Fighting Gender Bias In Science … With Gender Bias In Science

There they go again. There’s a new report, this time from the National Academies, lamenting the “underrepresentation” of women in science and calling for “immediate, overarching reform and decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, government agencies, and Congress.”

I confess that what follows is based on reading only the press release accompanying the report and this article about it, not the report itself. (Life is short.) Also, we have been here before. In fact, before proceeding please take a look at these two earlier discussions (here and here), since I’m not repeating their contents.

Right under the “For Immediate Release” the press release linked above asserts in its headline:

Broad National Effort Urgently Needed To Maximize Potential of Women Scientists and Engineers in Academia

Perhaps anticipating my churlish question (“Why?”), the first paragraph states:

WASHINGTON — Women face barriers to hiring and promotion in research universities in many fields of science and engineering — a situation that deprives the United States of an important source of talent as the country faces increasingly stiff global competition in higher education, science and technology, and the marketplace, says a new report from the National Academies. Eliminating gender bias in universities requires immediate, overarching reform and decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, government agencies, and Congress.

“[T]he country faces increasingly stiff global competition in … the marketplace”? What on earth does this mean? Oh well, forget about it.

But perhaps it’s worth noting (again, for those of you who honored my request to read the two earlier posts) that “this situation” deprives the United States of talent only if the absence of talented women prevented by “barriers” from careers in academia means we have fewer talented scientists than we would have without those “barriers” or if the places they would have occupied are occupied by scientists less talented than they. In other words, are academic science departments understaffed, with vacant positions that would have been filled by women not blocked by “barriers” or, in the alternative, are they fully staffed but with some (many?) of their positions filled by men (presumably) who are less talented than the women who would have sat in their chairs but for the “barriers”?

Perhaps the full report answers this question, but the press release didn’t.

How do we know that women are “underrepresented” in academic science? How do you think?

Forty years ago, women made up only 3 percent of America’s scientific and technical workers, but by 2003 they accounted for nearly one-fifth. In addition, women have earned more than half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and engineering since 2000. However, their representation on university and college faculties fails to reflect these gains. Among science and engineering Ph.D.s, four times more men than women hold full-time faculty positions….

The “underrepresentation,” in short, is that the percentage of women “scientific and technical workers” is smaller than the percentage of women earning undergraduate science degrees, and among full time faculty members the percentage of women is smaller than the percentage who earn science Ph.Ds. Why is that? That is, why do some women who earn undergraduate degrees in scientific fields not become “scientific and technical workers,” and why do some women who earn Ph.Ds in science fields not wind up as full time faculty members? Perhaps the full report says. It clearly says quite a bit about the “barriers” (lack of respect, etc.) that keep or send women out of academia, but the press release at least doesn’t say where they go.

Could it be that many of them find more attractive jobs in business or industry? If so, is that so bad? If academia changed its ways as recommended here, to attract more women, would business and industry then have to restructure themselves and their “culture” to woo them back? If, for whatever reason, the number of women who choose to work in scientific fields is smaller than the number who are qualified to do so, should the various institutions in different segments of the economy who hire scientific workers engage in a bidding war to attract the ones who do? Why?

The press release does refer to a couple of studies that, presumably, point to one of the “barriers” keeping women out of academia.

In one survey of 1,000 university faculty members, for example, women were more likely than men to feel that colleagues devalued their research, that they had fewer opportunities to participate in collaborative projects, and that they were constantly under a microscope. In another study, exit interviews of female faculty who “voluntarily” left a large university indicated that one of their main reasons for leaving was colleagues’ lack of respect for them.

If a survey were to reveal that “[men] were more likely than [women] to feel that their departments placed a higher value on recruiting, hiring, and retaining people of the opposite sex from themselves,” would that reveal a problem that required a national effort to reverse? Just wondering.

Here’s a thought: if the very future of our country depends upon having more women “scientific and technical workers,” maybe the government should play a more active role in encouraging women scientists to work in science. Maybe, on the model of unemployment compensation being unavailable to workers who voluntarily (or even “voluntarily”) leave their jobs, women who have received student loans to study science should be forced to repay them at a slightly higher rate if they do not work in science. Maybe, on the model of medical students who receive grants in return for their commitment to spend a certain amount of time in public service such as on Indian reservations, etc., women graduate students in science should be given grants if they agree to spend, say, three years in the most notoriously undiverse science departments (I’m sure the National Academies maintain a list). You get the idea, and I’m sure various government agencies can come up with many more.

I’m sure the National Academies will not like the above ideas, but what do they think should be done?

The report offers a broad range of recommendations, including the following important steps. Trustees, university presidents, and provosts should provide clear leadership in changing the culture and structure of their institutions to recruit, retain, and promote more women — including minority women — into faculty and leadership positions. Specifically, university executives should require academic departments to show evidence of having conducted fair, broad, and aggressive talent searches before officials approve appointments. And departments should be held accountable for the equity of their search processes and outcomes, even if that means canceling a search or withholding a faculty position. The report also urges higher education organizations to consider forming a collaborative, self-monitoring body that would recommend standards for faculty recruitment, retention, and promotion; collect data; and track compliance across institutions.

Quotas? Why, heavens no! Except, note that departments should be held accountable (for their “compliance”) not only for the “equity” of their searches but also for the “outcomes.” In short, a department could have perfectly equitable search procedures, “conducted fair, broad, and aggressive talent searches,” but still be found out of “compliance” because of the “outcomes” of its efforts. But of course this is not to recommend quotas, because quotas don’t exist except in the figment of conservative imaginations.

Curiously, the committee report also calls on the federal government to more vigorous about enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

Federal enforcement agencies — including the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); U.S. departments of Education, Justice, and Labor; and various federal civil rights offices — should provide technical assistance to help universities achieve diversity in their programs and employment, and encourage them to meet such goals. These agencies also should regularly conduct compliance reviews at higher education institutions to make sure that federal antidiscrimination laws are being upheld, the committee said. Discrimination complaints should be promptly and thoroughly investigated. Likewise, Congress should make sure that these laws are enforced, and routinely hold oversight hearings to investigate how well relevant laws are being upheld by the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Energy, and Labor; EEOC; and science agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and NASA.

I say curious, because so much of what the committee wants would seem to conflict with anti-discrimination law, especially (is this ironic, or what?) Title IX:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Because the concepts of discrimination and equal protection have, in my view, been drained of coherent content, this report is also revealingly inconsistent in at least one recommendation. It calls upon scholarly journals to

examine their processes for reviewing papers submitted for publication. To minimize any bias, they should consider keeping authors’ identities hidden until reviews have been completed.

But if keeping authors’ identities hidden minimizes bias, wouldn’t keeping the identities hidden of prospective graduate students, faculty appointments, postdoc applicants, and other job applicants also minimize bias in their selection? Why, then, does the committee recommend exactly the opposite? Remember, they demand not only that selection procedures be fair and equitable but also produce the desired, representative “outcomes.”

As with any report of this nature, some of it appears to be quite humorous. For example, the report urges universities to “examine evaluation practices, with the goal of focusing on the quality and impact of faculty contributions.” No doubt this recommendation will cause consternation in all those university science departments whose evaluation practices currently do not focus “on the quality and impact of faculty contributions.” That sound you hear is no doubt the loud, collective Smack! of the hands of department chairs across the nation hitting themselves on the head and exclaiming, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Here’s another comic bit:

In the past decade, several universities and agencies have taken steps to increase the participation of women on faculties and their numbers in leadership positions. But such efforts have not transformed the fields, the report says. Now is the time for widespread reform, the committee emphasized.

Reminds me of the retailer who lost money on every sale but decided to make up the loss by increasing sales.

In closing, let me list members of the National Academies committee who wrote this report and ask if you see anything odd about it:

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

and

INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE

Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy

Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering

Donna E. Shalala1 (chair)

President

University of Miami

Miami

Alice M. Agogino,2

Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering

University of California

Berkeley

Lotte Bailyn

Co-Director

MIT Workplace Center, and

Professor of Management

Sloan School of Management

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge

Robert J. Birgeneau,3

Chancellor

University of California

Berkeley

Ana Mari Cauce

Executive Vice Provost;

Earl R. Carlson Professor of Psychology; and

Professor of American Ethnic Studies

University of Washington

Seattle

Catherine D. DeAngelis,1

Editor in Chief

Journal of the American Medical Association

Chicago

Denice D. Denton (deceased)

Chancellor

University of California

Santa Cruz

Barbara Grosz

Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences

Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and

Dean of Science

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

Jo Handelsman

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor

Department of Plant Pathology

University of Wisconsin

Madison

Nan Keohane

Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs

Princeton University, and

Former President

Duke University

Durham, N.C.

Shirley Malcom,3

Head

Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Washington, D.C.

Geraldine Richmond

Richard M. and Patricia H. Noyes Professor

Department of Chemistry and Materials Science Institute

University of Oregon

Eugene

Alice M. Rivlin

Senior Fellow

Economic Studies Program

Brookings Institution

Washington, D.C.

Ruth Simmons

President

Brown University

Providence, R.I.

Elizabeth Spelke,3

Berkman Professor of Psychology, and

Co-Director

Mind, Brain, and Behavior Institute

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

Joan Steitz1,3

Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Yale University School of Medicine

New Haven, Conn.

Elaine Weyuker,2

Fellow

AT&T Laboratories

Florham Park, N.J.

Maria T. Zuber,3

E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, and

Head

Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge

STAFF

Laurel Haak

Study Director

1 Member, Institute of Medicine

2 Member, National Academy of Engineering

3 Member, National Academy of Sciences

Recall that this august committee has just called on “[f]ederal enforcement agencies” to “provide technical assistance to help universities achieve diversity in their programs and employment….” Given the make-up of this committee and its staff, it appears that the National Academies could also use some “technical assistance” to “achieve diversity.” This committee has all of the “diversity” it ostensibly recommends of, say, a committee on political diversity made up of all Democrats save for one person, a Socialist or member of the Green Party.

On the other hand, we have already learned with regard to race that “diversity” doesn’t mean diversity; it means more blacks. Since the National Academies committee obviously defines “diversity” to mean more women, this committee is almost 100% diverse. (The presence of the lone male, Robert Birgeneau, doesn’t really reduce the 100% “diversity” of this group since, as we’ve frequently seen [such as here, here, here, and here], he’s never met a race- or gender-based preference of which he disapproves.)

ADDENDUM

My wife, Helene, just read this post and raised an interesting question. Since the National Academies report argues that more women are needed in science in order to strengthen the competitve position of the United States against foreign competitors — because “the country faces increasingly stiff global competition in higher education, science and technology, and the marketplace” — she wonders whether foreign women who are in this country only temporarily should be counted toward “compliance” with the “goals” recommended by the committee. Insofar as it is necessary to displace some men to make room for more women, should American males be displaced to make room for foreign females?

Good question, I think.

UPDATE [3 October]

A reader points me to excellent critiques of this report, one by the distinguished economist Gary Becker and one by the distinguished federal judge and legal scholar Richard Posner on their joint blog.

I’m happy to say that Posner makes a few of the same points made here, especially about the composition of the panel. Neither of them has a higher opinion of the report than I expressed above (“heavy on beliefs and weak on carefully documented analysis,” wrote Becker), and to see why you should read all of both their discussions.

Becker did make a nice catch that I missed:

The summary of the Report says that it cannot be that women in academia, and sciences in particular, are now recipients of favoritism because affirmative action that selects candidates on the basis of race or sex is illegal.

I wonder if Gov. Granholm and the other women leaders in Michigan who are struggling so hard to retain preferences to women by defeating the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (discussed most recently here) would agree with the distinguished National Academy of Sciences panel that at present, even in the absence of MCRI, it is currently illegal for any affirmative action program to show “favoritism” based on race or sex.

Say What? (10)

  1. David Nieporent September 19, 2006 at 5:14 pm | | Reply

    John,

    This committee may be more diverse than you think. Sure, it may have only one male, but it’s diverse in other ways:

    Denice D. Denton (deceased)

    See? Not just living women, but dead women too!

  2. eddy September 19, 2006 at 6:00 pm | | Reply

    Perhaps we should call for “immediate, overarching reform and decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, government agencies, and Congress” to address the gender disparity in life expectancy. Why should women live longer than men? It’s just plain sexist!

  3. Agog September 19, 2006 at 6:16 pm | | Reply

    Ever notice how the Robert Birgeneau’s of academia never seem to be negatively affected by the diversity policies they seek to impose on others? His views would be much more credible if they were also accompanied by his own resignation and demand that his now-vacated position be filled by a minority.

  4. CaptDMO September 19, 2006 at 9:21 pm | | Reply

    Sacrifice excellence for “more women in power”.

    Got it! A “diverse” group of

    quota based inconcequence.

    Where can the “budding elite” expect to turn? Glaxo? Haliburton?

    Community College of Springfield?

  5. Chetly Zarko September 19, 2006 at 10:46 pm | | Reply

    John, I notice this mathematical fact. Quoting:

    Forty years ago, women made up only 3 percent of America’s scientific and technical workers, but by 2003 they accounted for nearly one-fifth. In addition, women have earned more than half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and engineering since 2000. However, their representation on university and college faculties fails to reflect these gains. Among science and engineering Ph.D.s, four times more men than women hold full-time faculty positions….

    Notice the last sentence:

    Among science and engineering Ph.D.s, four times more men than women hold full-time faculty positions…

    and the first:

    America’s scientific and technical workers, but by 2003 they accounted for nearly one-fifth.

    If men have a “four-to-one” ratio, that means they have a 4 divided by 4+1=5 percentage. So women would have the inverse, or 1 of 5. So the professorships ratio exactly equals the ratio of men and women in business. That’s remarkable coincidence … and evidence that something CONSISTENT and sociological, rather than discriminatory, is occurring. Obviously, its a trendline of movement for women into those fields, consistent with their actual real qualifications and other labor force participation causes (child-rearing, etc.) – (or consistent with both industry and academia having nearly identical rates of preference, which I doubt).

    Of course, these matching 20% still haven’t caught up with the increasing graduation rate of more than 50% undergrad degrees, but there certainly must be some lag, some other labor-force participation issues, and other explanations that one would need to control for to see what the expected number would be.

    Of course, this report considers none of those issues.

  6. Sara September 19, 2006 at 11:56 pm | | Reply

    Brilliant of you to comment on a report that you haven’t read! Press releases deal in generalities, not specifics.

    The 300 page report goes into great detail about the recommendations, particularly the one dealing with anti-discrimination laws. The report sepcifically asks that anti-discrimination laws such as Title IX, Title 7, etc. be enforced because they are not currently being enforced in terms of academic departments. Asking for compliance reviews is the best way (short of individual lawsuits) to ensure that these laws are being enforced. This recommendation is in no way contradictory.

    In terms of committee makeup, 9 out of 18 of those on the committee are members of either the NAS, IOM, or NAE and are the top scientists in their fields or are top academic leaders. They came to these recommendations based on substantive reviews of the literature. I dare you to find a more qualified committee.

    And to poke fun at Denice Denton, a woman who committed suicide during her term of service on the committee, poor taste…..

  7. John Rosenberg September 20, 2006 at 7:56 am | | Reply

    Sara writes:

    Brilliant of you to comment on a report that you haven’t read! Press releases deal in generalities, not specifics.

    Well, you might not have noticed, but this is a blog, not an academic treatise. I thought my readers might want to know about the report, and what based on its own summary and an article in an academic journal, it had to say before I had time to read it (if, in fact, I ever have time to read it). By mentioning that I hadn’t read it, and asking a couple of questions that the press release didn’t answer, I was implicitly inviting readers to look at the report and correct any misinterpretations I had offered.

    The 300 page report goes into great detail about the recommendations, particularly the one dealing with anti-discrimination laws. The report sepcifically asks that anti-discrimination laws such as Title IX, Title 7, etc. be enforced because they are not currently being enforced in terms of academic departments. Asking for compliance reviews is the best way (short of individual lawsuits) to ensure that these laws are being enforced. This recommendation is in no way contradictory.

    Yes, but “compliance” with what? Both Title VII and Title IX state explicitly that “no person” can be discriminated against because of race or sex. How is a great national effort to hire more women — and holding departments and universities accountable when the “outcomes” of their hiring fail to correct the “underrepresentation” of women — compatible with that requirement?

    In terms of committee makeup, 9 out of 18 of those on the committee are members of either the NAS, IOM, or NAE and are the top scientists in their fields or are top academic leaders. They came to these recommendations based on substantive reviews of the literature. I dare you to find a more qualified committee.

    If you re-read my post, you will see that I never said, implied, or even hinted that the committee or its members were in any respect unqualified. Since even preferentialists and diversiphiles who oppose evaluating all applicants for admissions or jobs “without regard” to their race, gender, or ethnicity do not claim that such a process produces admits or hires who are not qualified (only that they are not “diverse”), why on earth would you assume that my pointing out the lack of “diversity” of the committee amounted to my challenging the qualifications of its members? Indeed, if the National Academies had been concerned only with excellence and thus had been blissfully unconcerned with “diversity,” it might very well have named a committee identical to this one in every member (except for its token, Mr. Birgeneau).

    In short,what I said was that, by its own lights, the committee was dramatically un-diverse. I thus found, and find, it astounding that such a committee could berate the technical and science component of all of American higher education for lacking a “diversity” that is so strikingly absent on the committee itself.

  8. dchamil September 20, 2006 at 2:14 pm | | Reply

    I suppose these foreign nations which, it is claimed, present such a formidable challenge to our scientists and engineers have many more women than we do in important positions. Has anyone checked this? If not, how is hiring more women supposed to help our competitiveness? Perhaps improving competitiveness is not really the desired goal.

  9. John S Bolton September 21, 2006 at 2:42 am | | Reply

    One point which stands out is that they are demanding respect to be enforced by official aggression, or such is the implication.

    How are men of reason, men of science, supposed to respect affirmative action alternative welfare cases?

    Lesbocracy is not a valid social ideal.

    Science departments should close ranks against the quota placeholders; the progress of civilization is at stake.

  10. […] I’ve written about the looming threat of Title IX to science a number of times, such as here, here, here, here, and here. Posted in And another […]

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