Time for Family, Time for Science
A Conversation About Patching America's Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences
SOURCE: AP/JOSH REYNOLDS
A significant proportion of American women leave scientific careers between earning their Ph.D. and winning tenure-track positions. Many of these "leaks" in the pipeline are the result of decisions to start families. Changes to federal and university policy can stem the losses, say the authors of a new report.
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When Mary Ann Mason was graduate dean at the University of California, Berkeley, a frequent question she heard from women graduate students was “when is a good time to have a baby?” For women in academic science careers, the conventional wisdom was that waiting until she had achieved tenure was the best approach.
In 1985, the national average age of scientists winning tenure was 36. But by 2003, it was over 39. “So it’s increasingly poor advice to wait until you get to tenure,” she says. Her belief is that women researchers should be able to have children whenever they want, and her new report, “Staying Competitive: Patching America’s Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences,” co-authored with colleagues Marc Goulden and Karie Frasch, explains the work-family policies that are driving women out of the academic pipeline. Their data, taken from extensive surveys of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers within the University of California system, shows that work-life issues, and particularly decisions about when to get married and when to have children, account for the most significant loss of academic scientists in the pipeline between Ph.D. and tenured positions. “The leak is almost entirely, or at least due primarily to family formation,” said Mason, who is currently a professor and co-faculty director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic, and Family Security at the UC Berkeley.
To discuss the report and the choices facing women scientists along their professional pathways, Mason, Goulden, who is Director of Data Initiatives in Academic Affairs at Berkeley, and Association of American Universities President Robert Berdahl joined Science Progress for a podcast conversation.
These decisions, influenced by the family-unfriendly policies at many research institutions, account for the fact that while women now receive more than half of the Ph.D.s in science and engineering fields, they are under-represented in comparison to men at in the faculty level of their academic fields. According to the report women comprised “63 percent and 54 percent of NIH and NSF’s predoctoral awards in 2007, respectively, but just 25 percent and 23 percent of the competitive faculty grants awarded in the same year.”
But both women and men agree that research positions at universities are the most family-unfriendly career choices among a range of options for scientists. “We have a process in which a large number of very talented scientists… are discouraged about a career in science because of some of the demands that it puts upon them,” said Berdahl.
The Obama administration has made investment in science an administration priority, and as Mason points out, losing those women scientists who are so far along the career pathway represents a significant loss of federal grant funding. Training for a young scientist from graduate school through a postdoc can total close to $500,000.
For those women who do decided to start families while moving through the career pipeline, their odds of winning tenure are significantly diminished in comparison to their male counterparts. Married women with Ph.D.s who have young children are 35 percent less likely to get a tenure-track position than men with young children. The necessary time off those mothers need for childcare responsibilities can put principal investigators in charge of research grants in tough positions. “They’re definitely caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue,” explains Goulden, “because if their researchers have children and go on leave, that results in a loss of productivity to their grant. And as it stands, for the most part, they receive no additional supplemental funding in that situation.”
So it’s the responsibility of both federal grant-making agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as research universities, to develop and share policies that remove the tension in hiring decisions for PIs and create family-friendly environments for scientists aiming for the top of their profession who also want to start families. The report suggests policies that provide responsive benefits for all classes of researchers, from graduate students up through full professors; supplemental funding to offset productivity losses when scientists go on family leave; and flexibility in the lock-step timing of the academic science career path.
Andrew Plemmons Pratt is the managing editor at Science Progress.
Comments on this article
Here’s what will help women who want to have families and stay in science:
Don’t marry another scientist.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:51 pmWhile I agree that policies to help young parents stay in academia aren’t a bad idea (number one in my book would be affordable childcare…number two would be rooms set aside for nursing mothers to pump breast milk), articles like this irritate me because it implies that mothers who leave academia are leaving science altogether, which is not the case.
I had a child as an academic postdoc, and I can assure you that though I left academia I am still very much a scientist. To suggest that the NIH wasted its money on my education is completely ridiculous and just a little insulting.
Also, my decision to leave academia had nothing to do with becoming a mother and everything to do with the awesomeness of being able to do applied science in Industry.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:43 pmThere are all kinds of measures that can ease family formation in academic settings for pre-tenure women. On-site daycare. Services such as national babysitting services, where a researcher can arrange a sitter ahead in another city while attending a conference – some universities provide this as a subsidized service. Funding for taking the family along when research travel might be extended, for example in the summer (Harvard does this for pre-tenure faculty). Time off the tenure clock. Training for department chairs in how to mentor careers for young people with families (men included). A serious consideration of how to make it work, and what the needs are is more important than just money.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:29 pmConsider the following as purely a logical proposition, don’t pay attention as to whether it is true or false.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:00 pmImagine a planet in which women and men are different, not only in the physical aspects, for which we are all appreciative, but in the mental capacity.
Now, obviously everyone is aware of their own abilities but, how could you know if your ability is better or not as good as another person’s? Focus only on the mental abilities.
Of course, anyone can walk in the forest and appreciate the beauty and serenity. Is there any way to know if your impression is better, equal or mediocre compared to that of the other sex?
Of course, we all know it is impossible to know! And, THAT is the problem. The claim or assertion of EQUALITY is not founded in any scientific data, yet many continue to insist it is true.
Are there men that could be better Mothers than their wives? My point is that there is no way, at all, to know the answer.
In the absence of data, should we limit changes to a minor degree, and re-visit the data to see if there ia any reason to make minor adjustments?
I studied Calculus and the best two students in the class were pretty young Sophomore ladies.
I studied Engineering Drafting and the best and clear superior student in the class was a charming young lady. I could go on…
My first Engineering job was with a group of great engineers and I lernt a lot. The Group Chief was a woman, very smart and great at explaining matters.
At all levels in my career I worked with women that were great at their work. Were they happy? I don’t know.
Were all the other workers happy? I don’t know.
If one group of people are good with technical abstractions, advanced quantum mechanics, etx., and others are good at walking in the forest and suddenly wonder if the speed of light is, indeed, a constant, like all teachers and books said.
I think everyone should be free to demonstrate their ability, within the scope of their work, and judged on their merits. No, I did not get promotions as fast as others, but I sometimes did wonder if I needed to learn something, and made a change accordingly.
Feel free to interpret the above to fit within you “framework”, or “the way we make sense of words” in the way that is natural to you, for which I have not the slightest clue. Just like any normal communication.
Pay Equality, I do believe,
Equal consideration for promotion, yes!
Equality of results? That is not true within either,
it will only distort the world and make the incompetent
focus on discrimination instead of trying harder -like men.
As a male, tenure-track social scientist, I would just offer two comments from my own experience. First, I started a family in graduate school and received tremendous encouragement to prioritize being a father from my peers and advisors – in graduate school, as a postdoc, and as a newly hired faculty member. I even took almost a year off to be a full-time dad during grad school, and it didn’t really put me much behind my peers in terms of finishing my PhD. That said, I often wondered if I would have received the same encouragement along the way if I had been female. Second, the demands of staying “on track” with an academic career have pushed my marriage toward much more stereotypically gendered roles than I am comfortable with. I consider myself a feminist, yet do little domestic work apart from parenting. So we might ask whether the demands of academic careers not only drive away women with PhDs, but also reify gendered roles for the men who pursue careers in academia.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:33 pmI am a female “scientist” who has left academia to pursue other science-related career interests. I don’t regret my decision one bit.
I now have a job where I am eligible for maternity benefits, my salary is almost double what I made as a post-doc, and the work is just as intellectually rewarding. In fact, it is more intellectually rewarding because I don’t spend most of my time doing mindless, repetitive tasks required in bioscience research.
These are considerations for either male or female scientists, but become more urgent for women because they tend to carry more of the burden in having children.
I think the core of the problem, at least in the biosciences, is related to the long years essentially required as a post-doc. It is the most likely time to think about having a family, and yet you don’t have the resources or time to do it. In some cases, you may not even have an adequate health care plan.
Becoming a professor does come, in theory, with increased job stability, salary and “family-friendly” policies. However, getting a professorship often doesn’t come until your mid-thirties or later. That’s too long to wait for many people.
November 18th, 2009 at 5:14 pm