More on Ceci and Williams
Dear friends of women in science,
There have been mixed reactions to the new Ceci and Williams paper, to say the least. We discussed it here. It was widely cited in the media as showing women in science as a bunch of whiners who don't really experience discrimination about evaluation of our papers, our grants, or our applications for positions or promotions but simply opt out due to our child-related issues. It's true that this pair of researchers from Cornell did evaluate numerous papers about discrimination re women's publication, grants, and job transitions. They did conclude that it won't help redress the imbalance of women vs men scientists today to address these issues. Let's take a closer look at what they did, why, and what they actually did and did not conclude. And if you have time, please read it carefully and perhaps read their most recent book as well. People ask me about this all the time, and it is good to have thought through what I really think. Perhaps the same happens to you.
Their study is a meta analysis, meaning they did no original research but analyzed published papers on each of the issues they studied. Also, as is standard operation procedure for social science analysis, they removed all confounding factors from the data. I want to discuss how they analyzed studies of numbers of publications by men and women to clarify what I mean here. They did find differences, but they concluded that, "Women are as successful in publishing as men, when comparisons are between men and women with similar resources and characteristics." In the data, for example, the authors found that professors who had moved to a highter status institution increased publication rate. Since more men than women did that, there was a structural reason for the difference. Also, there were fewer publications by people at teaching-intensive colleges. There were more women than men there, so there was a structural reason for the differences in publication rate by men and women in that case too. There is nothing wrong, in a social science sense, with that way of thinking. But if the bottom line seems to be, there's no problem here, shouldn't someone be asking why fewer women are moving to places with more resources and more are in teaching-intensive schools? I think these analyses do a disservice to the experience of women whey they are summarized by the press as showing there is no longer a problem, given that these differences are hidden under the data analyses.
Cheers,
Laura
Right, Helen. They do, but unless we look at the original article, we can't see how to argue against them, they sound so sure of themselves!
cheers,
Laura
The media always want the controversy and the hype. So of course they read at a shallow level without having a good discussion. That's what boards and blogs are for after all in today's world. Sadly most people walk away with just the headline...
I agree with Sunny C. The paper is obviously carefully planned and they included a great deal of relevant data. But I also agree with Laura, that SOP for the social sciences can obscure real problems by noting them as interfering variables and removing them from the data. It's a catch 22.
MKS
It's very good, as a study. What is wrong here is how the press presented it. I don't think they outran their data, and they did the analysis very carefully. I believe they're as careful as any natural scientist would be. I just don't like how people now blow off any question of women meeting an unwelcoming atmosphere, saying Ceci and Williams have disproved that.
I've come back to life after a supreme onslaught of work. I promise to go read at least the paper. People (a couple) have asked what I think of it, with a kind of smirk that makes me think they believe it's refuted everything I've been telling people.
