At a time when 26 percent of women scientists report being sexually assaulted in the field, the authors of a new study boldly claim that “times have changed” and women’s “claims of mistreatment” in academic science are “largely anecdotal.”
As much as I’d like for this to be true, the claim is founded more on the authors’ fundamental misunderstanding of sex discrimination and oversimplification of gender than on any version of reality.
The authors of “Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape”, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, examine the career trajectories of women and men in math-intensive fields, finding that women fare as well as men when it comes to invitations to interview for tenure-track faculty positions, job offers, and promotions.
They interpret these findings as follows:
“We conclude by suggesting that although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields.”
Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci, two of the study’s authors, wrote about their findings in an October 31st New York Times op-ed. The response on Twitter was swift and skeptical. Critiques of the study have rightly focused on the author’s “wide-sweeping statements” and “self-contradictory observations and internal inconsistencies.”
Sex, Discrimination, and Oversimplification
Adding to these critiques, the authors’ claims that sex-based discrimination is a thing of the past reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of sex discrimination in the United States and an oversimplified understanding of gender.
Under the law, sex discrimination is not just about hiring and promotion; it includes sexual harassment, a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Research shows that workplace sexual harassment of women scientists is an ongoing and fundamental problem. Yet Ceci and colleagues completely ignore this reality and its consequences for the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women scientists.
Another problem is the Psychological Science in the Public Interest study’s confounding of sex with gender. While Ceci and colleagues cite male and females’ comparable rates of hiring and promotion to support their assertion that sexism in science is a thing of the past, they don’t seem to understand that gender is a fundamental dimension of power that shapes all social interactions. If women scientists are being harassed in the workplace because they are women, and we know that they are, then science surely has a sexism problem.
As sociologist Zulyeka Zevallos notes in her cogent critique of the study, “An analysis of sexism in academia needs to seriously address gender as a social system, not simply document superficial differences between men and women.”
Understanding gender as a social system means recognizing sexual harassment as a gendered expression of power that privileges a singular version of masculinity above all forms of femininity and above alternative forms of masculinity. All women, particularly those who challenge the gender hierarchy, and any men who do not adhere to the privileged version of masculinity may be at risk for becoming targets of harassment simply by virtue of their placement in the hierarchical gender system.
In a study published in American Sociological Review in 2004, Chris Uggen and I found that women were across the board more likely to experience harassment than men. Women are targeted simply because they are women. We also found a correlation between men’s likelihood of experiencing harassment and the amount of housework they reported doing — one of our measures of egalitarian gender relationships. Our interviews with harassed workers revealed that men who challenge the gender hierarchy are targeted for doing so.
The hostile climate that women in STEM face was most recently documented by Kathryn Clancy and colleagues but their work builds from a long line of research documenting harassment in the academy and other fields and its harmful consequences for employee well-being, mental health, and other health and job-related outcomes.
Further, while Ceci and colleagues may have evidence that some women in STEM are being promoted despite the persistence of a chilly climate, my own collaborative research on the harassment of women in positions of power suggests that as women are promoted, they may be even more likely to face harassment. What better way, after all, to put women who challenge the gender hierarchy “in their place”?
To ignore that hostile workplace climates have a real, significant, and negative impact on women in academic science is not only irresponsible, it is wrong.
The tragedy is that the Psychological Science in the Public Interest study actually does offer some encouraging news: some women in some STEM fields are as likely as men to be interviewed, hired, and promoted. But its message is totally lost in the cacophony of voices rightly objecting to the authors’ claim that “academic science isn’t sexist.”
As much as I wish for them to be right, there’s too much evidence to the contrary to believe it. And they’ve done those who have experienced harassment and who fight every day to achieve gender equality in the workplace a disservice by purporting it.
Comments 3
Gayle Sulik — November 13, 2014
I appreciate your pointing this out, Amy. The National Academies, under the oversight of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, also created a committee on maximizing the potential of women in academic science and engineering in 2006. The goal was to develop specific recommendations on how to make the fullest use of women in academic science and engineering. Here too, the report found that women are lost in every educational transition. But it's also not just a problem of pipeline. Women are very likely to face discrimination in every field of science and engineering, and there is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating inherent biases among both men and women as well as organizational structures and evaluation criteria that contain arbitrary components that systematically disadvantage women. The committee members, who included five university presidents and chancellors, provosts and named professors, former top government officials, leading policy analysts, and scientists and engineers—nine of whom were members of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or the Institute of Medicine. There is a clearly documented need to address gender bias in the sciences. Unfortunately, attitudes and beliefs too often get in the way.
Ribbit — November 13, 2014
This is so ludicrous. Come on . . . live up to your credentials and think like a sociologist. Moral panics like this one regarding 'persistent sexism in science' are made possible by an academic culture in which everyone believes the same thing. Most academics in ALL disciplines are liberals . . . which is why everyone behaves like lemmings when someone makes a claim like this. The metrics and anecdotes used to support the conclusions that STEM fields are sexist are unscientific, uncritical, and and unsociological. How about more science and less ideology?
Mindy — November 13, 2014
I was a Visiting Lecturer at MIT for 5 years, and watched a fascinating process unfold, in which the university was challenged to address issues of gender inequity among science and engineering faculty. In 1994, a Committee on Women in the School of Science proposed that the university create an initiative to improve the status of women in science. They expressed "serious concerns about the small number of women professors at MIT, and about the status and treatment of the women who are here. We believe that unequal treatment of women faculty impairs their ability to perform as educators, leaders in research, and models for women students".
In 1999, under the direction of then-President, Charles Vest, MIT underwent a major study about gender equity throughout the university, including in the School of Science and the School of Engineering. The reports that resulted from these studies acknowledged that women science and engineering faculty at MIT, in comparison to their male counterparts, were less likely to get tenure and were less likely to have their own labs and Research Assistants. Moreover, women faculty reported that they experienced hostility from colleagues who told them they only got their jobs because of affirmative action and that the push to advance women “must mean that standards are being compromised at some level.” Many respondents said they felt workplace attitudes posed obstacles to their success.
The university responded by putting a concerted effort towards responding to these inequities, by increasing the number of women faculty hired and encouraging departments to advance junior faculty to reach tenure. There is now an Associate Provost position on equity, as well as a Gender Equity project that has worked to increase women faculty in science and engineering and improve the university's family policies. The intent was that by increasing women faculty and more generally, opportunities for women faculty, the climate for women would change.
Even with this concentrated effort, a recent report shows that while there have been significant strides made, there is continued room for improvement. This is not surprising, given what we know about the gender disparities so clearly described by the author of this blog post. According to the MIT report, there are still concerns about faculty search procedures, which may be leading to unfair perceptions about how women faculty are hired and promoted. And while MIT is considered more "family-friendly," child-care issues are still perceived as "women's" issues rather than "family issues."
And I know that my students - in a class on gender, power, leadership and the workplace - were astutely aware of how they were perceived as student scientists in relation to their male counterparts. While they were proud of being MIT students - and felt that they deserved to be at the university because of their intellect - some challenged their competence and told them that they were there because there were "girls". In other words, even at MIT, a university that admits top students, being a "girl" scientist may be perceived as being "less than"...
But things are better, and this is because the university instituted an all-out effort to address the hostile environment for women, inequitable hiring practices, the lack of advancement opportunities and the lack of adequate family-friendly policies. Given that science and engineering as professions are still male-dominated, the effort to make progress must be at the institutional level before anything will change.