A Woman's Nation
Executive Summary
By Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary
This report describes how a woman’s nation changes everything about how we live and work today. Now for the first time in our nation’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. This is a dramatic shift from just a generation ago (in 1967 women made up only one-third of all workers). It changes how women spend their days and has a ripple effect that reverberates throughout our nation. It fundamentally changes how we all work and live, not just women but also their families, their co-workers, their bosses, their faith institutions, and their communities.
Quite simply, women as half of all workers changes everything.
Recognizing the importance of women’s earnings to family well-being is the key piece to understanding why we are in a transformational moment. This social transformation is affecting nearly every aspect of our lives—from how we work to how we play to how we care for one another. Yet, we, as a nation, have not come to terms with what this means. In this report, we break new ground by taking a hard look at how women’s changing roles affect our major societal institutions, from government and businesses to our faith communities. We outline how these institutions rely on outdated models of who works and who cares for our families. And we examine how our culture has responded to one of the greatest social transformations of our time.
Our findings should not be surprising to working men and women. Today, four-in-five families with children still at home are not the traditional male breadwinner, female homemaker. And women are increasingly becoming their family’s breadwinner or co-breadwinner (see Figures 1 and 2). The deep economic downturn is amplifying and accelerating this trend. Men have lost three-out-of-four jobs so far since the Great Recession began in December 2007, leaving millions of wives to bring home the bacon while their husbands search for work. Women working outside the home, however, is not a short-term blip. This is a long-term trend that shows no signs of reversing.
Although our report is titled “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” this is not just a woman’s story. This is a report about how women becoming half of workers changes everything for men, women, and their families. The Rockefeller/Time nationwide poll, conducted in early September as the chapters of the report were being finalized, finds that the battle of the sexes is over and is replaced by negotiations between the sexes about work, family, household responsibilities, child care, and elder care. Yet, while men generally accept women working and making more money, men and women both express concern about kids left behind. Whose job is it? Men and women agree that government and business are out of touch with the realties of how most families live and work today. Families need more flexible work schedules, comprehensive child care policies, redesigned family and medical leave, and equal pay. The aim of this report is to take this conversation up to the national level, to engage men and women in thinking about what this new reality means for our vision of ourselves, our families, our communities, and the government, social, and religious institutions around us.
In short, this report lays the groundwork for how our society can better support the new American worker and the new American family.
The chapters in this report examine a host of ways in which our lives have changed forever because women have entered the labor force in ever greater numbers. The policy implications vary from issue to issue, but the conclusions are clear: We need to rethink our assumptions about families and about work and focus our policies—at all levels—to address this new reality.
Clearly we aren’t going back to a time when women were available full time to be their families’ unpaid caretakers, so we need to find another way forward. This report builds on the decades of work on these issues and aims to spark a national conversation and attract the attention of policymakers and political leaders to focus on the implications of this transformation for our society.
Maria Shriver opens our report with A Woman’s Nation. Her chapter describes the unique ways the Shriver and CAP teams approached this complex set of topics. She details how together we took a “deep dive” into how our culture and our society are responding to changes in women’s dual roles in the workforce and in the family. Shriver takes a historical look at the transformation of the American woman since her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, asked Frist Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the first Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. Shriver connects this overarching social shift to the most consistent roles of her life and of most women’s lives—the roles of daughter and mother. As our country reshapes the face of its workforce, Shriver reminds us that the struggles of the women before us opened the doors for us to guide the next generation of young women through.
In her chapter, Shriver also describes the conversations she conducted with everyday Americans around the nation, discovering that men and women are indeed negotiating everything—from the daily struggle over whether the husband or wife will drop off their child at school in the morning to major life decisions about whether a family will relocate to further one spouse’s career even if it hampers the other’s. You’ll find quotes from these conversations highlighted between the different chapters of this report—insights that bring to life the equally telling analysis of how we work and live today. And alongside our chapters is a collection of essays that Maria Shriver and her team gathered from an intriguing array of women and men, among them Oprah Winfrey, Billie Jean King, Suze Orman, Patricia Kempthorne, and Tammy Duckworth; less famous but equally insightful individuals such as Col. Maritza Sáenz Ryan, First Gentleman of Michigan Dan Mulhern and Accel Partners’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy; and everyday Americans at the forefront of these monumental changes in our society like Gianna Le, a young Vietnamese-American seeking to enter medical school this year. This chapter captures these insights and matches them to the analysis in the report to sharply define these personal experiences on the larger canvas of our changing nation.
The New Breadwinners, by Heather Boushey, Center for American Progress senior economist, explores the economic underpinnings of the transformation of women’s work. This chapter homes in on who’s gone to work, where women are working, why they are working, how well they are coping, and what this means for the economic well-being of women and their families. The chapter finds that while women are now half of workers and mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners in the majority of families, institutions have failed to catch up to this reality. Women have made great strides and are now more likely to be economically responsible for themselves and their families, but there is a still a long way to go. Equality in the workplace has not yet been achieved, even as families need women’s equality now more than ever.
Family Friendly for All Families: Workers and caregivers need government policies that reflect today’s realities, by Ann O’Leary, Center for American Progress senior fellow and executive director of the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic & Family Security at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, and Karen Kornbluh, former visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress, explores the implications of women in the workplace for government policy affecting workers and caregivers. O’Leary and Kornbluh argue that we need to reevaluate the values and assumptions underlying our nation’s workplace policies and social insurance system to ensure that they reflect the actual—not outdated or imagined—ways that families work and care today.
Up until now, government policymakers largely focused on supporting women’s entry into a male-oriented workforce on a par with men—a workplace where policies on hours, pay, benefits, and leave time were designed around male breadwinners who presumably had no family caregiving responsibilities. But allowing women to play by the same rules as a traditional male breadwinner worker is not enough. Too many workers—especially women and low-wage workers—today simply cannot work in the way traditional breadwinners once worked with a steady job and lifelong marriage with a wife at home.
O’Leary and Kornbluh suggest that a fruitful way for government to address this new economic and social reality would be to update our basic labor standards to include family-friendly employee benefits and reform our anti-discrimination laws so that employers cannot disproportionately exclude women from workplace benefits. Their chapter also argues that we need to modernize our social insurance system to account for varied families and new family responsibilities, including the need for paid family leave and social security retirement benefits that take into account time spent out of the workforce caring for children and other relatives. O’Leary and Kornbluh close with suggestions for increasing support to families for child care, early education, and elder care in order to help working parents cope with their dual responsibilities.
Next is a reflective essay, Invisible Yet Essential: Immigrant women in America, by Maria Echaveste, Center for American Progress senior fellow and senior distinguished fellow at the Warren Institute at University of California Berkeley School of Law. This chapter focuses in on how we often overlook the crucial work—child and parental care, home maintenance, food production, and cleaning—once done by the unpaid wives of male breadwinners but which is now the work of immigrant women. These hardworking immigrant women have helped make possible other women’s mass entry into the workforce. Echaveste points out that our economy is increasingly based on a growing service-sector industry, which in turn challenges all of us to value the work of the millions of immigrant women performing these services. Indeed, she concludes that the work these women do will be necessary regardless of how high-tech our economy becomes. They can no longer be ignored.
Sick and Tired: Working women and their health, by Jessica Arons, director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress, and Northwestern University law professor Dorothy Roberts, explores the implications of women working and earning the family income on women’s health, as well as women’s access to employer-based and private health insurance. They find that women’s breadwinning has not always come with greater access to health benefits and, too often, women’s health is compromised as they combine work and family responsibilities. As more women work, the authors note that we are developing a greater understanding of the health implications for women and their families—everything from inequitable job conditions and workplace health hazards to the timing of when women become mothers. Further, they highlight how our current health insurance system, centered as it is on employer-sponsored insurance, fails women in a variety of ways.
Better Educating Our New Breadwinners: Creating opportunities for all women to succeed in the workforce, by professor and former dean of University of California Berkeley’s graduate division Mary Ann Mason, explores the implications for our education system, focusing on post-secondary education. She finds that women have made great advances in educational attainment, yet there is still clear evidence that women face barriers within our educational institutions. Further, even when women receive the same degrees as men, they continue to face lower wages and fewer high-paying job prospects due to inflexible and unsupportive work environments.
Mason examines both sides of this gender coin. Women receive 52 percent of high school diplomas, 62 percent of associate’s degrees, 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 50 percent of doctoral degrees and professional degrees. But three problems persist. First, not all women have gained access to post-secondary education. Hispanic women, for example, lag far behind their counterparts. Second, women remain concentrated in the “helping” professions of health and education and are falling behind in entering the higher-paying fields of the future, including science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. Finally, more women with family responsibilities are attending all levels of post-secondary education, but they need family-friendly support to get their degrees (just as all workers need businesses to respond to the fact that our highly-educated workforce necessarily combines work and care). Mason recommends that policymakers focus on these three problems and offers some solutions to help them do so, including increasing family-friendly environments in our educational institutions and increasing compliance with Title IX with regard to science, engineering, mathematics, and technology at all post-secondary levels.
Got Talent? It Isn’t Hard to Find: Recognizing and rewarding the value women create in the workplace, by Brad Harrington, professor of organization studies and executive director of the Center for Work & Family at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, and Jamie Ladge, assistant professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern University, point out that women make up half the talent that is available to corporate America and small businesses. The authors argue that women’s outstanding performance in educational institutions, especially in higher educational and professional schools, demands that employers create workplaces that attract, retain, develop, and exploit (in the best sense of the word) this tremendous resource. They detail, however, that the vast majority of employers need to let go of outdated models such as thinking that there is only one place that work gets done, one way to structure a workday, one model for the ideal career, and one leadership style that works in today’s workplace.
Harrington and Ladge show that flexible work arrangements, flexible career paths, and new leadership styles better meet the needs of today’s diverse workforce as well as today’s flexible and fast-changing economic environment. They argue these new work policies should not be perks for only a chosen few. All workers need policies that meet the changed realities of work and family, not just elite workers. In short, the conversation is no longer about whether women will work, but rather about how businesses are dealing with the fact that their workforce is increasingly made up of women and most workers today—men and women—share in at least some care responsibilities.
The Challenge of Faith: Bringing spiritual sustenance to busy lives, by Kimberly Morgan, associate professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University, and Sally Steenland, senior policy advisor for the Faith and Progressive Policy project at the Center for American Progress, explore the ongoing role of religion and spirituality in women’s lives. They ask how traditional faith communities and new organizational forms of spirituality have responded to women’s increased employment outside the home. Their conclusion? Women are struggling to find the time for religious involvement amid the responsibilities of job and family, which in turn means religious institutions need to adapt to these new realities—especially as the support and services that organized religion provides become more important than ever.
Morgan and Steenland note that some congregations have actively engaged with today’s new realities, providing increased services that address the challenges for families that no longer have an adult who remains outside the labor force. Yet others have not, and in many cases while women have entered boardrooms and are leading companies, faith institutions have been slow to incorporate women into their leadership. Morgan and Steenland suggest several ways for faith and spiritual communities to better engage with today’s busy women.
University of Michigan communications professor Susan Douglas then shows us in Where Have You Gone, Roseanne Barr? how the media that we’re surrounded by every day have in some ways overshot reality and in many ways not caught up on the way women work and live in our society today. The mainstream media outlets often suggest that women have “made it,” portraying women as successful executives at the top of every profession, yet in real life there are far too few women among the highest ranks of the professions, and millions of everyday women struggle to make ends meet and to juggle work and family. Douglas suggests women need to challenge these misleading portraits with facts, vigor, and humor.
Douglas’s provocative chapter is accompanied by an essay titled Sexy Socialization: Today’s media and the next generation of women, by Stacy L. Smith, a fellow at the Center for Communication Leadership and Policy at the Annenberg School of Communications, and two of her colleagues, Cynthia Kennard, a senior fellow at the Center, and Amy D. Granados, a policy analyst at Annenberg. The three authors highlight what today’s 8-to-19-year-olds are taking in about the role of men and women in the workplace and society through the lens of various media, focusing on how troubling male and female sexual stereotypes could affect the life and career choices of our next generation. The authors express concern about the future of women breadwinners in the coming decades because of these stereotypes, but hold out hope that the media industry itself will change as more women rise within its ranks or launch new media outlets on their own.
Our report then shifts focus to a series of chapters and essays that we hope will get people talking about all of our analytical research. In Has a Man’s World Become a Woman’s Nation?, Michael Kimmel, sociology professor at the State University of New York, Stonybrook, surveys the varied responses that men have had to women’s entry into the workforce and to losing the title of sole breadwinner. He finds that most men have chosen the path toward acceptance of greater gender equality and often relish the extra earnings women bring into the family—but that some groups of men continue to struggle with the idea of widespread employment of women and mothers as it has made them question their very notion of masculinity.
Above all, though, Kimmel finds that while both men and women want the kind of support that makes it possible to have a dual-earner, dual-caregiver family, these issues are more often misperceived as only “women’s issues” in Washington and statehouses around the nation. Men need family-friendly policies so that they can have the sorts of family relationships they say they want to have, as well as careers that enable them to work and live better in our changing 21st-century economy. Kimmel closes his chapter with a call for men to rally behind efforts to make it better for women and men together to work and live in our changing economy and society, not rely on women alone to do so.
Next, we learn that negotiating around the kitchen table can be good for your marriage. In her reflective essay, Sharing the Load, Evergreen State College sociologist Stephanie Coontz provides evidence that the most stable, high-quality marriages are those where men and women share both paid work and domestic work. This is a shift from generations ago when the most stable marriages were those where husbands specialized in paid work and wives did all the domestic work.
In this section we also include two concluding reflective essays, one by senior correspondent for The American Prospect Courtney E. Martin and the other by political strategist and media consultant Jamal Simmons. They explore what it all means for today’s generations of women and men who grew up in a world that was less likely to question the desirability of the equality of women but understands that does not yet mean true equality.
Simmons focuses on how the woman you commit to today may have the same name and social security number as the woman you are with tomorrow, but she may want completely different things in her life at different times throughout your lives together. For him, the rules seem to be maddeningly flexible. Martin notes that the women (and men) of her generation have come of age at a time when feminist values are simply in the water. But she argues that we need comprehensive policy reform that reflects an accurate picture of the workers and families as we really are, not as we imagine ourselves to be. She closes by saying that “It’s a good thing we’ve been so pumped up on post-gender idealism, because there are some big battles ahead.”
To gauge just how representative these conversations and observations are of actual conditions in American homes and workplaces, we close the report with a hot-off-the-press landmark nationwide poll. This Rockefeller/Time poll of 3,413 people nationwide takes a broad and deep look at what men and women think of their changing roles in society and their attitudes toward each other as spouses, parents, bosses, and co-workers. Center for American Progress fellows John Halpin and Ruy Texiera, Kelly Daley with global research company Abt SRBI Inc., and former Los Angeles Times pollster Susan Pinkus conducted, analyzed, and then concisely summarized the poll findings for us in their chapter Battle of the Sexes Gives Way to Negotiations.
The poll results reveal a truce in the battle of the sexes, demonstrating that men and women are in agreement on many of the day-to-day work and family issues. The old line in the sand separating them has largely washed away. Indeed, both men and women agree that women’s movement into employment is good for the country. Virtually all married couples see negotiating about the rules of relationships, work, and family as key making things work at home and at work. The authors conclude that the one clear message emerging from this poll is that the lives of Americans have changed significantly in recent years, yet the parameters of their jobs have yet to change to meet new demands. They find that political and business leaders who fail to take steps to address the needs of modern families risk losing good workers and the support of men and women who are riding the crest of major social change in America with little or no support.
Rather than pining for family structures of an earlier generation, the authors report that the poll found that men and women agree that government and businesses have failed to adapt to the needs of modern families. Americans across the board desire more flexibility in work schedules, paid family leave, and increased child care support. Given the ongoing difficulties many people face in balancing work and family life, it is not surprising that large numbers of Americans—men and women alike—view the decline in the percentage of children growing up in a family with a stay-at-home parent as a negative development for society. Yet, ever practical and pragmatic, this poll demonstrates that Americans understand that everything has changed in their work and lives today and that consequently they are working things out as best they can while looking to their government and their employers to catch up.
The academic research, anecdotal evidence, personal reflections, and poll results that make up this unique report all confirm that recognizing women now constitute half of the workers in the United States is only the first step. The second is identifying what we need to do to reshape the institutions around us. We can then begin to take the necessary actions to readjust our policies and practices. When you finish reading our report, we’re confident you’ll agree that more than four decades after President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women, we’ve learned that while there’s much to cheer about, we still have a long way to go. We as a people must transform the way our government, our businesses, our faith-based institutions, and our media deal with the realities of a woman’s nation so that all of us can better cope with the transformation of how we work and live. The ultimate goal is a more prosperous future for all women and men in a nation that recognizes the unique value of each of us to contribute to the common good at work and at home. We believe that we can get there together, and that this report takes an important step along that path.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Suggested Readings on Difference, Power, and Discrimination
Cudd, Ann. 2006. Analyzing oppression. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. Oppression. In The politics of reality, 1-16. New York: Crossing Press.
Hill Collins, Patricia. 2008. Toward a new vision: Race, class and gender as categories of analysis and connection.In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 57-65. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In Sister outsider, 114-123. New York: Crossing Press.
McIntosh, Peggy. 2008. White privilege and male privilege. In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 78-85. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pharr, Suzanne. 1988. The common elements of oppressions. In Homophobia: A weapon of sexism. Little Rock: The Women's Project.
Yamato, Gloria. 2008. Something about the subject makes it hard to name. In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 86-88. New York: McGraw-Hill.
-Susan M. Shaw, Donna A. Champeau, and Robert Amico
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. Oppression. In The politics of reality, 1-16. New York: Crossing Press.
Hill Collins, Patricia. 2008. Toward a new vision: Race, class and gender as categories of analysis and connection.In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 57-65. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In Sister outsider, 114-123. New York: Crossing Press.
McIntosh, Peggy. 2008. White privilege and male privilege. In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 78-85. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pharr, Suzanne. 1988. The common elements of oppressions. In Homophobia: A weapon of sexism. Little Rock: The Women's Project.
Yamato, Gloria. 2008. Something about the subject makes it hard to name. In Women's voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings, eds. S. M. Shaw and J. Lee, 86-88. New York: McGraw-Hill.
-Susan M. Shaw, Donna A. Champeau, and Robert Amico
Infusing Diversity in the Sciences and Professional Disciplines
By Susan M. Shaw, director of women's studies and the Difference, Power, and Discrimination program, and Donna A. Champeau, director of Women's Advancement and Gender Equity and associate professor of public health, both at Oregon State University; and Robert Amico, professor of philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in New York
Susan Shaw talks with Ron Adams, dean of Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, before leading a workshop for College of Engineering faculty. Photo by Justin Smith for Oregon State University.
When we lead curriculum transformation workshops around the country, we almost always encounter more participants from the liberal arts than from the sciences and professional disciplines. Faculty in English, history, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and women's studies seem to see a natural affinity for diversity in their curricula. In contrast, faculty in the sciences and professional disciplines often perceive their work as limited to technical skills and a certain canon of disciplinary knowledge. Nonetheless, myriad opportunities exist within these disciplines to attend to issues of difference, power, and privilege and to transform courses around matters of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
Too often, faculty in the sciences and professional disciplines have not been encouraged in their own educational journeys to examine disciplinary content and pedagogical practices from perspectives attuned to difference and power. But once introduced to key concepts and given opportunity to apply them, these faculty members can find creative and exciting ways to modify their courses to be attentive to gender, race and ethnicity, social class, sexual identity, age, ability, and religion, as well as the social structures, ideologies, and uses of power that advantage and disadvantage particular groups.
Transforming the Disciplines
Like most social institutions, academic disciplines tend to reproduce themselves. Because most disciplines (with a few notable exceptions) have been constructed and maintained primarily by white, heterosexual, financially privileged males, they tend to reproduce themselves as white, heterosexual, financially privileged, and male--not simply in terms of their demographic representation, but also in terms of their analytical frameworks. Often the disciplines' very structures, as well as the ways they are taught, tend to marginalize women, people of color, and LGBT students. These students' concerns are rarely at the center of the curriculum because invisible norms have shaped the disciplines to exclude traditionally marginalized groups. A simple additive approach (for example, including readings by women, people of color, or LGBT authors) cannot address these larger structural issues.
To facilitate curriculum transformation in the sciences and professional disciplines, we help faculty identify and understand the ways the curriculum, rather than being objective and value-neutral, is socially constructed and highly politicized. We often begin by encouraging faculty members to examine the subtle and invisible ways in which their disciplines reproduce themselves. We encourage them to consider a wide range of issues that affect their disciplinary work: the curriculum and the hidden curriculum, faculty composition, disciplinary methodology, professional values (overt and covert), professional societies, hiring policies and practices (including rewards, awards, tenure, merit, and promotion), funding, projects adopted, unasked questions and unexplored values, ideology, language, corporate relationships, and compartmentalization of one's knowledge or tasks.
Next, we ask faculty to think about knowledge production as a socially constructed process in which power, privilege, and difference shape and maintain the disciplines in their current forms. We ask such questions as:
How is knowledge constructed in your discipline, and who controls its production and dissemination? Who has access to knowledge, and who doesn't?
How do funding structures affect knowledge production in your discipline?
Are some people systematically disadvantaged by the way knowledge in your discipline is constructed, produced, or taught?
How is knowledge production in your discipline gendered or racialized? How is it connected to social class?
How do these factors affect the questions asked in your discipline? Are there certain questions that are asked and certain questions that aren't?
As we discuss these questions, we introduce literature on key concepts related to systems of oppression and encourage faculty members to make connections between this literature and their disciplines. For example, when we introduce the concepts of white privilege or heteronormativity, we ask faculty members to identify ways white privilege or heteronormativity operates in their disciplines. We also invite faculty members to think about how their disciplines would look (including the different questions they might ask and different processes they might use) if they centered on traditionally marginalized groups. What would business look like if women were at the center of the discipline? What would public health look like if LGBT people were at the center? What would engineering look like if people of color were at the center?
The goal of these questions is to encourage course transformation rather than simple addition of content. Merely adding a few readings or a unit about the concerns of traditionally marginalized people simply maintains those people's outsider status, and students quickly realize that the additions are of secondary importance to the "real" curriculum. Curriculum transformation, however, challenges the foundations and structures of disciplinary content and calls for the perspectives and concerns of traditionally marginalized people to be as central as those of the dominant group. Transformed courses are truly and fully inclusive of a broader range of knowledges and learning styles. These courses challenge notions of disciplines as fixed and objective bodies of knowledge that exist apart from the people who teach and learn and research.
Finally, we ask faculty to consider how they might restructure their disciplinary teaching to focus on issues of difference, power, privilege, and social justice. We ask faculty to imagine:
1. Teaching scientific and technical questions in their social context, asking: What is the historical context for the scientific development, research, or technology in question? What problems have arisen, and why? How have these problems affected traditionally marginalized people?
2. Helping students become ethical thinkers by asking: How do my values inform the way I practice my discipline? What shared disciplinary values form the context for my work? How do issues of power, privilege, and difference inform my work? What are the potential unintended consequences of my work?
3. Teaching students to develop knowledge, technology, products, and policy that will meet social needs by encouraging students to ask: What problem is to be solved, and for whom? What are the proposed solution's ethical, societal, and global implications? Does the proposed solution further the cause of social justice, or does it contribute to injustice or suffering? How might my work challenge systems of power and privilege that disadvantage members of traditionally marginalized groups?
Prompted by these inquiries, several faculty members in the sciences and professional disciplines at Oregon State University have transformed courses to meet the university's Difference, Power, and Discrimination requirement, which the university implemented in the 1990s in response to student demand. Rather than create a single course, the university decided to transform multiple courses so students would see how power, privilege, and social inequality are relevant across disciplines. For example, a microbiology course, Disease and Society, examines the movement of disease at the microbial level in relation to issues of race, gender, and social class. A course in exercise and sport science, Power and Privilege in Sport, examines how the unequal distribution of resources across gender, race, social class, sexual identity, ability, and age plays out in sports. Social Ethics in Engineering asks students to apply concepts of systems of oppression as they consider their professional development as engineers. A geosciences course, Environmental Justice, explores the impact of environmental racism on people of color, and a fisheries and wildlife course, Multicultural Perspectives on Natural Resources, considers how diverse social values affect changes in the physical landscape and biodiversity in the American West.
Examples from Engineering and Veterinary Medicine
We recently conducted two workshops, one for engineering faculty and the other for veterinary medicine faculty. The two workshops shared a number of similar features, but each dealt specifically with issues unique to each discipline.
We began the engineering workshop by asking faculty members to think about engineering's potential and limits in addressing social problems. A primary focus was the issue of technology's unintended consequences. After introducing the concepts of power and privilege, we discussed the example of the Toyota Prius. Engineers designed the Prius to be extremely quiet--so quiet that it poses a danger to vision-impaired people, who cannot hear it. Vision-impaired people are now asking the automotive industry to design automobiles that have minimum noise levels. Other unintended consequences include the impingement on Native American fishing rights caused by hydroelectric dams and the rampant consumerism driven by engineering's focus on creating new products. We also examined two case studies that faculty members can utilize to explore the complex issues of privilege, power, and difference in relation to engineering: the Manhattan Project and Hurricane Katrina.
In the veterinary medicine workshop, we began by discussing climate issues related to the discipline's changing demographics (women now outnumber men in veterinary medicine programs). As we moved on to discuss content, we talked about animals' vulnerability in human society and asked how faculty members might assess animal-human relations in the context of power and privilege. We concluded by asking faculty members to imagine how they might help their students think about issues of difference, power, and privilege in light of a range of questions, including:
What is poverty's impact on the practice of veterinary medicine?
How do cultural and gender differences affect the practice of veterinary medicine?
What role do veterinarians play in organizations that help humans, and do veterinarians have an obligation to work toward improving human conditions?
What ties does veterinary medicine have to pharmaceutical companies?
What role do veterinarians play in global development work, in disasters, and in wars?
What role do veterinarians play in developing legislation about animal welfare issues?
In both workshops, challenging faculty members to apply concepts of systems of oppression specifically to their disciplines was key to encouraging curriculum transformation.
Challenges to Consider
Curriculum transformation is not a quick or easy process, and it often occurs in small increments. While we have made strides on our two campuses, we still see room for growth. At Oregon State University, we need to add more science, engineering, agriculture, forestry, business, and health and human sciences courses to our Difference, Power, and Discrimination offerings. Yet even as we encourage faculty to develop new courses, we see many faculty members integrating questions of difference, power, and privilege and transforming parts of their existing courses. Although content-based accreditation requirements sometimes constrain faculty members in their efforts to transform a course, faculty are finding that they can raise questions of power and privilege, place problems in new contexts, and problematize the disciplines themselves while still meeting content guidelines.
As institutions move forward to begin the process of curriculum transformation, they must examine their reasons for embarking on change. Our experience indicates that the sciences and professional disciplines are usually more resistant to change than the liberal arts. Often, this resistance originates with institutions that have not fully embraced principles of curriculum transformation and may simply be looking to satisfy accrediting institutions by suggesting "good faith" efforts to embrace inclusion. Just as students can quickly recognize when a curriculum addition is of secondary importance to the "real" curriculum, so too can faculty recognize when schools do not fully embrace curriculum transformation throughout the curriculum. Hence institution-wide commitment to curriculum transformation in all disciplines is imperative. Academic disciplines, invested in existing power relations, will not change of their own accord.
An invitation to consider disciplinary content and pedagogical practices from a perspective informed by privilege, power, and difference is most compelling when the institution fully endorses it. The institution must offer monetary compensation, recognize faculty development in tenure and promotion decisions, and consider this transformative work as a component of faculty research obligations. Curriculum transformation requires the full support of the institution and the individual, particularly in the sciences and professional disciplines.
Questions, comments, and suggestions regarding Diversity & Democracy should be directed to Kathryn Peltier Campbell at campbell@aacu.org.
Copyright 1996 - 2009
Association of American Colleges & Universities | 1818 R Street NW, Washington, DC, 20009
Susan Shaw talks with Ron Adams, dean of Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, before leading a workshop for College of Engineering faculty. Photo by Justin Smith for Oregon State University.
When we lead curriculum transformation workshops around the country, we almost always encounter more participants from the liberal arts than from the sciences and professional disciplines. Faculty in English, history, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and women's studies seem to see a natural affinity for diversity in their curricula. In contrast, faculty in the sciences and professional disciplines often perceive their work as limited to technical skills and a certain canon of disciplinary knowledge. Nonetheless, myriad opportunities exist within these disciplines to attend to issues of difference, power, and privilege and to transform courses around matters of diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
Too often, faculty in the sciences and professional disciplines have not been encouraged in their own educational journeys to examine disciplinary content and pedagogical practices from perspectives attuned to difference and power. But once introduced to key concepts and given opportunity to apply them, these faculty members can find creative and exciting ways to modify their courses to be attentive to gender, race and ethnicity, social class, sexual identity, age, ability, and religion, as well as the social structures, ideologies, and uses of power that advantage and disadvantage particular groups.
Transforming the Disciplines
Like most social institutions, academic disciplines tend to reproduce themselves. Because most disciplines (with a few notable exceptions) have been constructed and maintained primarily by white, heterosexual, financially privileged males, they tend to reproduce themselves as white, heterosexual, financially privileged, and male--not simply in terms of their demographic representation, but also in terms of their analytical frameworks. Often the disciplines' very structures, as well as the ways they are taught, tend to marginalize women, people of color, and LGBT students. These students' concerns are rarely at the center of the curriculum because invisible norms have shaped the disciplines to exclude traditionally marginalized groups. A simple additive approach (for example, including readings by women, people of color, or LGBT authors) cannot address these larger structural issues.
To facilitate curriculum transformation in the sciences and professional disciplines, we help faculty identify and understand the ways the curriculum, rather than being objective and value-neutral, is socially constructed and highly politicized. We often begin by encouraging faculty members to examine the subtle and invisible ways in which their disciplines reproduce themselves. We encourage them to consider a wide range of issues that affect their disciplinary work: the curriculum and the hidden curriculum, faculty composition, disciplinary methodology, professional values (overt and covert), professional societies, hiring policies and practices (including rewards, awards, tenure, merit, and promotion), funding, projects adopted, unasked questions and unexplored values, ideology, language, corporate relationships, and compartmentalization of one's knowledge or tasks.
Next, we ask faculty to think about knowledge production as a socially constructed process in which power, privilege, and difference shape and maintain the disciplines in their current forms. We ask such questions as:
How is knowledge constructed in your discipline, and who controls its production and dissemination? Who has access to knowledge, and who doesn't?
How do funding structures affect knowledge production in your discipline?
Are some people systematically disadvantaged by the way knowledge in your discipline is constructed, produced, or taught?
How is knowledge production in your discipline gendered or racialized? How is it connected to social class?
How do these factors affect the questions asked in your discipline? Are there certain questions that are asked and certain questions that aren't?
As we discuss these questions, we introduce literature on key concepts related to systems of oppression and encourage faculty members to make connections between this literature and their disciplines. For example, when we introduce the concepts of white privilege or heteronormativity, we ask faculty members to identify ways white privilege or heteronormativity operates in their disciplines. We also invite faculty members to think about how their disciplines would look (including the different questions they might ask and different processes they might use) if they centered on traditionally marginalized groups. What would business look like if women were at the center of the discipline? What would public health look like if LGBT people were at the center? What would engineering look like if people of color were at the center?
The goal of these questions is to encourage course transformation rather than simple addition of content. Merely adding a few readings or a unit about the concerns of traditionally marginalized people simply maintains those people's outsider status, and students quickly realize that the additions are of secondary importance to the "real" curriculum. Curriculum transformation, however, challenges the foundations and structures of disciplinary content and calls for the perspectives and concerns of traditionally marginalized people to be as central as those of the dominant group. Transformed courses are truly and fully inclusive of a broader range of knowledges and learning styles. These courses challenge notions of disciplines as fixed and objective bodies of knowledge that exist apart from the people who teach and learn and research.
Finally, we ask faculty to consider how they might restructure their disciplinary teaching to focus on issues of difference, power, privilege, and social justice. We ask faculty to imagine:
1. Teaching scientific and technical questions in their social context, asking: What is the historical context for the scientific development, research, or technology in question? What problems have arisen, and why? How have these problems affected traditionally marginalized people?
2. Helping students become ethical thinkers by asking: How do my values inform the way I practice my discipline? What shared disciplinary values form the context for my work? How do issues of power, privilege, and difference inform my work? What are the potential unintended consequences of my work?
3. Teaching students to develop knowledge, technology, products, and policy that will meet social needs by encouraging students to ask: What problem is to be solved, and for whom? What are the proposed solution's ethical, societal, and global implications? Does the proposed solution further the cause of social justice, or does it contribute to injustice or suffering? How might my work challenge systems of power and privilege that disadvantage members of traditionally marginalized groups?
Prompted by these inquiries, several faculty members in the sciences and professional disciplines at Oregon State University have transformed courses to meet the university's Difference, Power, and Discrimination requirement, which the university implemented in the 1990s in response to student demand. Rather than create a single course, the university decided to transform multiple courses so students would see how power, privilege, and social inequality are relevant across disciplines. For example, a microbiology course, Disease and Society, examines the movement of disease at the microbial level in relation to issues of race, gender, and social class. A course in exercise and sport science, Power and Privilege in Sport, examines how the unequal distribution of resources across gender, race, social class, sexual identity, ability, and age plays out in sports. Social Ethics in Engineering asks students to apply concepts of systems of oppression as they consider their professional development as engineers. A geosciences course, Environmental Justice, explores the impact of environmental racism on people of color, and a fisheries and wildlife course, Multicultural Perspectives on Natural Resources, considers how diverse social values affect changes in the physical landscape and biodiversity in the American West.
Examples from Engineering and Veterinary Medicine
We recently conducted two workshops, one for engineering faculty and the other for veterinary medicine faculty. The two workshops shared a number of similar features, but each dealt specifically with issues unique to each discipline.
We began the engineering workshop by asking faculty members to think about engineering's potential and limits in addressing social problems. A primary focus was the issue of technology's unintended consequences. After introducing the concepts of power and privilege, we discussed the example of the Toyota Prius. Engineers designed the Prius to be extremely quiet--so quiet that it poses a danger to vision-impaired people, who cannot hear it. Vision-impaired people are now asking the automotive industry to design automobiles that have minimum noise levels. Other unintended consequences include the impingement on Native American fishing rights caused by hydroelectric dams and the rampant consumerism driven by engineering's focus on creating new products. We also examined two case studies that faculty members can utilize to explore the complex issues of privilege, power, and difference in relation to engineering: the Manhattan Project and Hurricane Katrina.
In the veterinary medicine workshop, we began by discussing climate issues related to the discipline's changing demographics (women now outnumber men in veterinary medicine programs). As we moved on to discuss content, we talked about animals' vulnerability in human society and asked how faculty members might assess animal-human relations in the context of power and privilege. We concluded by asking faculty members to imagine how they might help their students think about issues of difference, power, and privilege in light of a range of questions, including:
What is poverty's impact on the practice of veterinary medicine?
How do cultural and gender differences affect the practice of veterinary medicine?
What role do veterinarians play in organizations that help humans, and do veterinarians have an obligation to work toward improving human conditions?
What ties does veterinary medicine have to pharmaceutical companies?
What role do veterinarians play in global development work, in disasters, and in wars?
What role do veterinarians play in developing legislation about animal welfare issues?
In both workshops, challenging faculty members to apply concepts of systems of oppression specifically to their disciplines was key to encouraging curriculum transformation.
Challenges to Consider
Curriculum transformation is not a quick or easy process, and it often occurs in small increments. While we have made strides on our two campuses, we still see room for growth. At Oregon State University, we need to add more science, engineering, agriculture, forestry, business, and health and human sciences courses to our Difference, Power, and Discrimination offerings. Yet even as we encourage faculty to develop new courses, we see many faculty members integrating questions of difference, power, and privilege and transforming parts of their existing courses. Although content-based accreditation requirements sometimes constrain faculty members in their efforts to transform a course, faculty are finding that they can raise questions of power and privilege, place problems in new contexts, and problematize the disciplines themselves while still meeting content guidelines.
As institutions move forward to begin the process of curriculum transformation, they must examine their reasons for embarking on change. Our experience indicates that the sciences and professional disciplines are usually more resistant to change than the liberal arts. Often, this resistance originates with institutions that have not fully embraced principles of curriculum transformation and may simply be looking to satisfy accrediting institutions by suggesting "good faith" efforts to embrace inclusion. Just as students can quickly recognize when a curriculum addition is of secondary importance to the "real" curriculum, so too can faculty recognize when schools do not fully embrace curriculum transformation throughout the curriculum. Hence institution-wide commitment to curriculum transformation in all disciplines is imperative. Academic disciplines, invested in existing power relations, will not change of their own accord.
An invitation to consider disciplinary content and pedagogical practices from a perspective informed by privilege, power, and difference is most compelling when the institution fully endorses it. The institution must offer monetary compensation, recognize faculty development in tenure and promotion decisions, and consider this transformative work as a component of faculty research obligations. Curriculum transformation requires the full support of the institution and the individual, particularly in the sciences and professional disciplines.
Questions, comments, and suggestions regarding Diversity & Democracy should be directed to Kathryn Peltier Campbell at campbell@aacu.org.
Copyright 1996 - 2009
Association of American Colleges & Universities | 1818 R Street NW, Washington, DC, 20009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Her College Experience Is Not His
September 26, 2008
Chronicle of Higher Education
Her College Experience Is Not His
By Linda Sax
At a time when national attention is focused on the relative numbers of women and men on college campuses, little is known about the characteristics of the two genders and how aspects of college further shape those characteristics. The popular messages are oversimplified: Gender equity has been achieved, women are an academic success story, and men are experiencing an educational crisis.
Each of those messages has some truth, but they tend to convey the status of women and men as a zero-sum game: If one gender is succeeding, the other must be failing. The reality is that both genders face obstacles and challenges in their pursuit of higher education, and we need a deeper understanding of the nuances and implications of the gender gap in college.
As a scholar in gender issues, I have studied survey responses of more than eight million students who participated over the past four decades in the freshman survey of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. I have also examined longitudinal information obtained by the College Student Survey of students who entered college in 1994 and were followed up in 1998. Such data has enabled me to assess how gender shapes the characteristics of women and men entering college, how both genders experience college, and how college influences them. And I have found that women and men differ significantly from each other — and in ways that raise many questions for further research:
Connection to family. It has largely been assumed that leaving home is equally important for both genders, but we have found that it may be especially beneficial for female students, who develop greater scholarly confidence, stronger leadership skills, and a healthy sense of emotional well-being. For men, whether they live close to home or thousands of miles away is less relevant.
Today, however, students and parents stay in frequent contact with each other. The challenge facing colleges is how to encourage women to develop a healthy sense of independence at the same time that they stay connected to their parents.
Questions for future research: Do women turn to their families because of academic or social difficulties? Does their dependence on their families inhibit their personal and academic development? How do the type and frequency of student-parent communications relate to students' personal, academic, and social development?
Student-faculty interactions. Gender differences fall into three main categories. First, while interactions with faculty members encourage liberalism, political engagement, and a commitment to social activism among all students, we generally find that the more time men spend engaged in one-on-one interactions with faculty members, the more liberal they become in their political views and the greater concern they develop about race relations and the welfare of the larger society.
Second, men who work with faculty members on research or receive advice, encouragement, and support from them hold more-egalitarian views on gender roles. They become less supportive of the notion that "the activities of married women are best confined to the home and family." For women, the opposite is true: Those who spend more time with faculty members, especially in the context of research, become more committed to traditional gender roles.
A third theme relates to professors' influence on women's sense of confidence and well-being. Feeling dismissed by faculty members in the classroom has negative consequences for women's long-term academic aspirations, confidence in math, and even physical health.
Faculty members would benefit from a better understanding of the implications of their actions for students. They need to recognize that even when they believe they are treating male and female students the same way, the two genders may internalize those interactions differently.
Questions for future research: Does the nature of student-faculty interactions depend on where those interactions take place — in the classroom, a faculty office, a research lab, or elsewhere? Why and how do research experiences influence students' gender-role attitudes? What sorts of messages do professors send — intentionally or not — regarding women's social roles? What specific faculty actions lead women to feel they are not being taken seriously? What are effective strategies for promoting healthier student-faculty relations and for promoting safe spaces in the classroom? How does all this depend on the faculty member's gender?
Presence of female faculty members. It is often stated that female students benefit from greater numbers of women on college faculties — and, in fact, attending institutions with more female professors strengthens female students' scholarly confidence, motivation to achieve, and grade-point average. Yet the presence of female professors appears to bring a broader range of benefits to male students, including gains in mathematical confidence, scientific orientation, leadership ability, and emotional well-being. An obvious implication of those findings would be for colleges to hire more female faculty members. That could be an opportunity to shape the academic climate, as female faculty members have been shown to be generally more concerned than male faculty members with students' emotional development, character development, and self-understanding.
Questions for future research: Could the trend of males' benefiting more from the presence of female faculty members result from such professors treating their male students more favorably than their female students? Or, taking another perspective, might the developmental benefits accrued to men result from having less exposure to male faculty members? Are these findings due to a larger climate shift that occurs when an institution employs more female faculty members? In other words, how does the representation of female faculty members shape the culture of departments and institutions, and what impact does that have on male and female students?
Academic engagement. In high school, women devote more time than men do to studying, homework, and a range of academic and extracurricular activities. Women also place greater value than men do on the intellectual benefits of going to college, such as the opportunity to learn more about what interests them and to prepare themselves for graduate school. Women's superior record of academic achievement and intellectual engagement creates a gender gap that holds steady over the course of college.
But although men are less academically engaged than women, the influence of academic engagement is stronger for them. The time that men spend preparing for class has a greater impact on their grades, academic confidence, critical-thinking skills, and motivation to achieve. And the more time that men devote to their studies, the more interested they become in the larger political and cultural contexts that surround them, while the same is not true for women. Certainly, studying matters for women as well, but it seems to make more of a difference for men.
Clearly, colleges need to consider strategies for encouraging greater academic engagement among male students. As Jillian Kinzie, the associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research and National Survey of Student Engagement Institute, and her colleagues suggested in a 2007 research paper on gender and student engagement, colleges should involve men more in "learning communities, first-year seminars, writing-intensive courses, student-faculty research, study abroad, internships, and capstone seminars."
Questions for future research: How much do colleges consider the different academic needs of male and female learners? Should strategies for promoting student engagement be the same for both?
The impact of diversity programs. My research found that experiences with diversity both inside and outside the classroom are more liberalizing, motivating, and eye-opening for men than women. For example, attending racial- or cultural-awareness workshops or engaging in social diversity — dating, dining, studying, or living with someone of a different race or ethnicity — contributes more strongly to men's desire to improve race relations. In addition, taking ethnic-studies courses and participating in racial-awareness and cultural-awareness workshops give rise to more-progressive gender-role attitudes among male students.
Yet, at the same time, such activities are also often accompanied by heightened feelings of discomfort in male students. Campuses should provide appropriate resources for such students — following up with them in the weeks or even months after their participation in diversity programming to gauge whether they may need counseling or other support.
Questions for future research: Why are men more challenged and conflicted by diversity experiences than women? What specific aspects of diversity programming lead to such outcomes?
Careers and majors. Colleges often find it difficult to attract more women to pursue the traditionally male fields of engineering and computer science. Large numbers of women opt out of the science and engineering pipeline before they attend college, often because of factors beyond colleges' control, such as family influences and early educational experiences.
But colleges are in a position to recruit and retain women who have the ability and preparation for science and engineering careers yet who may nevertheless select other career paths. They have an opportunity to educate students about the ways in which math and science can help improve society and the human condition, particularly at a time of tremendous progress in computer and biological technologies. The more that higher-education institutions can connect scientific concepts to issues that women tend to care about — education, the environment, human rights — the more likely women will become scientists and create change in those areas.
Strategies to increase the number of women in science include summer internships, mentorships, professional-development workshops, and online networks of women in science. They are usually viewed, however, as programmatic supplements rather than integrated into the mainstream curriculum. In fact, we know far less about how to transform the broader culture of academic science.
Questions for future research: How can we make science more appealing to women? What are the characteristics of programs that successfully educate students about the connection between scientific concepts and larger societal concerns?
Besides those aspects of college life, female and male college students' experiences in higher education differ in several other key ways. For example, female students' average income has fallen further behind men's, so they are substantially more concerned than their male counterparts about whether they will have enough money to complete college. Thus, colleges should evaluate whether they allocate student aid and work-study opportunities fairly to women and men, which types of work experiences are most beneficial, and the extent to which women and men have equal access to the most-desirable positions. We should study, for example, whether having a job in the campus bookstore relates to a different set of outcomes than working in the admissions office, in the recreation center, or at the local coffeehouse or a retail store.
Also, despite the fact that college women earn better grades and exhibit a stronger academic orientation than their male counterparts, they tend to suffer from comparatively low academic confidence. In fact, women rate themselves lower than men on nearly every assessment of their academic abilities. Further, these gender differences grow during college. We should learn more about why women rate themselves lower — because they believe they are less capable, or are they simply reluctant to describe themselves as having high ability? — and what conditions account for the widening gender gap in academic self-confidence.
Finally, compared with men, women enter college with higher levels of self-reported stress and lower ratings of their physical and emotional health. Such gender gaps remain significant over four years of college and reflect the fact that men spend more time on activities that can be considered ways to relieve stress (playing sports and video games, partying, and watching television) while women often devote themselves to a range of responsibilities that tend to induce stress (studying, homework, community service, and family responsibilities). Colleges should encourage all students to strike a healthier balance between academics, extracurricular activities, and leisure. We also need to develop a better understanding of what it means for a student to maintain balance.
Although women have a numerical advantage in college, both genders face challenges to their adjustment and development. Just as we need to be concerned about high stress and low self-esteem among women, we must be concerned about growing academic disengagement among men.
And while we aim to encourage all students to become engaged and involved, we must be mindful that the dynamics of those experiences can be quite different for the two genders, especially when it comes to students' interactions with their professors. Thus, institutional efforts aimed at improving the college experience for both genders must consider the distinct needs of each.
Linda Sax is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. This essay was adapted from The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Women and Men, published this month by John Wiley & Sons. Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons.
Chronicle of Higher Education
Her College Experience Is Not His
By Linda Sax
At a time when national attention is focused on the relative numbers of women and men on college campuses, little is known about the characteristics of the two genders and how aspects of college further shape those characteristics. The popular messages are oversimplified: Gender equity has been achieved, women are an academic success story, and men are experiencing an educational crisis.
Each of those messages has some truth, but they tend to convey the status of women and men as a zero-sum game: If one gender is succeeding, the other must be failing. The reality is that both genders face obstacles and challenges in their pursuit of higher education, and we need a deeper understanding of the nuances and implications of the gender gap in college.
As a scholar in gender issues, I have studied survey responses of more than eight million students who participated over the past four decades in the freshman survey of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. I have also examined longitudinal information obtained by the College Student Survey of students who entered college in 1994 and were followed up in 1998. Such data has enabled me to assess how gender shapes the characteristics of women and men entering college, how both genders experience college, and how college influences them. And I have found that women and men differ significantly from each other — and in ways that raise many questions for further research:
Connection to family. It has largely been assumed that leaving home is equally important for both genders, but we have found that it may be especially beneficial for female students, who develop greater scholarly confidence, stronger leadership skills, and a healthy sense of emotional well-being. For men, whether they live close to home or thousands of miles away is less relevant.
Today, however, students and parents stay in frequent contact with each other. The challenge facing colleges is how to encourage women to develop a healthy sense of independence at the same time that they stay connected to their parents.
Questions for future research: Do women turn to their families because of academic or social difficulties? Does their dependence on their families inhibit their personal and academic development? How do the type and frequency of student-parent communications relate to students' personal, academic, and social development?
Student-faculty interactions. Gender differences fall into three main categories. First, while interactions with faculty members encourage liberalism, political engagement, and a commitment to social activism among all students, we generally find that the more time men spend engaged in one-on-one interactions with faculty members, the more liberal they become in their political views and the greater concern they develop about race relations and the welfare of the larger society.
Second, men who work with faculty members on research or receive advice, encouragement, and support from them hold more-egalitarian views on gender roles. They become less supportive of the notion that "the activities of married women are best confined to the home and family." For women, the opposite is true: Those who spend more time with faculty members, especially in the context of research, become more committed to traditional gender roles.
A third theme relates to professors' influence on women's sense of confidence and well-being. Feeling dismissed by faculty members in the classroom has negative consequences for women's long-term academic aspirations, confidence in math, and even physical health.
Faculty members would benefit from a better understanding of the implications of their actions for students. They need to recognize that even when they believe they are treating male and female students the same way, the two genders may internalize those interactions differently.
Questions for future research: Does the nature of student-faculty interactions depend on where those interactions take place — in the classroom, a faculty office, a research lab, or elsewhere? Why and how do research experiences influence students' gender-role attitudes? What sorts of messages do professors send — intentionally or not — regarding women's social roles? What specific faculty actions lead women to feel they are not being taken seriously? What are effective strategies for promoting healthier student-faculty relations and for promoting safe spaces in the classroom? How does all this depend on the faculty member's gender?
Presence of female faculty members. It is often stated that female students benefit from greater numbers of women on college faculties — and, in fact, attending institutions with more female professors strengthens female students' scholarly confidence, motivation to achieve, and grade-point average. Yet the presence of female professors appears to bring a broader range of benefits to male students, including gains in mathematical confidence, scientific orientation, leadership ability, and emotional well-being. An obvious implication of those findings would be for colleges to hire more female faculty members. That could be an opportunity to shape the academic climate, as female faculty members have been shown to be generally more concerned than male faculty members with students' emotional development, character development, and self-understanding.
Questions for future research: Could the trend of males' benefiting more from the presence of female faculty members result from such professors treating their male students more favorably than their female students? Or, taking another perspective, might the developmental benefits accrued to men result from having less exposure to male faculty members? Are these findings due to a larger climate shift that occurs when an institution employs more female faculty members? In other words, how does the representation of female faculty members shape the culture of departments and institutions, and what impact does that have on male and female students?
Academic engagement. In high school, women devote more time than men do to studying, homework, and a range of academic and extracurricular activities. Women also place greater value than men do on the intellectual benefits of going to college, such as the opportunity to learn more about what interests them and to prepare themselves for graduate school. Women's superior record of academic achievement and intellectual engagement creates a gender gap that holds steady over the course of college.
But although men are less academically engaged than women, the influence of academic engagement is stronger for them. The time that men spend preparing for class has a greater impact on their grades, academic confidence, critical-thinking skills, and motivation to achieve. And the more time that men devote to their studies, the more interested they become in the larger political and cultural contexts that surround them, while the same is not true for women. Certainly, studying matters for women as well, but it seems to make more of a difference for men.
Clearly, colleges need to consider strategies for encouraging greater academic engagement among male students. As Jillian Kinzie, the associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research and National Survey of Student Engagement Institute, and her colleagues suggested in a 2007 research paper on gender and student engagement, colleges should involve men more in "learning communities, first-year seminars, writing-intensive courses, student-faculty research, study abroad, internships, and capstone seminars."
Questions for future research: How much do colleges consider the different academic needs of male and female learners? Should strategies for promoting student engagement be the same for both?
The impact of diversity programs. My research found that experiences with diversity both inside and outside the classroom are more liberalizing, motivating, and eye-opening for men than women. For example, attending racial- or cultural-awareness workshops or engaging in social diversity — dating, dining, studying, or living with someone of a different race or ethnicity — contributes more strongly to men's desire to improve race relations. In addition, taking ethnic-studies courses and participating in racial-awareness and cultural-awareness workshops give rise to more-progressive gender-role attitudes among male students.
Yet, at the same time, such activities are also often accompanied by heightened feelings of discomfort in male students. Campuses should provide appropriate resources for such students — following up with them in the weeks or even months after their participation in diversity programming to gauge whether they may need counseling or other support.
Questions for future research: Why are men more challenged and conflicted by diversity experiences than women? What specific aspects of diversity programming lead to such outcomes?
Careers and majors. Colleges often find it difficult to attract more women to pursue the traditionally male fields of engineering and computer science. Large numbers of women opt out of the science and engineering pipeline before they attend college, often because of factors beyond colleges' control, such as family influences and early educational experiences.
But colleges are in a position to recruit and retain women who have the ability and preparation for science and engineering careers yet who may nevertheless select other career paths. They have an opportunity to educate students about the ways in which math and science can help improve society and the human condition, particularly at a time of tremendous progress in computer and biological technologies. The more that higher-education institutions can connect scientific concepts to issues that women tend to care about — education, the environment, human rights — the more likely women will become scientists and create change in those areas.
Strategies to increase the number of women in science include summer internships, mentorships, professional-development workshops, and online networks of women in science. They are usually viewed, however, as programmatic supplements rather than integrated into the mainstream curriculum. In fact, we know far less about how to transform the broader culture of academic science.
Questions for future research: How can we make science more appealing to women? What are the characteristics of programs that successfully educate students about the connection between scientific concepts and larger societal concerns?
Besides those aspects of college life, female and male college students' experiences in higher education differ in several other key ways. For example, female students' average income has fallen further behind men's, so they are substantially more concerned than their male counterparts about whether they will have enough money to complete college. Thus, colleges should evaluate whether they allocate student aid and work-study opportunities fairly to women and men, which types of work experiences are most beneficial, and the extent to which women and men have equal access to the most-desirable positions. We should study, for example, whether having a job in the campus bookstore relates to a different set of outcomes than working in the admissions office, in the recreation center, or at the local coffeehouse or a retail store.
Also, despite the fact that college women earn better grades and exhibit a stronger academic orientation than their male counterparts, they tend to suffer from comparatively low academic confidence. In fact, women rate themselves lower than men on nearly every assessment of their academic abilities. Further, these gender differences grow during college. We should learn more about why women rate themselves lower — because they believe they are less capable, or are they simply reluctant to describe themselves as having high ability? — and what conditions account for the widening gender gap in academic self-confidence.
Finally, compared with men, women enter college with higher levels of self-reported stress and lower ratings of their physical and emotional health. Such gender gaps remain significant over four years of college and reflect the fact that men spend more time on activities that can be considered ways to relieve stress (playing sports and video games, partying, and watching television) while women often devote themselves to a range of responsibilities that tend to induce stress (studying, homework, community service, and family responsibilities). Colleges should encourage all students to strike a healthier balance between academics, extracurricular activities, and leisure. We also need to develop a better understanding of what it means for a student to maintain balance.
Although women have a numerical advantage in college, both genders face challenges to their adjustment and development. Just as we need to be concerned about high stress and low self-esteem among women, we must be concerned about growing academic disengagement among men.
And while we aim to encourage all students to become engaged and involved, we must be mindful that the dynamics of those experiences can be quite different for the two genders, especially when it comes to students' interactions with their professors. Thus, institutional efforts aimed at improving the college experience for both genders must consider the distinct needs of each.
Linda Sax is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. This essay was adapted from The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Women and Men, published this month by John Wiley & Sons. Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Women in Science, Beyond the Research University: Overlooked and Undervalued
By KERRY K. KARUKSTIS
The underrepresentation of women in almost all science and engineering fields is a well-documented statistic. The National Academies have issued four significant reports since 2001 examining the status and challenges of women in academic science and engineering and offering recommendations to broaden the participation and advancement of women in those fields. It released its most recent report, "Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty," last month following a study mandated by Congress.
While those prominent studies focus attention and resources on an important issue, much of the emphasis is on those institutions described as Research I universities, using the former designations of the Carnegie classification system of institutions of higher education. Universities with less-extensive levels of research support, such as master's (comprehensive) universities and undergraduate liberal-arts colleges, are widely overlooked.
The primary consideration of Research I campuses might initially appear logical. The importance of basic research science to the American economy as well as the substantial amount of federal support for research on Research I campuses are compelling reasons for gender-equity studies focused on those institutions. The large student enrollments and faculty sizes of Ph.D.-granting institutions further justify making those campuses the focal point of efforts to improve the status of female scientists and engineers. Certainly any issues associated with a given institutional type are also best dealt with through analyses that concentrate on similar populations.
But overlooking other institutions of higher education is shortsighted and potentially harmful to the American scientific enterprise.
The belief that gender disparities are most likely to occur at research universities is itself questionable. The quantitative analysis provided by the American Association of University Professors in the "AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006" report demonstrates conclusively that, even using only a basic assessment of equity in terms of employment, salary, and rank, academic women face gender inequities and challenges at all career stages and at all types of institutions, including non-research-intensive campuses. In fact, seemingly exclusive attention to the challenges of one type of institution may serve to minimize the critical situation at other institution types and even suggest the existence of gender equality.
For example, data in a 2008 report of the National Science Foundation, "Thirty-Three Years of Women in S&E Faculty Positions," indicate that women with science backgrounds at research-intensive institutions have reached percentages at the full-professor level comparable to female scientists at liberal-arts colleges. But such parity was achieved only as the percentage of female scientists at the full-professor level at liberal-arts colleges stagnated (16.9 percent, 16.2 percent, and 15.8 percent in 1999, 2001, and 2003, respectively) while the percentage of female full professors at research institutions rose significantly (11.2 percent in 1999, 13.4 percent in 2001, and 15.6 percent in 2003). Those trends will need to be further examined when more current data are available.
Three immediate suggestions come to mind to better balance the assessment of the status of female scientists and engineers in academe. A key first step is for the programs, professional societies, and organizations that deal with aspects of academic culture and institutional structure that may affect female science and engineering professors to continue and expand their financial support. The Advance program of the National Science Foundation is an outstanding example of a vital program that seeks to develop systemic approaches to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. A second suggestion is to commission separate studies of gender-equity issues for each type of postsecondary institution. Finally, as research studies, panels, conferences, and other committees of experts are assembled to examine the challenges and successes of academic women in science and engineering, organizing bodies should seek inclusion of people from all institutional types.
Additional mechanisms for determining potential experts to analyze the status of academic women in science and engineering, especially in liberal-arts colleges, should be pursued, including surveying college and university administrators for suggestions of leading female faculty members in science and engineering, and tapping the database of Advance grant recipients. For example, the female full professors in chemistry and physics at 20 distinct liberal-arts colleges who participate in the project "Collaborative Research for Horizontal Mentoring Alliances" are one group with experience in promoting the leadership and visibility of women in science and engineering. That project, for which I am principal investigator, involves the formation of five-member alliances of senior female faculty members at different liberal-arts institutions to test a mentorship strategy that tries to enhance the advancement of academic women in science and engineering careers. Many other talented and extraordinary female scientists and engineers beyond the research university are also available to contribute.
Let's use all of our resources to improve the future of the scientific and technological enterprise and enhance America's global competitiveness.
Kerry K. Karukstis is a professor of chemistry at Harvey Mudd College.
________________________________________
http://chronicle.com
Section: Commentary
Volume 55, Issue 41, Page A23
The underrepresentation of women in almost all science and engineering fields is a well-documented statistic. The National Academies have issued four significant reports since 2001 examining the status and challenges of women in academic science and engineering and offering recommendations to broaden the participation and advancement of women in those fields. It released its most recent report, "Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty," last month following a study mandated by Congress.
While those prominent studies focus attention and resources on an important issue, much of the emphasis is on those institutions described as Research I universities, using the former designations of the Carnegie classification system of institutions of higher education. Universities with less-extensive levels of research support, such as master's (comprehensive) universities and undergraduate liberal-arts colleges, are widely overlooked.
The primary consideration of Research I campuses might initially appear logical. The importance of basic research science to the American economy as well as the substantial amount of federal support for research on Research I campuses are compelling reasons for gender-equity studies focused on those institutions. The large student enrollments and faculty sizes of Ph.D.-granting institutions further justify making those campuses the focal point of efforts to improve the status of female scientists and engineers. Certainly any issues associated with a given institutional type are also best dealt with through analyses that concentrate on similar populations.
But overlooking other institutions of higher education is shortsighted and potentially harmful to the American scientific enterprise.
The belief that gender disparities are most likely to occur at research universities is itself questionable. The quantitative analysis provided by the American Association of University Professors in the "AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006" report demonstrates conclusively that, even using only a basic assessment of equity in terms of employment, salary, and rank, academic women face gender inequities and challenges at all career stages and at all types of institutions, including non-research-intensive campuses. In fact, seemingly exclusive attention to the challenges of one type of institution may serve to minimize the critical situation at other institution types and even suggest the existence of gender equality.
For example, data in a 2008 report of the National Science Foundation, "Thirty-Three Years of Women in S&E Faculty Positions," indicate that women with science backgrounds at research-intensive institutions have reached percentages at the full-professor level comparable to female scientists at liberal-arts colleges. But such parity was achieved only as the percentage of female scientists at the full-professor level at liberal-arts colleges stagnated (16.9 percent, 16.2 percent, and 15.8 percent in 1999, 2001, and 2003, respectively) while the percentage of female full professors at research institutions rose significantly (11.2 percent in 1999, 13.4 percent in 2001, and 15.6 percent in 2003). Those trends will need to be further examined when more current data are available.
Three immediate suggestions come to mind to better balance the assessment of the status of female scientists and engineers in academe. A key first step is for the programs, professional societies, and organizations that deal with aspects of academic culture and institutional structure that may affect female science and engineering professors to continue and expand their financial support. The Advance program of the National Science Foundation is an outstanding example of a vital program that seeks to develop systemic approaches to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. A second suggestion is to commission separate studies of gender-equity issues for each type of postsecondary institution. Finally, as research studies, panels, conferences, and other committees of experts are assembled to examine the challenges and successes of academic women in science and engineering, organizing bodies should seek inclusion of people from all institutional types.
Additional mechanisms for determining potential experts to analyze the status of academic women in science and engineering, especially in liberal-arts colleges, should be pursued, including surveying college and university administrators for suggestions of leading female faculty members in science and engineering, and tapping the database of Advance grant recipients. For example, the female full professors in chemistry and physics at 20 distinct liberal-arts colleges who participate in the project "Collaborative Research for Horizontal Mentoring Alliances" are one group with experience in promoting the leadership and visibility of women in science and engineering. That project, for which I am principal investigator, involves the formation of five-member alliances of senior female faculty members at different liberal-arts institutions to test a mentorship strategy that tries to enhance the advancement of academic women in science and engineering careers. Many other talented and extraordinary female scientists and engineers beyond the research university are also available to contribute.
Let's use all of our resources to improve the future of the scientific and technological enterprise and enhance America's global competitiveness.
Kerry K. Karukstis is a professor of chemistry at Harvey Mudd College.
________________________________________
http://chronicle.com
Section: Commentary
Volume 55, Issue 41, Page A23
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Education
May 18, 2009
New Study Ponders the Effect of Professors' Gender on Students' Success in Science
Female students — or, more specifically, female Air Force cadets — are more likely to succeed in introductory-level science courses if those courses are taught by female professors, according to a study by a trio of economists.
The researchers examined the academic records of every student who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2000 to 2008 — more than 9,000 students in all. They found that women, and especially those with high mathematics-SAT scores, performed significantly better in introductory science courses if the courses were taught by women. Over all, the study found, “having a female professor reduces the gender gap in course grades by approximately two-thirds.”
The economists also wondered whether having female professors in introductory-level courses would affect students’ odds of eventually graduating with a science major. Among female students as a whole, the team found no such effect. But among female students with math-SAT scores above 700 — in other words, exactly those who might be likeliest to succeed in science — the study found a strong professor-gender effect.
The study estimates that female students with strong math skills were 26 percentage points more likely to graduate with a science major if all of their intro-level science professors were women than if all of their intro-level science professors were men.
And was there a reverse effect? Did male students abandon science if their intro-level science courses were taught by women? Apparently not. For male students of all abilities, the study did not find any significant professor-gender effects.
You might wonder how safe it is to generalize those findings across higher education, given the Air Force Academy’s military culture and its fraught history of gender politics.
Those are legitimate concerns. But the authors of the paper argue that the academy is unusually fertile ground for a study like this: All of its students are required to take a sequence of introductory science courses, the design of those courses is highly standardized, and students cannot choose which sections they will enroll in.
Because of that uniformity, the study was able to avoid some of the complications that often make it difficult to interpret classroom data. (At a typical college, the researchers would have had to ponder whether the most highly motivated female science students were sorting themselves into class sections taught by female professors.)
The paper’s authors are Scott E. Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Davis; Marianne E. Page, a professor of economics at Davis; and James E. West, a professor of economics at the Air Force Academy. The paper, which was released last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer-reviewed for publication. —David Glenn
New Study Ponders the Effect of Professors' Gender on Students' Success in Science
Female students — or, more specifically, female Air Force cadets — are more likely to succeed in introductory-level science courses if those courses are taught by female professors, according to a study by a trio of economists.
The researchers examined the academic records of every student who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2000 to 2008 — more than 9,000 students in all. They found that women, and especially those with high mathematics-SAT scores, performed significantly better in introductory science courses if the courses were taught by women. Over all, the study found, “having a female professor reduces the gender gap in course grades by approximately two-thirds.”
The economists also wondered whether having female professors in introductory-level courses would affect students’ odds of eventually graduating with a science major. Among female students as a whole, the team found no such effect. But among female students with math-SAT scores above 700 — in other words, exactly those who might be likeliest to succeed in science — the study found a strong professor-gender effect.
The study estimates that female students with strong math skills were 26 percentage points more likely to graduate with a science major if all of their intro-level science professors were women than if all of their intro-level science professors were men.
And was there a reverse effect? Did male students abandon science if their intro-level science courses were taught by women? Apparently not. For male students of all abilities, the study did not find any significant professor-gender effects.
You might wonder how safe it is to generalize those findings across higher education, given the Air Force Academy’s military culture and its fraught history of gender politics.
Those are legitimate concerns. But the authors of the paper argue that the academy is unusually fertile ground for a study like this: All of its students are required to take a sequence of introductory science courses, the design of those courses is highly standardized, and students cannot choose which sections they will enroll in.
Because of that uniformity, the study was able to avoid some of the complications that often make it difficult to interpret classroom data. (At a typical college, the researchers would have had to ponder whether the most highly motivated female science students were sorting themselves into class sections taught by female professors.)
The paper’s authors are Scott E. Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Davis; Marianne E. Page, a professor of economics at Davis; and James E. West, a professor of economics at the Air Force Academy. The paper, which was released last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer-reviewed for publication. —David Glenn
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
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.
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.
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.
Friday, January 30, 2009
A Measure of Equity: Women's Progress in Higher Education
Judy Touchton with Caryn McTighe Musil and Kathryn Peltier Campbell
ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9796181-6-1
SKU: EQUITY
Year Published: 2008
Pages: 37
A Measure of Equity: Women’s Progress in Higher Education presents the only current comprehensive overview of data on women’s status in higher education. It documents areas of progress and identifies needed action to move even further down the path towards equity for women in higher education. This publication details specific areas of concern and actions that would advance gender equity in colleges and universities. The research examines women’s access to college, areas of study in undergraduate and post-graduate work, and women’s status as faculty, administrators, and college presidents.
ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9796181-6-1
SKU: EQUITY
Year Published: 2008
Pages: 37
A Measure of Equity: Women’s Progress in Higher Education presents the only current comprehensive overview of data on women’s status in higher education. It documents areas of progress and identifies needed action to move even further down the path towards equity for women in higher education. This publication details specific areas of concern and actions that would advance gender equity in colleges and universities. The research examines women’s access to college, areas of study in undergraduate and post-graduate work, and women’s status as faculty, administrators, and college presidents.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: January 19, 2009
With the inauguration of an administration avowedly committed to Science as the grand elixir for the nation’s economic, environmental and psycho-reputational woes, a number of scientists say that now is the time to tackle a chronic conundrum of their beloved enterprise: how to attract more women into the fold, and keep them once they are there.
Researchers who have long promoted the cause of women in science view the incoming administration with a mix of optimism and we’ll-see-ism. On the one hand, they said, the new president’s apparent enthusiasm for science, and the concomitant rise of “geek chic” and “smart is the new cool” memes, can only redound to the benefit of all scientists, particularly if the enthusiasm is followed by a bolus of new research funds. On the other hand, they said, how about appointing a woman to the president’s personal Poindexter club, the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology? The designated leaders so far include superstars like Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, and Eric Lander, genome meister.
The Rosalind Franklin Society, a group devoted to “recognizing the work of prominent women scientists,” has suggested possible co-chairwomen for the panel. Its candidates include Shirley Ann Jackson, a nuclear physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist and president of Princeton University. Others have proposed Jacqueline Barton, a chemist and MacArthur fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Or, given the increasing importance of brain research, how about a prominent female neuroscientist like Nancy Kanwisher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Carla Shatz of Stanford University?
“People say, oh, we shouldn’t have quotas, but diversity is a form of excellence, and there are plenty of outstanding women out there,” Jo Handelsman, president of the Franklin society and a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in an interview. “You don’t have to lower your standards in the slightest — you just have to pay attention.”
Some would like to see novel approaches to treating systemic problems that often work against women’s scientific ambitions. Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden of the University of California, Berkeley, have gathered extensive data showing stark male-female differences in the family structure and personal lives of academic researchers at the top tiers of the profession.
Surveying outcomes for 160,000 Ph.D. recipients across the United States, the researchers determined that 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children, compared with only 44 percent of their tenured female colleagues. Twelve years or more after receiving their doctorates, tenured women were more than twice as likely as tenured men to be single and significantly more likely to be divorced. And lest all of this look like “personal choice,” when the researchers asked 8,700 faculty members in the University of California system about family and work issues, nearly 40 percent of the women agreed with the statement, “I had fewer children than I wanted,” compared with less than 20 percent of the men. The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”
From a purely Darwinian point of view, expecting a young woman to sacrifice her reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement is simply too much, and yet the structure of academic research, in which one must spend one’s 20s and early 30s as a poorly compensated and minimally empowered graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, and the remainder of one’s 30s and into the low 40s working madly to earn tenure, can demand exactly that.
Nor do all young men in science accept the notion that their lab bench must double as a sleeping cot while their wives take care of the kids. In a new survey of 19,000 doctoral students at the University of California, Dr. Mason and her colleagues found that while two-thirds of the respondents either had or planned to have children, 84 percent of the women and 74 percent of the men expressed worry about the family-unfriendliness of their intended profession, and many had changed their plans accordingly. While 40 percent of the male science graduate students and 31 percent of the women said they had begun their Ph.D. programs intent on pursuing an academic career — still considered the premier path to science glory — a year or more into their studies, only 28 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women still hoped to become research scientists at a university.
Dr. Mason and other legal experts suggest that President Obama might be able to change things significantly for young women in science — and young men — by signing an executive order that would provide added family leave and parental benefits to the recipients of federal grants, a huge pool of people that includes many research scientists.
Whatever the impediments, women have made great strides in most areas of science. According to Joan Burrelli of the National Science Foundation, whereas 50 years ago women earned a piddling 8 percent of the science and engineering doctorates, by 2006 they claimed a 40 percent share. In 1973, only 6 percent of the Ph.D. scientists employed full time in academia, business or elsewhere were women; by 2006 the number had risen to 27 percent. Over that same time frame, women’s share of full professorships in the sciences quadrupled, to about 20 percent. Yet the stats vary sharply from field to field: 26 percent of full professors in the life sciences are women, but in physics, 6 percent.
For many female physicists, the mystery of women’s slow progress through their ranks is nearly as baffling as the research mysteries they confront in the lab. Of course, only 6 percent of physics professors are female; only 4 to 6 percent of the matter in the universe is visible. “Sound familiar?” Evalyn Gates, the assistant director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, said wryly.
She has urged her colleagues to attack the problem of low female numbers as they would any scientific problem, by systematically gathering data, checking their detectors, factoring out background noise. Yes, girls and women leak out of the pipeline in comparatively greater numbers than males for every scientific discipline, she said, but they fall out of physics first and fastest. Why should it be, she said, that almost half of high school students in Advanced Placement physics classes are girls, but women earn only a fifth of bachelor’s degrees in physics? What turns girls away from physics so early?
Some have suggested that girls just can’t handle the advanced math of physics. Yet in an analysis of high school students’ performance on standardized math tests, published last summer in the journal Science, Janet Hyde and her colleagues found no gender differences in average performance, and even at the uppermost tails of achievement the discrepancies were minor and inconsistent: among whites who scored in the top 1 percent, there were two boys for every girl, whereas among Asian top scorers, there was one full girl for every nine-tenths of a boy. Besides, said Dr. Gates, female students earn half of the bachelor’s degrees in another math-heavy discipline called — mathematics.
Others have insisted that women just don’t like physics, perhaps because it seems cold and abstract, concerned with things rather than the flesh-and-blood focus of female-friendly fields like biology. But such reasoning, Dr. Gates said, cannot account for the fact that women earn half of the undergraduate degrees in chemistry, which is not quite plush toy material. “Something different is going on with physics, and we don’t know what it is yet,” she said. The culture? Bubble-headed television shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” with its four nerdy male physics prodigies and the fetching blond girl next door?
The difficulties are not confined to America. Surveying some 1,350 female physicists in 70 countries, Rachel Ivie and Stacy Guo of the American Institute of Physics found that, worse than family balance issues or lack of day care options, was the problem of public perception. The women were passionate about their work. They didn’t choose physics; physics chose them. Yet 80 percent agreed that attitudes about women in physics needed a serious overhaul.
As long as we’re making geek chic, let’s lose the Einstein ’do and moustache.
Published: January 19, 2009
With the inauguration of an administration avowedly committed to Science as the grand elixir for the nation’s economic, environmental and psycho-reputational woes, a number of scientists say that now is the time to tackle a chronic conundrum of their beloved enterprise: how to attract more women into the fold, and keep them once they are there.
Researchers who have long promoted the cause of women in science view the incoming administration with a mix of optimism and we’ll-see-ism. On the one hand, they said, the new president’s apparent enthusiasm for science, and the concomitant rise of “geek chic” and “smart is the new cool” memes, can only redound to the benefit of all scientists, particularly if the enthusiasm is followed by a bolus of new research funds. On the other hand, they said, how about appointing a woman to the president’s personal Poindexter club, the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology? The designated leaders so far include superstars like Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, and Eric Lander, genome meister.
The Rosalind Franklin Society, a group devoted to “recognizing the work of prominent women scientists,” has suggested possible co-chairwomen for the panel. Its candidates include Shirley Ann Jackson, a nuclear physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist and president of Princeton University. Others have proposed Jacqueline Barton, a chemist and MacArthur fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Or, given the increasing importance of brain research, how about a prominent female neuroscientist like Nancy Kanwisher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Carla Shatz of Stanford University?
“People say, oh, we shouldn’t have quotas, but diversity is a form of excellence, and there are plenty of outstanding women out there,” Jo Handelsman, president of the Franklin society and a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in an interview. “You don’t have to lower your standards in the slightest — you just have to pay attention.”
Some would like to see novel approaches to treating systemic problems that often work against women’s scientific ambitions. Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden of the University of California, Berkeley, have gathered extensive data showing stark male-female differences in the family structure and personal lives of academic researchers at the top tiers of the profession.
Surveying outcomes for 160,000 Ph.D. recipients across the United States, the researchers determined that 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children, compared with only 44 percent of their tenured female colleagues. Twelve years or more after receiving their doctorates, tenured women were more than twice as likely as tenured men to be single and significantly more likely to be divorced. And lest all of this look like “personal choice,” when the researchers asked 8,700 faculty members in the University of California system about family and work issues, nearly 40 percent of the women agreed with the statement, “I had fewer children than I wanted,” compared with less than 20 percent of the men. The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”
From a purely Darwinian point of view, expecting a young woman to sacrifice her reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement is simply too much, and yet the structure of academic research, in which one must spend one’s 20s and early 30s as a poorly compensated and minimally empowered graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, and the remainder of one’s 30s and into the low 40s working madly to earn tenure, can demand exactly that.
Nor do all young men in science accept the notion that their lab bench must double as a sleeping cot while their wives take care of the kids. In a new survey of 19,000 doctoral students at the University of California, Dr. Mason and her colleagues found that while two-thirds of the respondents either had or planned to have children, 84 percent of the women and 74 percent of the men expressed worry about the family-unfriendliness of their intended profession, and many had changed their plans accordingly. While 40 percent of the male science graduate students and 31 percent of the women said they had begun their Ph.D. programs intent on pursuing an academic career — still considered the premier path to science glory — a year or more into their studies, only 28 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women still hoped to become research scientists at a university.
Dr. Mason and other legal experts suggest that President Obama might be able to change things significantly for young women in science — and young men — by signing an executive order that would provide added family leave and parental benefits to the recipients of federal grants, a huge pool of people that includes many research scientists.
Whatever the impediments, women have made great strides in most areas of science. According to Joan Burrelli of the National Science Foundation, whereas 50 years ago women earned a piddling 8 percent of the science and engineering doctorates, by 2006 they claimed a 40 percent share. In 1973, only 6 percent of the Ph.D. scientists employed full time in academia, business or elsewhere were women; by 2006 the number had risen to 27 percent. Over that same time frame, women’s share of full professorships in the sciences quadrupled, to about 20 percent. Yet the stats vary sharply from field to field: 26 percent of full professors in the life sciences are women, but in physics, 6 percent.
For many female physicists, the mystery of women’s slow progress through their ranks is nearly as baffling as the research mysteries they confront in the lab. Of course, only 6 percent of physics professors are female; only 4 to 6 percent of the matter in the universe is visible. “Sound familiar?” Evalyn Gates, the assistant director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, said wryly.
She has urged her colleagues to attack the problem of low female numbers as they would any scientific problem, by systematically gathering data, checking their detectors, factoring out background noise. Yes, girls and women leak out of the pipeline in comparatively greater numbers than males for every scientific discipline, she said, but they fall out of physics first and fastest. Why should it be, she said, that almost half of high school students in Advanced Placement physics classes are girls, but women earn only a fifth of bachelor’s degrees in physics? What turns girls away from physics so early?
Some have suggested that girls just can’t handle the advanced math of physics. Yet in an analysis of high school students’ performance on standardized math tests, published last summer in the journal Science, Janet Hyde and her colleagues found no gender differences in average performance, and even at the uppermost tails of achievement the discrepancies were minor and inconsistent: among whites who scored in the top 1 percent, there were two boys for every girl, whereas among Asian top scorers, there was one full girl for every nine-tenths of a boy. Besides, said Dr. Gates, female students earn half of the bachelor’s degrees in another math-heavy discipline called — mathematics.
Others have insisted that women just don’t like physics, perhaps because it seems cold and abstract, concerned with things rather than the flesh-and-blood focus of female-friendly fields like biology. But such reasoning, Dr. Gates said, cannot account for the fact that women earn half of the undergraduate degrees in chemistry, which is not quite plush toy material. “Something different is going on with physics, and we don’t know what it is yet,” she said. The culture? Bubble-headed television shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” with its four nerdy male physics prodigies and the fetching blond girl next door?
The difficulties are not confined to America. Surveying some 1,350 female physicists in 70 countries, Rachel Ivie and Stacy Guo of the American Institute of Physics found that, worse than family balance issues or lack of day care options, was the problem of public perception. The women were passionate about their work. They didn’t choose physics; physics chose them. Yet 80 percent agreed that attitudes about women in physics needed a serious overhaul.
As long as we’re making geek chic, let’s lose the Einstein ’do and moustache.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
On Campus with Women
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
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
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
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