Can Women Have It All?

Related to achieving gender equity in science is how women balance professional and personal demands to achieve work-life balance. A friend reminded  me about this article from The Atlantic. Although published in 2012, it offers much food for thought.

Why Women Still Can’t Have It All published in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic. Online here.

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How Biased Are You?

On Nov 12 we will discuss definitions for implicit bias. In preparing for this discussion, you may ask yourself:

How biased am I?

One way to assess this is to take one of the online implicit bias tests. Harvard University runs Project Implicit, a site that serves implicit bias tests for all sorts of categories, including Gender – Science.

The test is easy and takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Go to the site by clicking this link.

Literature Discussed at the JHU Diversity Conference

Overcoming Bias and Barriers Presentation at the JHU Diversity Conference (22 Oct 2012)

Cited Sources

Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (2007) Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Acadmic Science and Engineering, Committee of Science Engineering and Public Policy, Institute of Medicine, Policy and Global Affairs, National Academy of Sciences, & National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

University Committee on the Status of Women. Vision 2020. 2006; Available from: http://web.jhu.edu/administration/jhuoie/docs/cmte_status_of_women/vision_2020_final_report.pdf.

Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students (2012) Moss-Racusin, C.A., J.F. Dovidio, V.L. Brescoll, M.J. Graham, & J. Handelsman, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109: 16474-9.

Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice (2001) Monin, B. & D.T. Miller, Journal of personality and social psychology 81: 33-43.

Can an angry woman get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and expression of emotion in the workplace (2008) Brescoll, V.L. & E.L. Uhlmann, Psychol Sci 19: 268-75.

Dr. Shelley Correll, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, Director of the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, From Education video at LeanIn.org

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/09yfp5/the-broads-must-be-crazy—belittled-women

The confidence code: The science and art of self-assurance—What women should know (2014) Kay, K. & C. Shipman, New York: Harper Business. 256; Kay, K. & C. Shipman, The confidence gap, in The Atlantic 2014, Atlantic Media Company: Washington, DC

Madera, J., Hebl, M., & Martin, R. (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation for academics: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology. 94, 1591-1599.

The presence of female conveners correlates with a higher proportion of female speakers at scientific symposia (2014) Casadevall, A. & J. Handelsman, MBio 5: e00846-13.

http://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/

Research Project Grants: Success Rates, By Gender

 

JHU Diversity Conference

Wow! Sixty people have registered for my workshop on achieving gender equity in STEM that will take place as part of the JHU Diversity conference on 22 Oct, 2014!

 

Vision 2020

Vision 2020 is a report published by Johns Hopkins University and put together by a university committee on the status of women. The committee was assembled in 2002, and the study was published in October 2006. Many of the findings about the experiences of women at JHU recapitulated those in the PNAS study.

Page 40 documents the hostile environment faced by both women faculty and staff. Page 42 has a section on the experiences of faculty members followed by those of women staff members. The case histories discussing the promotion of women faculty are particularly disturbing.

This section is followed on p. 45 by some suggestions for institutional best practices to be adopted. Since this was published (nearly 10 years ago) I will be interested to find out if there are any follow up to evaluate whether or not (or how many of) these institutional best practices have been incorporated into the JHU culture.

The full report can be found here:

Click to access vision_2020_final_report.pdf

This links works as of the posting, however please report a bad link if you come here in the future and cannot read it. It is well worth reviewing.