<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>A friend of mine attends UCB and recently sent me an interesting excerpt from her readings that is very relevant to me, seeing as I am a woman pursuing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. It's highly discouraging to say the least... anyway, the excerpt is not very long, and I'd love to hear all your thoughts on it if you could take the time to read it:</p>
<p>In your experience, do you agree that women are typically sidelined into the second tier in this field?</p>
<p>The article isn’t about being sidelined because of one’s gender, but because of gender roles and expectations if one chooses to have a family. </p>
<p>It’s also not generally at the PhD level that these sorts of decisions are made, since few women have children while they are PhD students. It’s more at the postdoctoral and junior faculty level that women begin to feel the squeeze between family obligations on one hand and work obligations on the other.</p>
<p>All in all, it is certainly not impossible to have a family and be competitive at the highest levels of academia. But it’s not easy, either.</p>
<p>It’s also not generally at the PhD level that these sorts of decisions are made, since few women have children while they are PhD students. It’s more at the postdoctoral and junior faculty level that women begin to feel the squeeze between family obligations on one hand and work obligations on the other.</p>
<p>I don’t 100% agree with this statement, especially since women are attending PhD and MD programs later and later in life because the programs are getting more competitive. It’s not uncommon in one of my fields for people to take 2-3 years off to be a lab coordinator and gain research experience, and in my other field, it’s pretty common for people to earn an MPH and work for 2-3+ years before returning. I have two cohorts, and between the two there are several grad students (women and men) who have had children while still in the PhD program, typically after they finish their coursework.</p>
<p>Do I agree with the article? Yes, the research is there. For one example, one of my fields (psychology) reached gender parity wrt the number of PhDs granted in 1986, nearly 30 years ago. However, the vast majority of full professors and most associate professors are still men. It seems that women can usually successfully complete the PhD and even successfully get hired into postdoctoral and assistant professor positions. Where we tend to begin to lose is the more prestigious assistant professor positions at big R1 schools and in promotion and tenure.</p>
<p>And it’s because of that time crunch - usually at this point women are in their early to mid 30s, and they want to have children. Women are still expected to do the majority of the childrearing and the majority of the housework, and research shows that they on average do. So often after getting a position as an assistant professor, and having small children, they either choose the path of least resistance (not pursuing a career at a top R1 because they already know the demands it places on them) or they are shut out (they do pursue the career, but they don’t get the grants and papers they need because they aren’t willing or able to spend 80 hours a week on it).</p>
<p>Fortunately, that’s not necessarily the culture everywhere and I think it’s changing. I’m a woman in two R1 departments that are top 10 in my primary field, top 20 in my secondary. Most of my female professors have children - a lot of the men, too - and I think especially in my primary department, they model good work-life balance. I see people leaving at 5 and 6 pm, not being here on weekends, enjoying time with their families. My advisor tells me to go home, take my birthday off, encourages free time and doesn’t expect 80+ hour weeks out of me. My colleagues/fellow grads work hard but we relax. And interestingly even though we are all R1 grad students at an Ivy, the culture is definitely not “I wanna go work at Harvard and be a famous professor.” Both the men and the women want to have families and a health work-life balance, so I’d say a good 30% at least want nonacademic jobs, and most of the rest of us have no desire to be at an R1. It’s really interesting to be in that kind of department.</p>
<p>It’s not just science PhDs. It’s many, many fields. Look up the number of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women. I participated in a study of parenting boards, forums and blogs a couple of years ago. The parents posting on these were virtually all women, most of them stay-at-home moms. The number of posts from fathers was in single digits out of thousands of posts. A very common and disturbing thread was this sentiment that work, careers and academics were “not worth it” once they had their children. Most of these women were also very much captured by the cult of attachment parenting - breastfeeding, baby-wearing and daycare is considered “strangers raising your child.” These weren’t just young mothers out of high school either. There were several who mentioned having advanced degrees and having left careers like law and medicine. </p>
<p>A lot of women don’t want to let go of their role at home, even if they have a husband who is willing to take on his share. Attachment parenting just makes it worse. Poor dad can’t even make a bottle and feed the kid anymore since breast is best and formula is poison. A woman’s options today are (1) Have kids and give up everything else, (2) Have kids and a career and be judged like crazy, plagued with guilt and most likely held back in that career, or (3) Don’t have kids. Personally, I am leaning very strongly toward #3.</p>
<p>This is a touch subject…its always risky for a male (like me) to wander into it…</p>
<p>In the science and engineering fields I’m in, I have certainly heard there is a bias against woman, but in my experience in academia, I think it is very small these days. First, affirmative action is the law for faculty hiring in the vast majority of places. Second, I just don’t see a habit of female professors being discriminated against. Woman should be encouraged by this.</p>
<p>Where I see woman get in trouble, is when they want to take months to a year off to raise a child. Legally they can do this, but in academia, you’ll miss out on grants, conferences, keeping up with state-of-the-art in the field, your students may leave you or find other mentors, or the lab your working in may reorganize itself to deal with your absence limiting your role. This all hurts in the long run when after 7 or 8 years at a University, you’ll be judged if you are a leader in your field to get tenure.</p>
<p>Like lauralily sorta said, find a good man/partner where you can somehow split the roles. That is the way to succeed. The thing is that academia is competitive and life is not easy. It is difficult for men too. I know men who turn down good jobs to be with their wives, academic couples that have worked in different states for years, men who get divorced, and men who end up not having as many children as they would like because of the stresses of academia.</p>
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<p>What I find disturbing is that this sentiment disturbs you. Haven’t we come far enough that women can decide which path they want to take?</p>
<p>Haven’t we come far enough that women should not have to decide? Haven’t we come far enough where women, like men, can have both career and family without having to be second-tiered or mommy-tracked?</p>
<p>The thing is that it is very difficult for a woman (or man) to take months or even a year off in academia and succeed in the long run… </p>
<p>To me it always seems like there is a decision to be made between two spouses. It is hard to see it as the University (or any other Research institution)'s job to radically adjust their policies to correct for a personal decision from a marriage that may not favor one spouse. For example, if a mother (or the father) decides to stay home for six months to year for a child, why should a university radically change their policies to make sure the spouse who stayed home does not have his/her career affected. </p>
<p>Universities compete for grant money, they compete for journal articles, prestige in a field, etc. The world doesn’t always care at what cost the performance comes (I’m not saying this is right, it is just reality). In a sense the University would have to spend more to make the environment a more level playing field for a faculty who takes a significant time off. This is very tough…especially in this economy.</p>
<p>^^But sometimes the woman chooses not to juggle a career and family. She decides to stay home full-time. And there is nothing wrong with that. I know a few stay-at-home dads, too - our next-door neighbor, for one.</p>
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<p>Deleting the words ‘medical science’ covers all professions. Academia is no different than business in that regard. Life-balance is becoming much more difficult due to the increasingly “competitive world”. The one advantage (for incumbents) academia has over business is tenure (which can be a minus to new entrants).</p>
<p>It’s not so much how to live a balanced life but how best to imbalance one’s life that will lead to success…</p>
<p>What I wonder though, is how often it is a choice in the sense that being a full-time parent was their dream and something they always wanted to do, and how often it is a choice in the sense that they really wanted a career and a family, but felt it was too difficult and had to decide between the two.</p>
<p>Jack has brought up maternity leave a number of times, but I’m actually aware of a few faculty members who have taken maternity leave prior to getting tenure, but still worked at about 50-75% time. This let them extend their “tenure clock” for when they’re up for review. I think for one it’s really worked in her favor, since in the last year or two after having her kid a number of large grants have come in, as well as diversifying her research a bit in addition to getting many more publications. It’ll be interesting to see how her review committee handles things.</p>
<p>I’m going to chime in on the topic of children and add that it also depends on the other parent and how much that parent is willing to keep to reasonable hours and contribute. Another factor is pay discrepancy. I am not going to assume it’s a traditional 2 parent household, but if it is, and the husband is in the higher paying job, he may expect the wife to cut back on hours and career for the needs of the children first.
I’ve known mothers in high achieving academic careers whose husbands have contributed much to the child care. Some have been in the lower paying career and have been willing to cut back to part time. In the traditional model, there may be pressure on the woman to cut back or relocate to accomodate the man’s career. I don’t know about the non traditional households, but I would expect that the same consideration and conflict over whose job comes first would be a consideration regardless.</p>