STEM and motherhood

It is the same as with the wage gap:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2012) — Women with advanced degrees in math-intensive academic fields drop out of fast-track research careers primarily because they want children – not because their performance is devalued or they are shortchanged during interviewing and hiring, according to a new study at Cornell University. [...]

For the study, Williams and Ceci analyzed data related to the academic careers of women and men with and without children in academic fields, including math-heavy ones. They found that before becoming mothers, women have careers equivalent to or better than men’s. “They are paid and promoted the same as men, and are more likely to be interviewed and hired in the first place,” Williams said.

The study builds on previous research by Williams and Ceci published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that women in math-intensive fields did not face discrimination in hiring, publishing or funding.

And while the following studies link is dead by now, there still is Glenn's blog post:

In this one, three researchers at Cornell University analyzed some 400 existing studies and concluded that, although women have closed the gender gap in math test scores, their representation in fields like engineering doesn’t reflect that achievement. Why not? Their conclusion is the same as in the other studies I’ve reported on – women drop out of the profession to have kids. And as in the other studies, women and men begin their careers on the same level, but women tend to opt out of the labor force (or limit their time in it)to devote time to family while men tend not to.

As the authors state, corroborating much pre-existing literature on the subject,

“The one research finding related to the underrepresentation of women in all academic careers, not just those that are math-intensive, that is robust, incontrovertible, and based on up-to-date information, is that women’s fertility choices, and the timing of when to have children, are powerful predictors of career success…”

STEM and role models for girls

Tangential interesting:

The researchers found that feminine STEM role models decreased girls' self-rated math interest, ability and short-term success expectations. They also had a negative impact on girls' future plans to study math among girls who did not identify with STEM [...]

Replicating past research, this work suggests that role models whose success seems unobtainable can make young students feel threatened rather than motivated. But even if they see feminine STEM role models, girls who do not care for math or science might not be motivated to like these fields.

"Rather than opening these girls' minds to new possibilities, the feminine STEM role model seemed to shut them further," said Sekaquaptewa, U-M professor of psychology.

The overall study raises the possibility that role models who counter more than one competing stereotype (women can be good at math or be feminine, but not both) are less effective than role models who just counter one (e.g., a typical woman who excels in STEM). The researchers also say that young girls may see their success as difficult to emulate if they believe that women in STEM are "too good" to be role models.

Taking a look at this sentence again: "But even if they see feminine STEM role models, girls who do not care for math or science might not be motivated to like these fields.". Next logical step, force them into STEM at gunpoint.

Another study....this time stem

I blogged about this study before, here is a direct link:

Understanding current causes of women’s underrepresentation in science - Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams - 2010

Explanations for women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination in grant and manuscript reviewing, interviewing, and hiring. Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains. [...] Based on a review of the past 20 y of data, we suggest that some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current
causes of women’s lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women’s underrepresentation.

We conclude that differential gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources attributable to
choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in addressing meaningful limitations deterring women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today. Addressing today’s causes of underrepresentation requires focusing on education and policy changes
that will make institutions responsive to differing biological realities of the sexes.

[...]As noted, women in math-intensive fields are interviewed and hired slightly in excess of their representation among PhDs applying for tenure-track positions. The primary factors in women’s underrepresentation are preferences
and choices—both freely made and constrained: “Women choose at a young age not to pursue math-intensive careers, with
few adolescent girls expressing desires to be engineers or physicists, preferring instead to be medical doctors, veterinarians, biologists, psychologists, and lawyers. Females make this choice despite earning higher math and science grades than males throughout schooling”

About Stem-fields....

Didn't I blog about this before? Not too sure, anyhow collected from F&F/Glenn's old blog:

Women's Choices, Not Abilities, Keep Them out of Math-Intensive Fields, Experts Argue - ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) - Dr. Stephen Ceci and his colleague Wendy Williams:

Williams and Ceci also reviewed research on sex discrimination and decided that it is no longer a major factor. In fact, one large-scale national study found that women are actually slightly more likely than men to be invited to interview for and to be offered tenure-track jobs in math-intensive STEM fields.

Instead, Williams and Ceci think the problem is that women actually choose not to go into math-heavy fields, or drop out once they have started. “When you look at surveys of adolescent boys and girls and you say to them, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up,’ you never see girls saying, ‘I want to be a physicist or an engineer,’” Ceci says. That doesn’t mean they’re rejecting science, but they’re more likely to want to be physicians or veterinarians.

And those preferences persist. Studies of college students find that women are more interested in organic and social fields, while men are more interested in systematizing things. And indeed, more than half of new medical doctors and biologists are women today — and in veterinary medicine, women are more than 75% of new graduates.

I ran a piece recently on a study done by Cornell researchers led by Dr. Stephen Ceci comparing men and women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathmatics) area of academia. It found essentially the same things that two other recent studies into MBA graduates of the University of Chicago and University of Michigan law graduates. All three studies found that there’s no discernible discrimination against women in the fields studied and that the reason women fall behind men over time is that they tend to drop out or take significant time off to give birth to and care for children. Differences in pay and promotions are due to that salient fact.

Now there’s a new and even larger study done at the mandate of Congress into the STEM area of academia, and it unsurprisingly finds that there is really no discrimination against women among those disciplines. The authors summarize,

“Our survey findings do indicate that, at many critical transition points in their academic careers (e.g., hiring for tenure-track and tenure positions and promotions) women appear to have fared as well as or better than men…”

The study found that hiring was equal between men and women and that male and female assistant and associate professors were paid the same. Among full professors there was an 8% difference in pay, but the researchers attributed that to the men’s greater seniority.

Which links to

This past Tuesday the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a non-political, objective study of women in academic science entitled Gender Difference at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty. The study was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and mandated by Congress. It contradicts key findings of Beyond Bias and Barriers. According to its executive summary:

Our survey findings do indicate that, at many critical transition points in their academic careers (e.g., hiring for tenure-track and tenure positions and promotions) women appear to have fared as well as or better than men... These findings are in contrast to the COSEPUP [Shalala] committee’s general conclusions, that “women who are interested in science and engineering careers are lost at every educational transition” and the “evaluation criterion contain arbitrary and subjective components that disadvantage women.”

To give one typical finding, in the years studied, 2004 and 2005, women accounted for approximately 20 percent of applicants for positions in mathematics, but were 28 percent of those interviewed and 32 percent of those who received job offers. Furthermore, once women attained jobs in math or science programs, their teaching loads and research resources were comparable to men’s. Female full professors were paid, on average, 8 percent less than males. But the committee attributed this to the fact that the senior male professors had more years of experience. There were no differences in salaries for male and female assistant and associate professors. “I don’t think we would have anticipated that in so many areas that there would have been such a balance in opportunities for men and women,” said Dr. Sally Shaywitz, Yale University research scientist and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report.

The new study does not claim that women have achieved parity with men. It found, for example, that women with Ph.D.s in math and science are far less likely than men to pursue a career at a research-intensive university. Why should that be? The report does not say, but suggests it would be an important question to pursue. In fact, there is now a lively and growing literature on gender and vocation. While some scholars contend that “unconscious bias” and persistent stereotypes are primary reasons for the paucity of women in the high echelons of math and science, others, perhaps a majority, suggest that men and women, on average, have different career interests and propensities. (AEI Press will soon be publishing The Science on Women and Science, a collection of articles by scholars who argue different sides of this issue.)