CAREERS NATURE|Vol 465|10 June 2010

GENDER STOP-GAPS
Women are still underrepresented in academic science, and universities are struggling to do something
about it. But there are efforts afoot, reports Robin Mejia.

W
hen Monique Frize started

r. dale
at the University of Ottowa
in Ontario, Canada, in the
1960s, she wanted to study
engineering. At the time, her gender was
more than an anomaly. “I was the first one.
The dean and the department chair tried to
dissuade me and told me to stay in chemistry,
which I hated,” Frize recalls. “I wanted to be
an electrical engineer.”
Today, a story such as Frize’s sounds almost
anachronistic — its overt sexism something
that a modern university would be unlikely to
tolerate. Yet studies show that in Europe and
North America, women are still significantly
underrepresented in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, at least at
the top levels. In Europe, only 11% of senior
academic researchers are women, according
to the European Commission 2009 report She
Figures. In the United States, a 2009 National
Research Council (NRC) study found that
21% of senior science faculty members and
6% of senior engineering faculty members
were female. “The [tenure] processes have
not changed to reflect the lives of young
professors,” says Catherine Didion, the
director of the Committee on Women in
Science, Engineering and Medicine at the US
National Academies based in Washington DC.
Universities are attempting to address Although researchers routinely control to pause the tenure clock after a child was
these shortcomings (see ‘Increasing for subconscious biases in scientific studies, born or in certain other situations, up from
gender diversity of the candidate pool’). some are loath to consider that a similar the 48% that reported the policy in 2002.
Some have sought policies to make the problem might affect their hiring decisions. Many other universities indicated that they
academic track more family-friendly, such Yet the NRC report found that such biases were considering adopting the policy. But
as pausing the tenure clock after the birth seem likely. Simply having a woman on a scientists must be willing to make use of it.
of a child. Others have made a concerted search committee led to more women being Amber Charlebois, an assistant professor of
effort to broaden faculty searches or offer interviewed for a position. chemistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University
mentoring programmes. Such moves should “Think about how you recruit,” says in Madison, New Jersey, says that she avoided
provide new solutions to an old problem — Alicia Carriquiry, a professor of statistics taking part for fear that she would seem
especially for those candidates who know at Iowa State University in Ames, who less dedicated and productive than her
that these options exist. analysed the data for the NRC study. “You peers. Kathleen Christensen, the director of
post announcements everywhere, and the Workplace, Work Force and Working
Increasing applicants then you call all your friends and say, ‘if Families programme at the Alfred P. Sloan
One lesson for recruiters hoping to you have any good students, send them my Foundation in New York, calls such decisions
increase their female ranks is to make way’.” If the recruiters are all male, they may “bias avoidance”. For the tenure pause to
sure that they broaden searches to include unintentionally attract a male pool. Similarly, work, department chairs must be clear in
candidates with a range of backgrounds. women are more likely to have female their endorsement, explaining in letters to
“Some deans tell us, there just aren’t friends, and those friends may recommend reviewers that female faculty members took
women in this field. We don’t believe that,” more female candidates. advantage of a university policy with full
says Curt Rice, vice-president for research departmental support.
and development at the University of Family and flexibility In a 2006 study (R. Drago et al. Am. Behav.
Tromsø in Norway. Even in fields with Stopping the tenure clock after the birth of Sci. 49, 1222–1247; 2006), researchers at
many female PhD students, applicant pools a child is one family-friendly policy that Pennsylvania State University showed that
for tenure positions are predominantly seems to be growing in popularity. A 2007 one-third of women had not asked for the
male. In the United States, for example, report by the Center for the Education of reduced teaching load that they needed for
45% of biology doctoral degrees go to Women at the University of Michigan in family reasons, because they were concerned
women, but they account for only 26% of Ann Arbor found that more than two-thirds about adverse career repercussions (19%
the applicants to tenure-track positions. of US research universities allowed faculty of men said the same thing). And 42% of
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© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
NATURE|Vol 465|10 June 2010
women reported coming back to work sooner
than they would have liked after having
a child, because they wanted to be taken
seriously as an academic.
In an effort to affect policies and culture,
the Sloan Foundation, together with the
American Council on Education and the
Families and Work Institute, developed an
awards scheme for faculty career flexibility.
In 2005, five universities received grants of
US$250,000 to help them expand on flexible
career paths. For example, the University of
California, Berkeley, used the grant to update
an old policy, giving faculty members the
option to go part-time temporarily. Berkeley
academics had been using the rule, initiated
in the 1970s, only to start up companies.
The Sloan award enabled the university
to launch an online interactive newsletter
and website explaining its family-friendly
polices, including that the part-time option
could be used to support family transitions.
The university also initiated mandatory
workshops for new department chairs
to ensure that the university leadership
understood and supported the policies.
Lehigh University in Pennsylvania used the
Sloan money to offer a $6,000 grant to help
tenure-track faculty members to balance their
careers with family responsibilities. In 2006
and 2009, the Sloan Foundation made two
more rounds of awards to six universities.
It is too early to determine whether these
policies will mean more senior female faculty.
However, data collected from the initial Sloan
grantees of 2005 do show that more faculty
members know that their school offers
tenure-track extensions.
Mentoring for women
When Frize began her studies in electrical
engineering, her dean may not have
recognized her talent, but one of her
INCREASING GENDER DIVERSITY OF THE CANDIDATE POOL
Targeted or special advertising
General advertising
Recruiting at conferences, contacting
women directly, using personal contacts
Help from diversity/equal opportunities
office or coordinator
Contacting colleagues and other universities
Special language used in advertising
Special consideration to females
(e.g. making extra effort to interview females)
Informal networks
Grants or special funds for hiring women
Target of opportunity
Use of special databases or directories
Having a diverse search committee
Broadening searches
Other
0 10
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
professors did. That professor encouraged her
to enter a student-paper competition, which
she entered and won. “He made me believe
in myself,” she recalls. The NRC report shows
that this kind of backing is
crucial. Men and women both
had better grant-application
success rates when they had
mentors, but the difference
was more pronounced for
women: 68% of female
assistant-professors without a
mentor received grant funding,
compared with 93% of those
with a mentor.
Now a professor of electrical
engineering at the University Monique Frize helps to
of Ottowa, Frize helps to organize mentoring events they are ready to take the
organize networking and for female researchers.
mentoring events for female
science and engineering students, bringing
in other senior female researchers who
can answer their questions. In 2004, she
organized a leadership workshop in Kenya
for women scientists and engineers, and says expanding the programme.
she later received e-mails from participants
saying that they’d negotiated better salaries,
and in one case, achieved a vice-provost
appointment.
Some are seeking remedies by moving
beyond the standard mentoring model. For
example, ‘co-mentoring’ entails a group
of women meeting every month to both
mentor and be mentored. At each meeting,
participants have the option of bringing up
a problem or issue and describing it in five
minutes. The group responds for five minutes,
and then another person can bring up an issue. professor of sociology at Reed College in
But women often don’t actively promote
themselves. In Norway, faculty members are
not promoted according to the strict timeline that in smaller biotech start-up companies
common to universities elsewhere; it is up
to the scientist to decide when to apply for
20 30 40 50 60 70
Number of US university departments who
reported using the given measure
CAREERS
promotion to full professor. “Men are willing
to give it a shot as soon as they think they
might have a chance. Women tend to wait
until they’re super sure,” says Rice. So Rice
asked department chairs to
r. j. lacombe
alert him when they felt that
female faculty members in
their department were ready to
apply, regardless of whether the
woman had started the process.
Often the two don’t agree.
To determine who’s ready
when, the University of Tromsø
created a ‘promotion simulation’.
At a cost of about $2,500 per
candidate, the exercise is used
to help women assess whether
next step. External reviewers
put the candidates through
assessments and interviews as if they were up
for promotion. In an initial trial, most women
fared well in the simulation and decided to
apply — successfully — says Rice, who is
Lessons from industry
Other schools are applying policies from
the corporate realm to academia. Bowdoin
College in Brunswick, Maine, is using
Sloan Foundation funding to develop
part-time tenure-track positions and job
sharing for academic couples.
Rice has also looked at research on male
and female work patterns, finding inspiration
in the work of then graduate student Kjersten
Bunker Whittington (now an assistant
Portland, Oregon), who looked at patenting
patterns in academia and industry. She found
with flat, teamwork-focused organizational
structures, women were as likely as men
to hold a patent. At universities and large
source: us Natl res. couNcil
pharmaceutical firms with rigid hierarchies,
men patented significantly more than
women. “The performance of women seems
to vary considerably based on how research
is organized,” says Rice. So starting with one
academic centre, in 2002, the University of
Tromsø asked the heads of each research
group to also participate as a team member
in a second research programme — as a peer
to PhD students and postdocs. The feedback
was positive, says Rice, who is now trying to
promote the idea to other centres at his school.
It is still not an easy sell, he says, noting that
many of his colleagues fail to see gender as an
issue in their own departments. He disagrees.
“What’s perfectly clear,” Rice says, “is that if
40% of the associate professors are women
and 20% of full professors are, that’s not the
result of fair play.” ■
Robin Mejia is a freelance journalist based
80 in Santa Cruz, California.
See Editorial, page 666.
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