<p>Although my knowledge base is limited, I think there are a couple of relevant differences, PG. If a person misses the up-or-out decisions in management consulting or law, the person can generally find a spot in the same field, somewhere down the prestige and income scale, as I understand it. I think a lot of the management consulting positions are taken with the presumption that the person will move on, even before the decision is reached. A lawyer can always go into private practice, and still be practicing law, if not with the same sort of clientele.</p>
<p>In the case of an unfavorable tenure decision, it is often very hard to restart an academic career. As mentioned above, at any university that follows AAUP rules, the person cannot be offered another 5 to 7-year Assistant Professorship. People who do not get tenure at Harvard or Berkeley are offered tenured positions at other research universities, fairly often (or positions tenurable after one year). On the other hand, people who do not get tenure at “other research universities” tend to have a pretty difficult time finding an academic position that allows for research. If one’s research requires a multi-million dollar lab, there’s not an option of setting up shop independently–generally speaking, in the absence of a trust fund or lottery win. In some fields, people may be able to obtain an industrial position that does involve research; and in very favorable cases, they might even be able to segue back into an academic sport after a decade or so. But that’s quite hard if one’s research consists mostly of trade secrets.</p>
<p>Another difference between tenure-stream faculty positions and positions in law firms (aiming for partner) is the starting age, to the best of my understanding. People can graduate from law school at 25 and move directly to a position in a law firm (if they are not going the federal clerkship route). Ph.D.s in STEM fields take a little over 5 years on average; then for a position at a research university, post-doctoral experience is almost always required. One stint as a post-doc adds 2 to 3 years to the timeline, and 2 separate post-doc appointments will add 4 to 5 years, usually. We have rarely hired anyone under 30 in recent memory, and we have hired a few people with long post-doctoral track records, who are in their upper 30’s. (No women with children in that group, though, at least so far.)</p>
<p>Among women who are training for a surgical specialty (such as neurosurgery), at what career stage is it common to start a family? I don’t know, and thought that this might provide a useful comparison.</p>
<p>If you’re highly ambitious in whatever field - there’s no “good time” to start a family, so you might as well just do it as it suits you. I guess I’m surprised that so many of you think the hours that academics work are sooooo much longer than ambitious working professionals in the private sector, who also work routine 12 hour days, work at night / on weekends / on vacations that turn out not to be vacations, etc. I know I work 7 days a week, and had a recent vacation in which I worked a solid 2.5 days and spent a good hour or two on the other days checking in and moving things along. I guess I don’t see why you all think the life of an academic is that much harder. Seems like the norm for smart, ambitious people.</p>
<p>I see young people with science PhDs going into business - the sort of positions where they work 24/7, travel a lot, and leap-frog around different companies in different locales every few years- rather than pursue a career in academics, because they want to start families and see this as the better option. They are concerned about the future of academics as funding dries up. They feel like in business they can afford to hire full-time childcare and a home with a bedroom for live-in help. They don’t see how they can afford this in academics, even in the best possible scenario… definitely not on a post-doc income. They don’t envision trying to raise a family, doing either academics or business, without full-time help. They are realistic about the time commitments of either career path. They are looking to family members who might want to live with them and this may work out.</p>
<p>I know a young female MD in a demanding specialty at a teaching hospital. She and her husband, also an MD, have two young children. Both sets of grandparents bought condos in the same building with their children and the grandparents split the child care. This young woman was extremely fortunate that her pregnancies and deliveries were easy and uneventful. That is impossible to plan for. I know more than one woman whose career was derailed by unanticipated bed rest during pregnancy or the constraints of caring for a premature baby.</p>
<p>I don’t think academics work harder than people in a variety of other fields, but I agree with Quant Mech and others that academia can be more of a zero sum game. In most fields, not getting the promotion doesn’t mean you are fired from your current job, it just means you aren’t advancing. Not good, and one reason that there are still fewer women at a lot of high levels of many fields, but not the same as a job where if you don’t get the “promotion” of tenure, you lose your current job and aren’t even eligible for other comparable ones.</p>
<p>I seem to remember PG had premature babies. PG seems to have a very successful business career. As QM writes, in academics the tenure clock is important. The women I know with derailed careers couldn’t catch back up in their academic positions. They couldn’t take a time-out while they were in the hospital. Or when they were home with babies on monitors, etc. They were expected to have the same research and publications as their male peers when the time came for review. Maybe it’s just fair to have the same rules for everyone. I don’t have an opinion on this at the moment. Just pointing out some realities as I see them.</p>
<p>adding: and I think it is possible that it reflected negatively on them, in the eyes of older faculty, that they might have a priority above their academic position or a conflict with the position. It just wasn’t possible for them to be as engaged as their childless/childfree peers (male or female) in the same position.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say “very successful.” I’m content with where I’m at, but it’s not like I’m some amazing star in my field. </p>
<p>What is there to catch back up on that is so different in academia vs in the business world? Women who take long leaves in the business world suffer as well by not keeping current / being up to date. I was out for 6 months on maternity leave and I saw certain aspects of my field change very dramatically and I was behind the curve when I came back. I’m asking sincerely, because there’s all this exceptionalism for academia that I just don’t understand.</p>
<p>Typically, if you were extremely fortunate, you would be hired as an assistant professor after completing your PhD. After five or six years (?) there is a tenure review. You are either tenured and promoted to associate professor or you are let go from the university. They aren’t allowed to keep you if they don’t tenure you. Probably you get a year to teach, untenured, as you look for another job. Your prospects at that point are extremely dismal. If you weren’t able to accomplish what was necessary by this point in time, you aren’t a really good bet.</p>
<p>What I see, is an expectation that the dissertation is published as a book the first year or so as an assistant professor. There needs to be at least a second book by the time the tenure review happens. There need to be more publications, articles etc, and evidence of substantial, on-going research. Probably you need outside awards and grants, professional recognition from important organizations in your field. You pretty much have to be an “amazing star” to get tenured these days. This is a relatively recent development though it has been trending this direction for 20plus years. imho</p>
<p>I am not writing about science tenure review. I am not a professor, just an observer.</p>
<p>Remember the context of this thread: women and STEM. So, QM’s perspective is valid. Sure women can have the same challenges in other fields (don’t underestimate how hard young lawyers or management consultants work,) but many women may not want to choose a STEM path if it doesn’t suit the balance of what they want in their fuller lives.</p>
<p>DH didn’t need a 2nd book for tenure, but he needed plenty of activity in his field, including articles. Not STEM, not beholden to a lab. Not dependent on large, ongoing, outside grants (they can factor in PhD research, but are not a mandate afterwards.) He could weave his research in with the kids’ needs, make up for lost time at midnight. But he was tied to one U setting, with far fewer options to just up and switch jobs, far fewer annual openings than may occur in other arenas.</p>
<p>For my generation those who weren’t tenured tended to go to law school. That was Plan B. For the young scientists I know, medical school is sometimes Plan B.</p>
<p>I know lawyers who have pulled all-nighters when they were younger, and I think they do work quite hard to this day. </p>
<p>The time sequence of the career makes a difference, though. If you consider a 32-year-old woman, if she is in corporate law and did not do a clerkship after law school, she may have had 7 years to establish her career and become valuable to the firm. (I don’t think people can make partner that fast, but perhaps it is possible.) If she is in a STEM field, odds are that she is just starting her Assistant Professorship, or perhaps a year or even two years into it, in the most favorable cases. In terms of earning tenure, all the of skills that she has acquired as a Ph.D. student and post-doc will be helpful to her–but none of those accomplishments count toward tenure. Only the publications at the new university go into the “tenure packet.” In STEM fields, major grants in support of research are required for tenure (though sometimes not sufficient). Published work at the university where one is an Assistant Professor is virtually always required in order to be successful in the competition for grants.</p>
<p>I admit that it is possible that both men and women who are Assistant Professors in STEM fields in a lot of places are in the grip of a collective delusion that they should not start families until they have a tenured position. It could be worthy of an anthropological investigation. I don’t mean this sarcastically, even though it may come across that way. It is just the most common practice in my field. </p>
<p>Also, there are some people who break that mold, some successfully. In some fields, where people do not receive their first research grants until they are 42 on average, there is not a realistic option to postpone starting a family until afterwards–well, at least not for a woman.</p>
<p>Addendum: I should not have implicitly overlooked the possibilities of adoption, surrogacy or other means of family formation in the sentence immediately above.</p>
<p>^^the young people I know are definitely factoring in the possibilities of adoption as they try to figure out these work/family issues for themselves and try to decide how long they can “afford” to wait on children.</p>
<p>Also, I should add that a number of universities offer the option to “stop the tenure clock” for one year, when a child is born. This means that the year does not count toward the time limit for consideration for tenure. I don’t think it’s close to an even balance on the extra time that child care takes; and actually, the only person I know who has taken advantage of the offer is male.</p>
<p>Note that non-academic jobs for STEM majors vary significantly based on field. Those with PhDs in engineering, math, statistics, and computer science are probably much better off than those with PhDs in biology and chemistry.</p>
<p>I would think so. And still there are fewer women studying these subjects and working in these fields also.</p>
<p>I don’t think an insurance underwriter or pharmacist or systems analyst is facing different challenges around family timing that lawyers or management consultants are.</p>
<h1>174 Isn’t this a relatively recent development? For our generation and the one directly after us, I remember women desperately and discreetly trying to figure out the maternity policy, when in fact an official written policy didn’t even exist. I only ask because of all the recent glass-ceiling type articles about women in STEM. Did official maternity policies exist at schools, with which you are familiar, in the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s?</h1>
<p>In practical terms, in STEM, how do you take a year off from your lab? Is that even possible?</p>
<p>adding: oh wait - you don’t actually take a year off, right? you just get an extra year before your tenure decision?</p>
<p>I know female non-STEM faculty who planned it so they’d have the baby in June/July- and it miraculously happened that way. Barring an early out for bed rest, they completed the semester and spent the summer with the baby. A med school student friend managed #1 this way and #2 wasn’t born til a week or two after her final requirements ended. Life doesn’t usually work this way.</p>
<p>Alh, in DH’s humanities subfield, it’s not common for one faculty member to put out many books in a relatively short period. The quality books tend to need quite some time and are then referenced for decades (ie, long shelf life.) I can’t speak to other fields. But articles matter- and the quality and enthusiasm of those outside peers who provide references/commentary re: professional contributions to the field.</p>
<p>That’s right, alh–people don’t stop working, but the tenure decision is delayed by a year. There are some curmudgeons (not our curmudgeon on CC) on various faculties who think that the work accomplished during the “stopped” year should not count toward tenure, because that time is extra.</p>