How MIT (Sorta) Solved Its Gender Problem

(Flickr/Infinitely Curious)

As Monica Potts notes at The American Prospect, there have been a number of stories about women's leadership this week:

No fewer than three news articles this week detail how hard it is for women, both students and professors, at elite campuses. The New York Times reports that MIT, which made an effort some years ago to correct for a lack of female professors on campus, has made gains in recruiting and honoring female professors. But that's created a weird dynamic in which women who win accolades question whether their gender plays a role and feel they have to navigate gender stereotypes on campus. The Daily Beast writes about a study that shows women trail men in campus leadership positions as students, and another Beast article interviews the presidents of UPenn and Brown, both women, about how there's a similar leadership gap at their colleges.

Though the Times story Monica links to leads with the remaining problems of cultural sexism, what I think is interesting about the MIT situation is this: MIT story is that the school found a problem, studied it, and made steps to correct it. And it worked! MIT made significant gains in female representation among professors. It even has a female president, Susan Hockfield. It's a very MIT way of going about it, when you think about it.

Of course, that didn't eliminate all problems of women in academia. As the Times reported, problems remain: there's still a perceived problem that women are unfairly favored (even though MIT took steps to ensure qualified candidates would be hired), and the school still struggles (like all higher ed institutions do) accommodating academic couples.

What this illustrates is that schools really get down to business and recognize that institutional sexism is a problem that needs fixing, there are steps they can take to get there. And recognizing that there's a problem is an important first step.

Women Spend Less Time on Research in Academia

(Flickr/Marshall Astor - Food Pornographer)

Via Inside Higher Ed, Academe is publishing a new study that finds women in academia are routinely given more departmental service duties -- duties that often aren't considered when considering promotions. The study examined 350 faculty members at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and found:

Although associate professors of both sexes worked similar amounts of time overall—about sixty-four hours a week—the distribution of work time varied considerably. Men spent seven and a half hours more a week on their research than did women. Even if these differences in research time occurred only during semesters, not during summer or holiday breaks, this would mean that men spent in excess of two hundred more hours on their research each year than women. On the other hand, women associate professors taught an hour more each week than men, mentored an additional two hours a week, and spent nearly five hours more a week on service. This translates to women spending roughly 220 more hours on teaching, mentoring, and service over two semesters than men at that rank.

In other words, when it comes to promotion in academia it's research that matters -- and men are getting to spend more time on research than women. In many ways, it's the equivalent of the housework paradox; women spend just enough more time on household duties than men often translating into less time working those extra hours that might get you promoted.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but this study just confirms what I learned anecdotally from women I've interviewed in academia. Women are often assigned to more administrative and teaching duties while their male peers are left to do more research and publish more studies. It will take some serious cultural changes to alter this pattern.

New Study: Women In Academia Behind in Promotions

Today the Modern Language Association of America released a report that examines the gender disparities in academic careers. This is something I wrote about a couple years ago for Campus Progress (in a three-part series). Like any kind of advancement and pay equity situation, the reasons for this are complicated. The good thing about this study, though, is it actually examines some of the reasons why women advance in academia more slowly than their male counterparts do.

• Women spend two fewer hours per week on research and writing. In many institutions, the quality and volume of papers published is one of the key factors considered for advancement. Those hours add up over time, and it's no wonder that women are struggling to keep up the publishing rate with their male peers.
• Women spend more time with feedback (grading or comments) and course preparation than their male peers. If you're wondering where that extra time for research comes from, this is it. In other words, women in academia are spending more time on the teaching element of their jobs while men tend to weight toward the research element of their jobs.

Both are important components to academic institutions, but by placing an emphasis on research alone when it comes to promotion, that leaves female professors behind.

The good news is that parenting has an impact of only a few months' delay in promotion, both for men and women, but the bad news is that men report greater overall job satisfaction. MLA's report also comes with some recommendations for institutions, so it's worth reading the key findings (PDF).

College and University Faculties Experience Demographic Crunch

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education’s news blog, a new study (PDF) from the American Council on Education shows that the traditional methods of promoting faculty through department chair, dean, and chief academic officer may soon become a thing of the past. The problem is twofold: First, since mandatory retirement ended in 1994 there are far more older professors than ever, and the recent squeeze on investments has caused many to delay retirement. Second, there are very few young faculty (under the age of 34) in permanent positions. Many doctoral students are taking longer to complete their programs or taking time off (especially women) once they’ve completed them. Community colleges in particular have many faculty members who work part-time or come to teaching as a second career.

This is especially bad for the promotion of women and minorities because they make up so few of the younger permanent faculty. According to the study, “Women under the age of 45 in permanent positions make up 5 percent of faculty at four-year institutions and 6 percent of community college faculty. People of color under the age of 45 in permanent positions represent 4 percent of faculty at four-year institutions, and 6 percent of faculty at community colleges.” In other words, when senior faculty look around at the permanent faculty for promotion, most of the candidates are going to be white dudes.

The study’s authors call for universities, colleges, and community colleges to reevaluate the methods they use for promotion. They may have to start looking at faculty with less experience than they might traditionally have in the past. Perhaps schools should start to include other life experiences when evaluating a candidate for promotion rather than strictly looking at academic experience. In any case, once older faculty do start to retire, academia will be facing major problems to fill leadership positions.

Cross posted at Pushback.

Ms. Ph.D.

This article from Inside Higher Ed yesterday talked about a study from the University of Washington Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education entitled "Finally Equal Footing for Women in Social Science Careers?" The question mark pretty much says everything.

Generally, the evidence is very positive for women — as their careers start. Women are slightly more likely than men to have their first jobs on the tenure track (42 percent vs. 40 percent) and slightly less likely than men to have faculty jobs off the tenure track (26 percent vs. 28 percent). But these figures reverse themselves 6 to 10 years after a Ph.D., at which point men are more likely to have tenure or jobs outside of academe (generally with higher salaries than those for professors) and women are more likely to have jobs off the tenure track.

So in other words, as soon as women get higher up in academia or as soon as they start having children -- a lot of academics put off children until they get through tenure -- the picture looks much less rosy. Additionally the article notes the difference in partners of those in academia:

Men are more likely to be married 6-10 years out (79 percent to 71 percent). But the more significant difference may be who male and female social scientists marry. Women still “marry up,” the report says, noting that women in the survey are much more likely to be married to fellow Ph.D.’s while men are more likely to be married to people with less education than they have.

Just this week, a Stanford University study noted that academic woman at top research universities are more likely than their male counterparts to be married to fellow academics — and noted that this makes their career advancement in academe more difficult as they need to navigate dual-career issues. The study on the social sciences suggests that this situation extends well beyond the top universities examined by Stanford.

Generally speaking, academics tend to marry academics, but this seems to be an important and significant life choice. There is a great deal of history behind the whole notion of "marrying up," but this study suggests that such a notion may actually hurt a woman's career. A lot of social research shows that in couples where both partners are driven career-types -- especially when there are children involved, the woman's career often tends to take a back seat to the man's.

It seems that before women get bogged down in the 6-10 years out of a Ph.D. program, they succeed on almost equal terms. The study is just another piece of the social science research that tends to show women "volunteering" to take the back seat for the sake of her partner.

Overstretched Professors

Inside Higher Ed reviews a collection of essays from women in academia called Unfinished Agendas: New and Continuing Gender Challenges in Higher Education. The conclusion the review draws from the book is that while women are getting increasingly represented in the academy, they still aren't achieving gender parity with men.

Once women earn tenure and arrive at the institution they immediately begin getting pulled into various "service" commitments. This includes heading committees, become program coordinators, or take other leadership roles. While this is good for women that long to go into administration at a university, it often pulls female professors away from research.

I think the urge is to make sure women are represented in leadership roles but when this pulls time away from their principal mission of research, it becomes a bad thing. This particular problem with women in academia is something I've seen in other professions as well. Successful women are often overstretched. They're constantly asked to take on more commitments that they feel they cannot say no to.

"People who think racism is a thing of the past"

Via Chronicle's Footnoted blog: Oh No a WofC PhD responds to Bitch PhD's whining about how she can't afford to live on what her household income is. On No a WofC PhD has a "shame list," basically a list of all the things that piss her off about being an academic. Two things stuck out to me:

• I chose a profession in which I have to work with people who think racism is a thing of the past, LGBT people are “gross” and “sinful,” and who when hiring decisions are made never hire these people but are more than happy to fill the adjunct ranks with them
• I chose a profession based on inequality in which women and people of color make up the ranks of the lowest paid, least tenured, and most over-worked (through demands placed on them to do extra teaching loads or not be asked back the following semester or year, by being asked to officially or unofficially mentor all the people in their identity group, and teach most if not all of the courses associated with their identity group)

I wrote a while back about women in academia, but women of color especially have a hard time getting placed in prestigious (and not so prestigious) institutions as full-time tenured professors. While institutions are generally moving away from the tenure model, I think it's especially true that these institutions are more than happy to hire in their lower ranks but have different standards that are much harder to meet if women have pregnancies. I think Oh No a WofC PhD put it in a frank and honest way. These professors and deans don't think of themselves as perpetuating racial and gender divides, but they are.

Enigmatic Acadamy

My apologies for so few posts lately. In the meantime, my part two is up.

Webprint.

Robert Kuttner has an article on the future of newspapers over at CJR. He delves into the differences between newspapers and online journalism and ultimately concludes that one cannot exist without the other. What I thought interesting, was Kuttner's history on my (sort of) hometown newspaper, the Strib.

At greatest risk are newspapers in between—the mid-sized regional metropolitan dailies, like The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. For example, when McClatchy bought the hugely profitable Star Tribune from the Cowles family in 1998, the paper was one of the Internet pioneers. The family had invested heavily in startribune.com. But when the dot-com bubble burst, and profit margins fell from over 30 percent to under 20 percent, McClatchy began disinvesting. To make matters worse, the innovative startribune.com was ordered to convert to the technology of McClatchy Interactive, which was based on the successful site of another McClatchy paper, the Raleigh News & Observer. “We lost at least a year,” says one reporter. And not long after the technical overhaul was complete, the paper was sold again; the Web staff is now scrambling to disengage from an alien technology that it never liked. Sources at the paper say that Web traffic and Web advertising revenue were close to flat in 2006, while they rose sharply at most newspapers.

Kuttner also delves slightly into the Google Books dilemma, but I foundJeffrey Toobin's article inthe New Yorker (Feb. 5) much more informative. Google Books is somewhat of its own subject. The problems with Google books have a lot more to do with copyright and public access. The opponents to the project may end up actually helping Google:

A federal court in New York is considering two challenges to the project, one brought by several writers and the Authors Guild, the other by a group of publishers, who are also, curiously, partners in Google Book Search. Both sets of plaintiffs claim that the library component of the project violates copyright law. Like most federal lawsuits, these cases appear likely to be settled before they go to trial, and the terms of any such deal will shape the future of digital books. Google, in an effort to put the lawsuits behind it, may agree to pay the plaintiffs more than a court would require; but, by doing so, the company would discourage potential competitors. To put it another way, being taken to court and charged with copyright infringement on a large scale might be the best thing that ever happens to Google's foray into the printed word.

By setting a legal president, which Google has every reason to think it would win, they would break open the wall between copyright and online. I was surprised when doing a recent search for scholarly articles that these in particular are password protected more than any other kind of information on the Web. This seems counterintuitive. The research was conducted in the interest of adding to collective knowledge. By saying that this kind of information is at a premium, it's pushing a kind of elitism about academic research. Not only do you have to be of a certain class to study a topic, but you also have to be of a certain class to access information on a topic.

The Academic Ceiling

Also, check out my story over at Campus Progress on women in academia pegged to the rise of incoming President Faust at Harvard.