The networking seems to be working: Barbara MacKay, an engineer who rejoined BBN in 2007 after five years at home, now is recruiting another at-home mom to the company, Ms. MacKay says.
On a larger scale, IBM offers an extended-leave program that enabled Tami Garneau, a software product manager in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to return to work there amid the economic gloom of last October, after an extended leave with her two children.
Despite the sagging economy, "IBM was fully receptive," allowing her to work from home, she says. "That transition back in was great."
Internationally, General Electric has launched a program called Restart in its Bangalore, India, research center, offering flexible work and other incentives to lure female technologists back to work after having children, a spokesman says. And the British government is funding a 12-week on-ramping program in Bradford, England, and recently began handing out re-training grants, says Annette Williams, director.
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Men and Mothering

February 24, 2009
BALANCING ACT
Men and Mothering
University policies and academic culture continue to discourage men from being active parents

By MARY ANN MASON
It's no secret that more than 40 years after Title VII guaranteed them equal treatment in the workplace, women with children still go home from work and begin their second shift. Our study of faculty members at the University of California revealed that mothers, on average, worked 95 hours a week, with 43 percent of those hours devoted to child care and housework and the rest to professional activities. Fathers worked 80 hours a week, with only 31 percent devoted to their domestic duties.
Some might dismiss that as a phenomenon of an older generation that is on the wane. But the 8,000 doctoral students we surveyed at the university revealed the same pattern — except they worked longer hours. Graduate students who were mothers, on average, worked 101 hours a week and spent about half of that time on child care and housework. Student fathers worked 89 hours, with 37 percent spent on home duties.
Before we point fingers at fathers, let's acknowledge that they are, in fact, contributing a significant number of hours to child care and housework. Let's also acknowledge the social and institutional barriers that may prevent them from doing more. Consider the following comment from a scientist who responded to my column, "Do Babies Matter in Science?" (The Chronicle, October 17, 2008):
"For our daughter's (a special-needs child) first couple of years," he wrote, "I took her to physical therapy three times a week, losing about seven hours of work time. I was pre-tenure at that point. Everyone assumed that my wife (also a tenure-track scientist) was the primary caregiver, including the male chair and female dean and provost, so she was offered special consideration on scheduling classes and such. She had to tell them that I was the primary caregiver with respect to physical therapy, since our daughter wanted to nurse, not work, when my wife was there. No special scheduling was then offered to me. I think their minds simply couldn't get around the idea of a man being the primary caregiver."
Andrea Doucet, in her thoughtful book, Do Men Mother? Fathering, Care, and Domestic Responsibility, examines the lives of more than 100 fathers, mostly single ones, who consider themselves the primary parent. Doucet found that men do take over the primary role of protective care when there is no mother, but that their overall style of nurturing tends to emphasize fun, playfulness, and physical activity, while mothers tend toward cuddling, holding, and emotional sympathy.
The book shows it was not easy for those single fathers because, just as in the scientist's case, American society is not always willing to accept them as the primary caregivers. Particularly tricky is being accepted by other parents in social situations and at schools. As one father commented in the book, "There's a lot of networks for moms and there isn't a network for guys, and I think a huge part of that is it isn't easy for a guy. I've been out to the library, and I've seen a guy pushing a baby carriage. But it's just not so easy for a guy to go up to another guy and say, 'Hey, how old is she? Do you want to be friends?'"
Our colleges and universities are not always welcoming to men as active parents, either. Among the members of the Association of American Universities (the 62 top-ranked research institutions), only a handful offer paid parental leave to fathers after their children are born — the majority offer it to mothers — and none offer graduate-student fathers paid parental leave (a few offer it to mothers).
Over the years I have sat around many conference tables arguing with colleagues about whether new fathers should be allowed to stop the tenure clock, or should receive special accommodations in teaching and other work. The opposition is always the same: "Men won't use the time for parenting; they'll use it to write another book or publish more articles." Fathers, for their part, even if they are full participants in parenting, don't often use parental accommodations, because, like many mothers, they fear they will be considered less committed by their institutions.
Father as breadwinner is a deeply held cultural stereotype within the society and the university; despite many instances in which women, particularly professional women, earn salaries larger than their husbands'. In Doucet's study, the married fathers who had chosen to be stay-at-home parents included those whose wives made a much higher salary and those in couples who had decided that the father was the better choice for stay-at-home parent. In virtually all of those cases, the father returned to work within three years. Most of them attributed it to the social stigma they had experienced by not being the breadwinner.
In the university world, we've found that women are more likely than men to marry a fellow student. Bargains are struck about whose career takes precedence and who will earn more money. They may cling to the ideal of equality and agree to take turns when it comes time to move careers — his choice now, hers later. The possibility of starting a family can play an important part in that bargaining process. But our research shows that, ultimately, the woman is likelier to defer to her partner's career — a decision that the culture applauds.
A common explanation for a couple's decision to have the father be the main breadwinner and the mother to work mainly at home is that fathers can't nurse an infant. Ironically, as women have moved into the workplace, breast-feeding has become not just popular but a requirement of good motherhood. In an article in the February 19 issue of The New Yorker called "Baby Food," Jill Lepore chronicles the long, strange story of breast-feeding through history. Over the past two centuries, it has gone in and out of fashion every few generations. As recently as the 1950s in this country — my mother's generation — formula milk was considered far more healthy for an infant. The women who nursed their babies were poor ones who could not afford formula.
Whatever the merits of breast-feeding, it imposes a short leash on mother and infant. An adaptive consequence for modern women in the workplace, according to Lepore, has been an exploding industry of breast pumps: "Today, breast pumps are such a ubiquitous personal accessory that they're more like cellphones than like catheters."
Universities rarely provide on-campus infant-care centers, or lactation rooms for nursing and pumping, as many progressive corporations now do. Such accommodations would benefit both academic parents and would allow fathers to share more equally in the early months, when caretaking patterns are often set.
If we want fathers to become equal participants in child raising, we must encourage them to do so. Family-friendly policies must include fathers as well as mothers. Cultural change occurs with participation; only then will the strongly held gender stereotypes against men as committed caregivers dissipate. In Sweden the government changed its generous 18-month parental-leave policy to insist that fathers take at least six months of the total; otherwise the leave is reduced to 12 months. The intention was not to save money but to make fatherly participation in raising children an accepted norm. And as it becomes the norm, the culture will no longer look upon family-friendly policies as a "mommy trap."
Mary Ann Mason is a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic & Family Security and the author (with her daughter, Eve Ekman), of Mothers on the Fast Track. She writes regularly on work and family issues for our Balancing Act column and invites readers to send in questions or personal concerns about those issues. 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.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Swimming Against the Tide

African American Girls and Science Education
Sandra L. Hanson

"Swimming Against the Tide" addresses a crucial lacunae in the body of literature on women in science, particularly women of color. This is a ‘new’ and innovative approach, since very few book publications on women in science have addressed the subject of African American women in science and from an age specific and culturally relevant perspective. Theoretically and methodologically strong, this is an example of feminist scholarship at its best." —Josephine Beoku-Betts, Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology, Florida Atlantic University

“They looked at us like we were not supposed to be scientists,” says one young African American girl, describing one openly hostile reaction she encountered in the classroom. In this significant study, Sandra Hanson explains that although many young minority girls are interested in science, the racism and sexism in the field discourage them from pursuing it after high school. Those girls that remain highly motivated to continue studying science must “swim against the tide.”
Hanson examines the experiences of African American girls in science education using multiple methods of quantitative and qualitative research, including a web survey and vignette techniques. She understands the complex interaction between race and gender in the science domain and, using a multicultural and feminist framework of analysis, addresses the role of agency and resistance that encourages and sustains interest in science in African American families and communities.