Precarity of post doctorate career breaks: does gender matter?
Autor/in:
Jones, Karen
Quelle: Studies in Higher Education, 48 (2023) 10, S 1576–1594
Inhalt: Against a background of Bologna process goals to improve employment prospects for PhD graduates, and the crisis of precarious employment conditions and prospects afflicting postdoctoral researchers – hitherto postdocs, the OECD ([2021], “Reducing the Precarity of Academic Research Careers.” In OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers. Paris: OECD Publishing,) called for research into postdoctoral careers and the precarity phenomenon. This paper responds by giving attention to career breaks as these represent a prevalent but under researched aspect of postdoc precarity in the contemporary academic labor market. Utilizing a substantial international mixed-method dataset with a sample of 950 postdocs, the study examined experiences and perceptions of the professional and personal implications of academic career breaks. Results reveal significant differences between males and females in key areas: maternity was the main reason for females’ career breaks, and redundancy/end of contract for males. Females resumed employment more with the same employer and males with a different employer. Support surrounding career breaks was mixed, largely inadequate, but not associated with gender. Perceptions of career breaks differed significantly across groups of postdocs that previously experienced a career break, those on a career break, and postdocs that had never had a career break. The latter two groups perceived negative career outcomes and positive personal outcomes more than postdocs who had previously had a career break, however, significant gender differences indicate females were more negative about the personal implications of career breaks. Discussion of the findings concludes that under neoliberalism postdocs represent a growing lumpen proletariat, leading to recommendations for policy, practice and further research into gender, precarity and postdoctoral careers.
Quelle: Nat Rev Mater (Nature Reviews Materials), (2023)
Inhalt: Higher education and research institutions are critical to the well-being and success of societies, meaning their financial support is strongly in the public interest. At the same time, value-for-money principles demand that such investment delivers. Unfortunately, these principles are currently violated by one of the biggest sources of public funding inefficiency: sexism.
Power and the perception of pregnancy in the academy
Autor/in:
Percival Carter, Erin
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: Becoming pregnant as an academic is risky. Many who want to become or find themselves pregnant structure their lives and careers to try to mitigate the potential negative effects of pregnancy on their future careers. Yet research continues to suggest that having been pregnant or being a mother significantly reduces the likelihood of career success compared to either being child-free or a father. While in some cases success is defined as research productivity, in many cases, it is defined as simply remaining in academia. Governments, societies, and institutions bemoan the resulting “leaky pipelines” and speculate as to the causes of seemingly reinforced glass ceilings. Yet, underlying so many of the formal and informal conversations, norms, and policies surrounding pregnancy and academia is an implicit assumption that pregnancy and pregnant people are the problem to be solved and solutions thus require repairing some deficit created in the individual by pregnancy. In this article, I argue that pregnancy discrimination in academia is in large part a problem resulting from power and how it is wielded against pregnant people, both by institutions and by individuals. Using both a personal narrative account of the process, experience, and outcomes of pregnancy in the academy resulting in filing a formal Title IX complaint and a review of contemporary research on power, discrimination, and pregnancy, I explore how academic structures and systems nominally tasked with supporting equity can instead serve to exaggerate power differences and foster discrimination.
Gender pay gaps in economics: A deeper look at institutional factors
Autor/in:
Kim, MinSub; Chen, Joyce J.; Weinberg, Bruce A.
Quelle: Agricultural Economics, 54 (2023) 4, S 471–486
Inhalt: Using rich data on graduate tenure‐track faculty, we explore the gender pay gap in academic departments of economics and agricultural/applied economics and the differences between them. We find that the gender pay gaps in economics and agricultural/applied economics are 8.3% and 4.1%, respectively, controlling for faculty rank, experience, and university affiliation. The gender pay gap increases with rank and varies across institutions. Productivity is an important determinant of wages but it explains little of the gender pay gap. While the lower unexplained gap in agricultural/applied economics is laudable, a greater share of women who are assistant and associate professors is part of the explanation. Given institutional differences, we explore the extent to which institutional factors—differences in the returns to observed characteristics, such as rank; unobserved characteristics; and institutional differences in pay levels—contribute to the gender pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Inhalt: Women remain underrepresented among faculty in nearly all academic fields. Using a census of 245,270 tenure-track and tenured professors at United States-based PhD-granting departments, we show that women leave academia overall at higher rates than men at every career age, in large part because of strongly gendered attrition at lower-prestige institutions, in non-STEM fields, and among tenured faculty. A large-scale survey of the same faculty indicates that the reasons faculty leave are gendered, even for institutions, fields, and career ages in which retention rates are not. Women are more likely than men to feel pushed from their jobs and less likely to feel pulled toward better opportunities, and women leave or consider leaving because of workplace climate more often than work-life balance. These results quantify the systemic nature of gendered faculty retention; contextualize its relationship with career age, institutional prestige, and field; and highlight the importance of understanding the gendered reasons for attrition rather than focusing on rates alone.
Persistent pandemic: The unequal impact of COVID labor on early career academics
Autor/in:
Ballif, Edmée; Zinn, Isabelle
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2023)
Inhalt: The COVID-19 pandemic has not only highlighted preexisting inequalities in academia but has also exacerbated them while giving rise to novel forms of disparities. Drawing upon our experiences as women, parents, and early career academics (ECAs) in Switzerland and enriched by feminist theory on reproductive labor and carework, we examine the unequal impacts of the pandemic. First, our analysis reveals how the pandemic disproportionately impacted ECAs, a group already in a position of precarity within academia. Second, we identify the broad range of tasks brought about by the pandemic as “COVID labor”. This essential labor—undervalued, invisible, and often unpaid—had a particularly negative impact on ECAs. Third, looking at various intersections of difference, we emphasize that the experience of COVID labor was far from uniform among ECAs with institutional responses disregarding its extent and unequal distribution. In conclusion, we underscore the importance of acknowledging the long-term consequences of COVID labor on ECAs, particularly those belonging to underrepresented groups. Neglecting these issues may lead to the loss of a wide range of talented scholars for reasons that are not related to the quality of their academic performance.
Schlagwörter:academia; Arbeit; care work; COVID-19; early career researcher; inequalities; intersectional; intersektional; labor; pandemie; precarity; Reproduktionsarbeit; Schweiz; Switzerland
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on publishing in astronomy in the initial two years
Autor/in:
Böhm, Vanessa; Liu, Jia
Quelle: Nature Astronomy, 7 (2023) 1, S 105–112
Inhalt: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns changed working conditions for many researchers worldwide. While there exists initial evidence that these conditions have had a measurable impact on the field of astronomy, a comprehensive quantitative analysis is still outstanding. We study the effects of the pandemic on the astronomy community worldwide, with a special focus on early-career and underrepresented female scientists, using public records of publications. We find that the overall output of the field, measured by the yearly paper count, has increased. This is mainly driven by boosted individual productivity in most countries. However, a decreasing number of incoming new researchers is seen in most countries we studied, indicating higher barriers for new researchers to enter the field or complete their first project during COVID. The overall improvement in productivity is not equally shared by women. A smaller fraction of papers are written by female astronomers and fewer women are among incoming new researchers as compared to pre-pandemic trends, in 14 out of 25 countries we studied. Even though female astronomers became more productive during COVID, the level of improvement is smaller than for men. Pre-COVID, female astronomers in countries such as the Netherlands, Australia and Switzerland were equally as or even more productive than their male colleagues. During COVID, on average, no single country’s female astronomers were able to be equally productive as their male colleagues.
Wie gut konnten Forschende während der Corona-Pandemie arbeiten? Eine Studie im Journal “Nature Astronomy” hat dies untersucht. Sie beschäftigt sich mit der Produktivität der Astronomie, könnte aber auch Rückschlüsse auf einige andere Disziplinen geben. Insgesamt haben die Lockdowns und Einschränkungen 2020 und 2021 der Produktivität in der Astronomie offenbar nicht geschadet: Nicht nur stieg die Zahl der weltweiten Veröffentlichungen um 13 Prozent und setzte damit den Aufwärtstrend der vorherigen Jahre fort, auch die individuelle Produktivität der Forschenden wuchs. Dies spricht dafür, dass die flexiblen Arbeitsbedingungen sowie durch wegfallende Wege gewonnene Zeit der eigenen Forschung zugute kam (FAZ, Nature Astronomy). Eine gute Nachricht? Nicht nur.
Denn nicht für alle Forschenden galt dies gleichermaßen: Es waren fast ausschließlich männliche Wissenschaftler, die produktiver wurden, während der Erfolg von weiblichen Wissenschaftlerinnen stagnierte. Sie konnten sogar weniger Zeit als vorher in ihre Forschung investieren. Der Gleichstellung dürften die Pandemiejahre also geschadet haben.
Schlagwörter:COVID-19; gender gap; publication gap
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Gender-based Language Differences in Letters of Recommendation
Autor/in:
Fu, Sunyang; Calley, Darren Q.; Rasmussen, Veronica A.; Hamilton, Marissa D.; Lee, Christopher K.; Kalla, Austin; Liu, Hongfang
Quelle: AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science proceedings. AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science, 2023 (2023) , S 196–205
Inhalt: Gender stereotyping is the practice of assigning or ascribing specific characteristics, differences, or identities to a person solely based on their gender. Biased conceptions of gender can create barriers to equality and need to be proactively identified and addressed. In biomedical education, letters of recommendation (LOR) are considered an important source for evaluating candidates' past performance. Because LOR is subjective and has no standard formatting requirements for the writer, potential language bias can be introduced. Natural language processing (NLP) offers a promising solution to detect language bias in LOR through automatic extraction of sensitive language and identification of letters with strong biases. In our study, we developed, evaluated, and deployed four NLP different methods (sublanguage analysis, dictionary-based approach, rule-based approach, and deep learning approach) for the extraction of psycholinguistics and thematic characteristics in LORs from three different physical therapy residency programs (Neurologic, Orthopaedic, and Sport) at Mayo Clinic. The evaluation statistics suggest that both MedTaggerIE model and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model achieved moderate-high performance across eight different thematic categories. Through the pilot demonstration study, we learned that male writers were more likely to use the words 'intelligence', 'exceptional', and 'pursue' and male applicants were more likely to have the words 'strength', 'interpersonal skills', 'conversations', and 'pursue' in their letters of recommendation. Thematic analysis suggested that male and female writers have significant differences in expressing doubt, motivation, and recommendation. Findings derived from the study needed to be carefully interpreted based on the context of the study setting, residency programs, and data. A follow-up demonstration study is needed to further evaluate and interpret the findings.
Schlagwörter:gender bias; medicine; Medizin; natural language processing; recommendation letter
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Gender bias in reference letters for residency and academic medicine: a systematic review
Quelle: Postgraduate medical journal, 99 (2023) 1170, S 272–278
Inhalt: Reference letters play an important role for both postgraduate residency applications and medical faculty hiring processes. This study seeks to characterise the ways in which gender bias may manifest in the language of reference letters in academic medicine. In particular, we conducted a systematic review in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. We searched Embase, MEDLINE and PsycINFO from database inception to July 2020 for original studies that assessed gendered language in medical reference letters for residency applications and medical faculty hiring. A total of 16 studies, involving 12 738 letters of recommendation written for 7074 applicants, were included. A total of 32% of applicants were women. There were significant differences in how women were described in reference letters. A total of 64% (7/11) studies found a significant difference in gendered adjectives between men and women. Among the 7 studies, a total of 86% (6/7) noted that women applicants were more likely to be described using communal adjectives, such as "delightful" or "compassionate", while men applicants were more likely to be described using agentic adjectives, such as "leader" or "exceptional". Several studies noted that reference letters for women applicants had more frequent use of doubt raisers and mentions of applicant personal life and/or physical appearance. Only one study assessed the outcome of gendered language on application success, noting a higher residency match rate for men applicants. Reference letters within medicine and medical education exhibit language discrepancies between men and women applicants, which may contribute to gender bias against women in medicine.
Online panel work through a gender lens: implications of digital peer review meetings
Autor/in:
Peterson, Helen; Husu, Liisa
Quelle: Sci. and Pub. Pol. (Science and Public Policy), 50 (2023) 3, S 371–381
Inhalt: Previous studies have highlighted how the academic peer review system has been marked by gender bias and nepotism. Panel meetings arranged by research funding organisations (RFOs), where reviewers must explain and account for their assessment and scoring of grant applications, can potentially mitigate and disrupt patterns of inequality. They can however also constitute arenas where biases are reproduced. This article explores, through a gender lens, the shift from face-to-face to digital peer review meetings in a Swedish RFO, focusing on the implications for an unbiased and fair grant allocation process. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with panellists and staff in the RFO, the analysis identifies both benefits and challenges of this shift, regarding use of resources, meeting dynamics, micropolitics, social glue, and possibilities for group reflections. RFOs deliberating digitalisation of their peer review processes need to consider these implications to develop policies promoting unbiased and fair grant allocation processes and procedures.
Schlagwörter:digitale meeting; Digitalisierung; gender bias; grant application; inequality; micro-political practices; Mikropolitik; Panel; Peer Review; research funding organisation
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis