Talking about bias
There is a discussion on Inside HigherEd about the National Academy of Sciences report. Go check it out if you are interested.
I am increasingly frustrated with the issue of discrimination against women in academia. Rhetorically, women are being put in the position of having to prove that discrimination exists, against the claims of their opponents, who claim that the gender ratio in science is in fact due to other factors (biology, interests, etc.).
I don’t like the way this debate is framed. It puts women in a weak position, to argue the evidence for their own poor treatment.
And anyway, I have no interest in proving that discrimination exists. I would much rather believe that discrimination (or it’s softer cousin, "bias") does not exist and just focus on helping myself succeed.
On the other hand, if even the small group of bloggers who write about gender and science and academia don’t even bother to comment on Internet discussion forums about gender, science, and academia, where will things be? Before stepping into the fray, what I need to figure out is how we can reframe this discussion.
I just posted this over on that site, thanks to the inspiration of your post. I hope you don’t mind cross-posting here. If you do, please feel free to delete it.
At the Crossroads
I’m a woman about to complete a Ph.D. in a hard science in a respectable program. And I’m trying to figure out whether I want to stay in academia. The answer seems to be that academia doesn’t want me on my terms.
Some of those terms are entirely personal, and (I think) non gender related: I want research to be a spice in an existence whose main dish is teaching. This means that I’m not particularly interested in an R1, right now. (However, perhaps if I finished my program and worked at a post-doc for a bit, my priorities would shift.)
Some of these terms are structural: There are not a ton of primarily-undergrad job postings in my field right now. Usually a post-doc would give me a few extra years of flexibility to find a good fit. However, due to my husband’s career, I have limited geographical mobility — I can ask him to move once, but not the two or three times required for your average “one or two post-docs before getting an tenure track job” scheme in the sciences. And I need to live in an area where he can get the sort of industrial R+D position that his Ph.D. qualifies him for and which he wants. This is a gender issue — your average female Ph.D. is much more likely to be constrained by her partner’s career than your average male Ph.D.
Academia is the only career option I’m considering that doesn’t offer either a single move or the opportunity to stay where I am now. All the other options (industry in my field, management consulting, high school teaching) are concentrated in large enough cities that my husband can probably find something promising. Most of the other options pay more. (Even high school teaching in my urban setting would not pay less than many assistant professor positions.) And some of them offer more family-friendly lifestyles.
So I fear that I’m going to end up being a leak in the pipeline. Is it for lack of interest? Well, maybe, if you define “lack of interest” as being “lack of a passion so great that it overwhelms all other priorities in your life”. If this were the same standard men were held to, it would be at least equitable. Academia demands a very flexible personal life. As long as men are more likely to have the required flexibility, then there’s a gender bias. It’s not unique to academia, but academia’s demands certainly exacerbate the effects of that difference.
The solution is for society’s gender norms to shift enough that it’s just as likely for a man to be either the primary child-care provider or the one in the more flexible career his wife. At that point we’d be better able to gauge whether “interest” means “I’m really interested in this field”, or “I’m more interested in this field than anything else in life.”
Comment by Emily — October 4, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
I’m frustrated with the constant attention on “Are Men different that Women” like the recent 20/20 bit called Gender is more than Sex, where they spent the whole show telling us how the female brain is different than the male brain, and that it reacts differently to different stimuli.
My response to that program was “Yes of course female brains are different, move on!” What we need is a change in thinking and an embrace of what is different between men and women. Once we get over that, we can focus on the need to teach an acceptance of a “non-traditional” career paths with the same career goals. Unfortunately, I think doing this would be a lot like trying to change how medical residents are treated. It’s the “my feet were in the fire and so you have to burn a little to earn your wings” mentality.
Mostly, we women ourselves have to be more vocal, and more pro-active towards changing the status quo. Easier said than done.
Comment by SciMom — October 4, 2006 @ 11:17 pm
If you accept that being a professional researcher is so competative, unrewarding, and difficult that only an obsessive psychopath would do it, then the question of under-representation of women in science becomes the same as that of under-representation in mental health wards and prisons.
The only difference is that looney bins and jails don’t have “star-geniuses”, who get paid huge amounts to tack their names onto papers written by enslaved postdocs and forget what the inside of a lab looks like. Do you allow run-on sentences in this blog?
Comment by Lab Lemming — October 5, 2006 @ 3:08 am
Great work, Emily. And good luck with your career decisions. Is this your first time here?
Comment by drshellie — October 5, 2006 @ 3:49 am
I think doing this would be a lot like trying to change how medical residents are treated
It’s my understanding that medical residents are in fact treated, though not particularly well, considerably better these days than they were only a few years ago.
I don’t mean to pick a fight — I agree with what you’re saying — but just want to point out that your analogy offers some reason for optimism as well as the promise of much work still to do.
I have no interest in proving that discrimination exists.
My position is that conclusive evidence is already widely available, so anyone who wants me to re-prove that women face discrimination in our society is arguing either from ignorance or in bad faith — most likely the latter. Which, having read through the responses on IHE, is why I won’t be taking part in that discussion.
Comment by Bill Hooker — October 5, 2006 @ 3:08 pm
What amazes me is the accusation that women are forming a special interest group to accuse universities of bias in order to get special perks (as in the NYT column by Tierney). This is SO FAR from my experiences (science departments in American R1 universities, plus short stays at two foreign universities) as to be laughable.
Propter doc has mentioned that she knows women who exhibit an attitude of entitlement– that they should be hired for jobs because they are female and consequently don’t have to work as hard. I don’t know ANYONE like this. Thoughts??
Comment by drshellie — October 5, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
I have known one or two slackers who have tried this excuse as a means of self-justifying why it doesn’t matter that they aren’t cutting the mustard.
Given that I know over a hundred female scientists, this would costitute a lunitic fringe- well outside 2 sigma. However, I would not be surprised if men in Bill’s “latter” catagory preferentially steer these outliers towards ignorant journalists looking for a story with a contrarian bent.
Comment by Lab Lemming — October 8, 2006 @ 8:51 am
I’ve never known a woman who felt a sense of entitlement in science - regarding being hired for a job, getting a grant, a nice lab, etc. Never. If anything, they feel like it’s a small miracle when something positive happens!
Regarding my own experiences, I have often observed that whenever two women are talking together (heaven forbid three or more!) that male faculty/colleagues immediately get defensive or suspicious. It makes me laugh - if women got defensive every time two or more men talked together, we’d never get anything done. I can’t help but think that the male interpretation of women forming a ’special interest group’ is based on the assumption that women in groups MUST always be talking about men (either positively or negatively) and it couldn’t possibly be that we are talking about science…
Comment by Pam — October 13, 2006 @ 11:50 pm
Women do deserve jobs because we don’t have to work as hard as men to do as much as they do. I can do 3 times the work my male colleagues do in the same amount of time, because my brain is different: I can multitask, and they can’t.
Comment by MsPhD — October 14, 2006 @ 12:17 am
There are several dumb-ass, clueless comments over there that basically sum up the problem. But I am glad to see at least an equal number of cogent, thoughtful posts (such as Dr Shelley from Cornell) that reframe the debate clearly and concisely.
The tyrrany of the majority does make the way they asked that question (”In your opinion …”). No one wants to know that there is bias and discrimination in our happy little academic land. No one wants to know that they are doing the unconscious discriminating!
Why, in this thorny issue, is it kosher to attend to the least scientific way of doing research - armchair speculation from not-disinterested parties?
Comment by Joolya — October 27, 2006 @ 2:08 pm