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    What Happens When a Math Whiz Grows Up? Depends on if You're a Boy or a Girl
    by Alice Robb
    New Republic
    November 12, 2014

    Quote
    In a New York Times op-ed this week, two Cornell professors lay out a provocative argument: The gender gap in research science isn’t a reflection of sexism in the academy; the real problem is that journalists over-report small differences, thus perpetuating them and scaring women off. There’s no question, admit Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, professors of human development, that “until recently, universities deserved their reputations as bastions of male privilege and outright sexism.” But, they go on: “Times have changed.” Mistreatment of women in the physical sciences, computer sciences and engineering is “largely anecdotal, or else overgeneralized from small studies.” For women working in research science today, they argue, getting hired, promoted and fairly compensated is not very different than it is for men.

    ...

    The latest set of data—gathered from surveys collected between early 2012 and early 2013—shows that these mathematically precocious children had grown into high-achieving adults: Across the two cohorts, 4.1 percent had earned tenure at a major university, 2.3 percent had become senior executives at well-known companies, and another 2.4 percent were attorneys at major firms. But they also found important gender differences at every level of elite achievement. Among the first cohort, for example, 33 percent of the men had earned a Ph.D., compared to 25 percent of the women. 4.7 percent of the men, but just 1.5 percent of the women, had achieved tenure at a major university. Nearly three times as many men had published a book. Over three percent of men and 0.7 percent of women had won a grant from the National Science Foundation. There were also differences in the women’s lifestyles and priorities: Women more often said personal relationships were more important than work, and 30 percent of women—but just 7 percent of men—said they’d be unwilling to devote more than 40 hours per week to their “ideal job.” Williams and Ceci don’t deny that women are under-represented at the top levels of science, but the SMPY data at least shows that we can’t attribute the problem to innate differences in ability.
    The Times op-ed is Academic Science Isn’t Sexist.



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    I am a scientist working at a large pharmaceutical company in research and development. I don't work in academia, but I can tell you that not only are there not an equal number of women working in corporate science jobs, but they are also notably absent from higher level management positions. Women are still very much in the minority in science fields. In my university graduate school program, I was one of only TWO women accepted. Further, in the department that I currently work in, women make up about 30% of the work force and don't occupy a single management or supervisory position.

    Do I think that journalists are "scaring" women away with articles using shady numbers from disreputable studies? Absolutely not. Fewer women are entering hard sciences, fewer women still are being hired into positions, and even fewer make it to executive positions. We still have a long way to go.

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    Where I work there are far more women in junior semi skilled areas and more men in serious research jobs. There are obvious exceptions and a fair number of women in middle management. It has got better since I have been there but most women cannot commit to 60 hours a week after having kids (our wages aren't high enough to cover the childcare required anyway) and are more often the ones who take of time when the kids are sick. The men usually have wives to look after the kids. The most successful women I know in science either never had kids or had them very young and started their career afterwards.

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    Someone hasn't done their literature survey very well. It's the leaky pipeline that's most obvious, but we have quite a few convincing (not "anecdotal" nor unduly "small sample") papers using unimpeachable methodology* that demonstrate bias against women from very early in academia, e.g. enquiring about doctoral study, or applying for the kind of position students customarily use to support themselves. Here are two from this year.

    http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742

    * You base your study on paperwork, and make copies of it that differ only in a name, which can then be male or female (you have to take care that your chosen names don't give other differing impressions that might cause bias, of e.g. ethnicity or class, but are comparable apart from gender; but that's not too hard to do in prestudy). If your (appropriate and sufficiently large) sample evaluates the paperwork with male names higher than the identical paperwork with female names, game over: there's no explanation other than bias.


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    Originally Posted by puffin
    The most successful women I know in science either never had kids or had them very young and started their career afterwards.

    Some of us also have spouses willing to do a large amount of childcare. I had my daughter just before earning tenure in a scientific field and my husband has taken a huge amount of the childcare responsibilities. Considering he is in the same field and did not yet have tenure, that was a major decision.

    Some men are willing to provide that sort of support and it shouldn't be forgotten.

    Last edited by apm221; 11/28/14 08:04 AM.
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    I know a number of women who are un/homeschooling their kids who were working for pharma, medical field, or biology/engineering fields and left due to the paucity of g/t school options in the area, especially for hg/pg crowd. Some of them were the breadwinners in the family too.

    There are a lot of factors at play with childcare, g/t options, and between academia/jobs. Tenure/rank, pay, health issues and benefits etc. - all of them can play a role in deciding who shoulders the lion's share of the childcare/household duties.

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    The original article is an opinion piece by the author of a study that has been submitted to an academic journal. For all we know, the paper will crash and burn in peer review. And even if it doesn't, it still needs to be published so we can look at the methodology for cogent discussion.

    So until the paper is published, there's no story here.

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    Originally Posted by Dude
    The original article is an opinion piece by the author of a study that has been submitted to an academic journal. For all we know, the paper will crash and burn in peer review. And even if it doesn't, it still needs to be published so we can look at the methodology for cogent discussion.

    So until the paper is published, there's no story here.
    The underlying paper, titled "Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape", has been published in Psychological Science, a leading journal. It can be downloaded freely.

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    Thanks.

    The op-ed focused entirely on the adult experience of career, but the paper goes a lot deeper. It does not dispute a gender gap, but attempts to explore/explain it.

    Interestingly, they dispute the popular notion of boys as being more naturally inclined to occupying the right tail of mathematical ability with greater frequency, as a meta-analysis of previous studies shows the lack of consistency among different cultures with different attitudes. This has been found among other studies, as well.

    The op-ed disputed the notion of gender bias at the academy... that is, gender bias in hiring practices at the highest levels of professorship. The basic takeaway I got from this study is that the gender biases are potent BEFORE the academy. In other words, there are reasons why only 12% of applicants for tenure-track positions in Physics were women, they're not biological, and they're pervasive from childhood through entry-level hiring, when life choices (child bearing/care) have no bearing on the conversation.

    I found their case against hiring bias to be pretty weak. They seem to have made a stronger case in the opposite direction.

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    The Cornell professors have another paper on gender bias in STEM.

    Advantage Women
    Inside Higher Education
    April 14, 2015
    By Colleen Flaherty

    Quote
    Many studies suggest that women scientists aspiring to careers in academe face roadblocks, including bias -- implicit or overt -- in hiring. But a new study is throwing a curveball into the literature, suggesting that women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. Could it be that STEM gender diversity and bias awareness efforts are working, or even creating a preference for female candidates -- or is something more nuanced going on? Experts say it’s probably both.

    ...

    But the pair’s new experimental paper -- also in PNAS -- is an effective takedown of that last assumed bias: hiring, especially in math-intensive disciplines. They argue that past studies of gender bias in STEM hiring don’t focus on faculty positions, where there isn’t really a problem.

    “Although the point of entry into the professoriate is just one step in female faculty’s journey at which gender bias can occur, it is an extremely important one,” the paper says. “We hope that the discovery of an overall 2 to 1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female underrepresentation can be addressed in part by increasing the number of women applying for tenure-track positions.”

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