Sloan Foundation Pipeline Report (comments allowed version)
The authors point to American women as a resource that has been eroded, but say these women are increasingly needed as foreign graduate students and postdocs return to their home countries to conduct science, making the US less competitive. They point out that, "over the last four decades, the relative proportion of women Ph.D. recipients has increased more than 100-fold in engineering (from a scant .2 percent in 1966 to 22.5 percent in 2006), 12-fold in the geosciences (3 percent to 36.6 percent), and 8-fold in the physical sciences (3.7 percent to 27.9 percent)." Thus the supply is being produced, but women disappear from the workforce because of lack of support for chidbearing and child care.
The report cites data showing that among postdocs, future plans to have children have different effects on men and women. These plans made 28% of the women postdocs likely to shift career goals from university professor, while it only mades 17% of the men postdocs reconsider prior plans. Among postdoctoral fellows who had children while in the UC system as postdocs, 41% of women with children but only 20% of the men changed their career goals away from being a professor with a research emphasis.
The authors pointed out that the younger the women were, the less likely that they could receive paid pregnancy leave. This paid pregnancy leave benefit is very rare for graduate students, occasionally offered to postdocs, but typically offered in some form to faculty members. How such leave affects the tenure clock is quite variable.
How could the situation be ameliorated? The report's authors pointed out that the government grant administration and the institutional expectations make it hard on a PI who grants a paid leave to a pregnant woman: there can be no research output from spending these funds, yet such output is expected of the PI. The graduate schools also are typically judged by output of graduate students, and granting such a leave will delay a student's completion date. They say aligning reward structures with the desired support of women's needs is becoming more essential as we need to retain these highly trained women in the workforce.
What do you think?
A NSF and NIH need to realign their expectations and reward systems so that childbirth and child care support are rewarded, not punished
B Universities and companies need to make these changes without waiting for the government agencies to act or they will not be able to retain women employees
C I'm pessimistic that anyone is going to make these changes.
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The more I think it over, the more I'm leaning to B. I do think the government funders could apply pressure, but the universities could lobby for fairer rules if they really decided to care about it.
I think C. No chance those with the power will give it up unless someone with more power intervenes. And who would do it?
I agree it's difficult to be optimistic about such changes in the face of the fundamental moves it would take to execute them at universities. Add to that the disincentive for changing the status of grad students and postdocs for the whole to give a sub-group access to certain benefits.
For example, changing the status of these two groups might well mean that all of them have to pay social security taxes on their stipends/fellowships. That is not a trivial chunk of income for these people. And it would be an unintentional penalty for helping provide an option for maternity leave...and that still leaves out paternity leave!
C unless women demand a change, I'd say. Inertia is a powerful force, and a lot of men don't see any need to change what they've always done and been comfortable with.
Hi H,
I will pursue this with the IT team and see if it can be done.
cheers,
Laura
Hi - I can't find a way to email this forum, so I'm posting what I would rather send as an email. Is it possible to get a weekly email with a digest of the postings? I enjoy them but would rather not get the emails so often. Thanks.
I'd say A and B, because I don't see the universities pushing the government to reconsider these rules, and the TItle IX teeth are almost non-existent when it comes to science faculty appointments. Laura, have you heard of Debra Rolison? A few years ago she made a lot of noise about this Title IX issue. But I think Helen is right that the universities at least use the government regulations as an excuse when they can.
Good point, Helen. If the govt rules keep the universities from doing the right thing, then the rules need to change at that level. I wonder, too, if there aren't cases where the universities are not as quick to respond as they could be. For example, an affordable child care center isn't always available. I think now it almost always is at industry settings today.
cheers,
Laura
A. Legal definitions of students and postdocs as trainees make it very difficult for universities to give such benefits when individuals are paid through government funds. There is some interesting accounting that has to go on behind the scenes to even make it happen. That is a big dis-incentive for change. The funding agencies should lead the way on this one.
Industry generally provides maternity leave, even for a postdoc program because they are considered employees, not university trainees. Maternity leave is mandated by the State of California for companies with more than a certain number of employees. They get the whole banana just as a regular employee would.
