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  2. Economists Tackle the Women in Science Debate

Economists Tackle the Women in Science Debate

By cortex on November 16, 2006.

Larry Summers was wrong. It's not about innate cognitive differences, it's about fertility:

Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.

This paper should make a lot of people uncomfortable, since it suggests that the structure of academic science discriminates against women who have children. If you are a single man, or a single woman, then you'll do just fine. But if a woman wants to become a mother...then you're shit out of luck. I know working mothers are a relatively new phenomenon (post WWII), but it seems that we should start trying to figure out a way to end the discrimination. How about starting with a few weeks of paid maternity leave?

Hat Tip: Marginal Revolution

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If gestating and caring for children has the impact on one's time and energy that experience suggests to me it does, and the demands of an academic career one one's time and energy are a significant as I've been told, then there's no 'discrimination' involved here - excepting the most literal meaning of the word, which is simply to be able to distinguish and choose between two different things.

There is an opportunity cost here forced by biology.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 16 Nov 2006 #permalink

There is an opportunity cost here forced by biology.

Biologically mean are just as able to rear offspring in this day and age as are women. Thank you technology! It is an opportunity cost no longer being forced by biology, but by culture. As stated in the post, it is only since WWII that women have taken roles in the workforce, and those roles are still evolving. Cultural traditions have not yet had time to catch up to the cultural advances being made. And, until they do, we are going to continue to see the discrimination against women who want to have it all (family, job, etc.) in both academic and business fields.

What we are talking about in the sciences is nothing new to women in the corporate business world. How many female Fortune 500 presidents have children? I think men should be happy that they don't have to be the sole bread-winner anymore, and that by staying at home with the kids they can support wives who want to achieve more in their career. Full equality and removal of discrimination will only come when it's not just the woman who has to make the choice of job versus kids.

It is an opportunity cost no longer being forced by biology, but by culture.

Um, no. The recent work on male gestation does not make men equivalent to women. It would take a whole lot of technological development before your argument would even begin to be valid.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 16 Nov 2006 #permalink

Rearing a child is different from developing one using the raw materials in your body. Men are equally capable of rearing children now that we have breast pumps, formula, etc.

Although formula may possibly be an inferior substitute, I grant your larger point: men are just as capable of raising an infant as women.

They're not just as capable at bearing infants, and that takes a lot out of people.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 16 Nov 2006 #permalink

just to keep in mind what summers actually said:

here are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I'll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.

what is the high-powered job hypothesis?

there are many professions and many activities, and the most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise to leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours in the office, they expect a flexibility of schedules to respond to contingency, they expect a continuity of effort through the life cycle, and they expect-and this is harder to measure-but they expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place. And it is a fact about our society that that is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make than of married women...Is our society right to have familial arrangements in which women are asked to make that choice and asked more to make that choice than men? Is our society right to ask of anybody to have a prominent job at this level of intensity, and I think those are all questions that I want to come back to. But it seems to me that it is impossible to look at this pattern and look at its pervasiveness and not conclude that something of the sort that I am describing has to be of significant importance.

Yup formula is probably inferior that's why I mentioned breast pumps.

So it's logical that women should be less successful for their entire lives because they have to take off to physically have the baby? Let's say ~2 months incapacitation, 1 month before birth if there is some kind of problem, 1 month to recover. That's like, less than a summer. Nothing. And most women only need a couple of weeks anyway and some only need a couple of days.

So it's logical that women should be less successful for their entire lives because they have to take off to physically have the baby? Let's say ~2 months incapacitation, 1 month before birth if there is some kind of problem, 1 month to recover. That's like, less than a summer. Nothing. And most women only need a couple of weeks anyway and some only need a couple of days.

So if that's all the time women need if childcare is being handled by their mate, perhaps their mates aren't doing it. In which case, the problem isn't with the universities, it's in the marriages.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 17 Nov 2006 #permalink