Report Roundup
thusspakezuska | November 7, 2008According to the Chronicle Newsblog
Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues.
You can find the full report here and a press release from the university here.
The comments section at the Chronicle post is full of the usual dismissive commentary that arises whenever the issue of gender inequities in salary is broached. I liked this response from Meshiko:
It amazes me that despite the…
thusspakezuska | March 17, 2008Good stuff from the AWIS Washington Wire:
A new website on reducing stereotype threat.
The engineering of ice cream, from Yale's first female dean of engineering.
"More than half the women in the world live in countries that have made no progress in gender equity in recent years. " See the Gender Equity Index website for more information.
"Women in Europe earn about 43% of doctoral degrees in science, but hold only 15% of senior academic positions." More info in this report.
thusspakezuska | February 27, 2008Maybe you've been wondering just exactly how few women scientists and engineers there are in academia in the U.S. Or, to put it another way, maybe you've wondered just exactly how much men scientists and engineers are overrepresented in academia.
There's a new website that gathers and presents comprehensive data you can use to answer those questions. The National Women's Law Center presents The Women's Prerogative. You can find out how many women are teaching in science and engineering at your school - there are data for 150 research universities. There are fact sheets that delineate…
thusspakezuska | August 29, 2007By way of the Chronicle news blog:
The National Institutes of Health has released new guidance about its policies on diversity and on child care.
One set of guidelines, or "frequently asked questions," released Friday, concerns the NIH's efforts to expand the pool of candidates eligible for its training grants that were historically reserved for minority students...Another set of "frequently asked questions" describes the circumstances under which universities may use the agency's grants to finance child care and parental leave for scientists who receive NIH grants.
Seems these guidelines…
thusspakezuska | March 22, 2007This post has gotten so long I'm going to have to break it into pieces. Here's the first installment.
You've read a million stories about the leaky pipeline. They all start out more or less like this:
It is no secret that women are under-represented at every level of the science and technology (S&T) system. Statistics clearly show that, much like a 'leaky pipeline', women steadily drop out all along the system.
Nor is it difficult to identify the causes of the leaks. They range from gender-based biases in hiring, evaluation, and promotion; to inadequate institutional support for…
thusspakezuska | February 2, 2007Another AWIS Washington Wire in my inbox today. Here are a few tidbits I thought looked especially interesting:
Why Aren't More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence
This 248-page book is a collection of 15 essays by experts on gender differences in ability. They consider the question of why more women are not pursuing careers in science, engineering and math, considering innate differences, societal discouragements, differences in aspirations and other key factors. This book should challenge readers' emotional and political biases through empirical science.
This looks…
thusspakezuska | December 13, 2006Today marks the debut of guest-blogger Cynthia Burack at TSZ. A professor at the Ohio State University, Cynthia is a political scientist who tools are feminist political theory and political psychology. We have worked together in the past on several projects, including work on group dynamics and resistance to diversity (see sidebar, NWSA Journal article) and on evaluating STEM department websites for diversity. What follows, however, is entirely Cynthia's work. I am grateful that she has allowed me to present it here. I think it is very important for all scientists to hear.
Zuska has…
thusspakezuska | December 12, 2006I wonder if Rachel Brenc thinks the Iraq Study Group's report was biased. After all, of the ten members of the panel who issued the report, nine were all of one gender, with only one of the opposite gender.
Oh wait a minute, it's okay. There were nine penises on the Iraq Study Group, so bias clearly isn't an issue here.
Actually, there are two factors at play here. If the NSF report Beyond Bias and Barriers had been issued by a panel of seventeen men and one women, I am pretty sure Rachel and her ilk would still not have been happy with it. No, the fuss about the supposedly biased…
thusspakezuska | December 6, 2006The 28th Carnival of the Feminists is up at Diary of a Freak Magnet, and it's a tasty one.
Yours truly has made the Carnival! Yay! That's fun.
Go check it out. Lots and lots and lots of good stuff. Especially this Bitchitorial about why young girls don't go into math and science. Love it, love it, love it.
thusspakezuska | November 2, 2006Regular reader and blogger Michael Anes wrote to tell me:
I haven't heard any Scienceblogging on the gender equity report issued this morning and profiled on the Chronicle? Did you check it out?...My post and challenge is here -- I'd be interested in your take on the issue and the action I suggest!
(For modesty's sake I removed the line where Michael told me how great I am.)
Michael is referring to the new report issued by the AAUP, AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006, and discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The report contains, as you might expect, dismal news for women…
thusspakezuska | October 3, 2006I am breaking my word from yesterday in order to post news about this report because the results are so disturbing I can't keep them to myself. I want someone else to be upset with me. From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Black men are underrepresented at institutions of higher learning over all, and even more so at flagship universities in the 50 states, says a report released on Wednesday by a national research center.
The report, "Black Male Students at Public Flagship Universities in the U.S.: Status, Trends, and Implications for Policy and Practice," was written for the Joint…
thusspakezuska | September 19, 2006From the September 15, 2006 AWIS Washington Wire
Women at Work-Striving for 25% Female Faculty
In 2000, the European Research Ministries set the goal that 25% of all faculty members would be female by the year 2010. Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to fall far short. To show what the visual impact of this proportion of women would be, Petra Rudolf, a professor and materials scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, convinced 35 of the university's 50 female professors to show up at the opening ceremony of the new academic year. As a result of Rudolf's planning pushed…
thusspakezuska | September 18, 2006Tim left this comment over at Uncertain Principles on Chad's post The Pipeline Problem:
I thought the data was pretty clear about this: past high school, the [physics] pipeline is no more leaky for women than it is for men...here's the
Report:
Read it for yourselves.
Examination of the academic "pipeline" reveals that women disproportionately leave physics between taking it in high school and earning a bachelor's degree. While almost half of high school physics students are girls, less that one-fourth of bachelor's degrees in physics are earned by women. After this initial "leak" in the…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006So, here's the latest set of reports telling you exactly what the situation is for women in science, nicely collected for us in the AWIS Sept. 1, 2006 Washington Wire (thanks, AWIS!) FYI: STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. What follows are the titles of three reports, AWIS's summary, and then my summary.
Rapid Increase in STEM Occupations in the Last Half-Century
A new study published by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) shows that the growth in American STEM occupations between 1950 and 2000 outpaced the growth of the total labor…