Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine Opening Doors (2020) / Chapter Skim
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2 Factors that Drive the Underrepresentation of Women in Scientific, Engineering, and Medical Disciplines
2 Factors that Drive the Underrepresentation of Women in Scientific, Engineering, and Medical Disciplines
Pages 37-72
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From page 37... ...
fields.3 Why these efforts to improve recruitment, retention, and advancement have effected little improvement in gender representation in many STEMM fields remains an open question. While it is true that in many STEMM fields the situation has gotten better, many are concerned that the rate of improvement has been too slow and that progress has plateaued, or even moved backward in some cases.
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From page 38... ...
. Even in medical disciplines, where, as of 2018, the number of women enrolled in medical schools exceeded men for the first time, there is a persistent underrepresentation of women at senior academic or leadership positions that cannot be explained by a time lag between degree completion and career trajectory (see Figure 2-1)
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While women in all fields face bias and discrimination, the way women experience these behaviors differs by discipline and career stage, leading to similarities or differences that create unique climates for women across the STEMM enterprise. COMMON DYNAMICS ACROSS STEMM FIELDS Gender Bias Across the STEMM fields, women may experience implicit bias and structural barriers at every career stage, including at critical junctures such as consideration for graduate school admission, recruitment into a laboratory for graduate research, consideration for postdoctoral positions, recruitment to fill tenuretrack faculty positions, and evaluation for promotion in rank (Bronstein and Farnsworth, 1998; MacNell et al., 2014; Milkman et al., 2015; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Settles et al., 2006; Urry, 2015)
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. There are additional gender disparities in receiving grant funding (Pohlhaus et al., 2011; Witteman et al., 2017)
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Women shoulder the burden of teaching, mentoring, and service (Armstrong and Jovanovic, 2015; Hermanowicz, 2012; Kulis et al., 2002; Madge and Bee, 1999; Urry, 2015) , particularly White women in maledominated fields and minority women in all fields, who, as Johnson and Lucero (2003)
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. In all six STEMM fields studied, the percentage of women increased -- often substantially -- from the applicant pool to interviews to job offers.
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. However, many women have less experience with these masculine traits because they are often socialized to be more "other-focused" than their male counterparts (Eagly and Mladinic, 1994; Eagly and Riger, 2014)
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Further, cultural expectations and biases about which jobs and careers are held, or should be held, by women and men can limit men's opportunities in certain STEMM fields. Gender discrimination, biases, stereotypes, and microaggressions against men have been well documented, primarily in health fields, such as nursing and other health sciences, where men are not well represented.
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Surveys from a university system and a university with multiple campuses demonstrate that 20–50 percent of women students experience sexual harassment from faculty or staff, depending on their stage of education and field (Krebs et al., 2016; Swartout, 2018)
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. When women experience sexual harassment in the workplace, the professional outcomes include increases in job stress (Barling and Cooper, 2008; Fitzgerald et al., 1997)
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An alternative term more commonly used in workplace aggression literature, and throughout the 2018 National Academies consensus study report on the Sexual Harassment of Women, is the term "incivility," which refers to "low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect" (Andersson and Pearson, 1999)
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. Minority women have been awarded more STEMM degrees as measured in absolute numbers since the 1970s but remain underrepresented at advanced education and career stages in most fields relative to White women (Ong et al., 2011)
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FACTORS THAT DRIVE THE UNDERREPRESENTATION OF WOMEN 49 FIGURE 2-2 While the share of science and engineering degrees earned by underrepresented minority women has more than doubled at all levels of education, the percentage of underrepresented minority women earning science and engineering degrees remains lower than that of White women. The plotted lines represent the percentage of science and engineering degrees among all degrees for the specific category shown.
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. Beyond feelings of isolation, there is evidence to indicate that both women of color and White women in STEMM have more limited social network supports than men, which can tangibly and negatively impact their career trajectory (Collins and Steffen-Fluhr, 2019; Etzkowitz et al., 1994; Feeney and Bernal, 2010)
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. While most women report career-life balance as a challenge to working in STEMM fields, for women of color, this may be a critical factor contributing to why they remain underrepresented in these fields (Kachchaf et al., 2015)
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Women with LGBTQIA Identities Women who identify as LGBTQIA face significant barriers in STEMM, in part due to their intersectional identities -- being both a woman and a sexual minority. What has been studied on this topic indicates that women who are LGBTQIA are particularly marginalized across STEMM fields, and that while some interventions and recruitment efforts have increased representation of this population, the reality is that the numbers are not improving, and, in some cases, are getting worse.
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research suggests that better representation of women in STEMM is associated with greater inclusion of those who are stereotyped as not conforming to gender roles, in that LGBTQIA scientists working in STEMM fields with better representation of women were more likely to disclose their identities to their colleagues. In addition to openness, individuals with minority genders, sexual orientation, or both experience higher rates of sexual harassment and assault than cisgender straight women (Brewster et al., 2012, 2014; Eliason et al., 2011)
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International Women in STEMM in the United States Research indicates that international women students in U.S. institutions, along with their male counterparts, face discrimination in STEMM fields as a result of their national origin and cultural differences.
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. The authors noted that the converse of this might also be true: "International women have presumably sacrificed a good deal to pursue STEM training in the U.S.
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Therefore, data on the number of Black women in STEMM may not exclusively represent the percentage of African Americans present in STEMM in comparison with foreign-born members of African descent. Instead, these data may be representative of all Black women inclusive of immigrants employed in STEMM careers within the United States (i.e., Afro Caribbeans and Africans)
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STEMM fields highlights this as a critical research need. DIFFERENCES ACROSS STEMM FIELDS While many barriers to full and equitable participation are shared across all STEMM fields, their form varies with the history, culture, and context of disciplines.
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. In the hustle culture, stereotypes about women who nurture, as well as actual responsibilities they may have for childcare or elder care, may violate the ideal worker norm expectations in certain STEMM fields.
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. Dichotomies in Diversity Issues The fields defined in the statement of task -- physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and medicine -- can be divided into two broad categories: those in which disparities in participation arise by the time students enter college and those in which underrepresentation occurs primarily at more senior career stages.
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For example, like White women, Asian/Pacific Islander women slightly increased representation at the Ph.D. level, comprising 2.5 percent of Ph.D.s awarded compared to 1.6 percent of bachelor's degrees awarded (Ong et al., 2011)
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. Moreover, Black women in computer science are marginalized by both White women and Black men who prioritize gaining acceptance from the White men who hold cultural capital ( harleston et al., 2014)
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. Compared with other scientists in other STEMM fields, engineers are more likely to be employed in the field for which they were trained, but departures from the field are characterized by high rates of gender disparity (Fouad and Santana, 2017; Hewlett et al., 2010; Hunt, 2016)
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The authors noted that the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in these fields is due to "(1) the lack of supportive environments for these students in many departments, and (2)
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. In many institutions, however, biases and barriers undermine success and increase the desire to leave at later educational and career stages.
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. These findings point to lost opportunities for advancement for women in biology across the career stages.
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. Typically, men have higher salaries, are given better or larger research space, and are more likely to be promoted at all career stages (Greene et al., 2010)
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Like other STEMM fields, women leave mathematics at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels due to isolation and a lack of mentoring in their graduate experiences (Herzig, 2002, 2004b)
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. Women in the field of medicine, as in other STEMM fields, experience conflicts between biological and professional clocks, as well as challenges of traditional gendered division of domestic labor.
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CONCLUSION: SYSTEMIC ISSUES IN STEMM CULTURE Across the science enterprise, widespread instances of active and passive actions, as well as implicit and explicit biases, hinder women's careers in STEMM. Women of multiple marginalized identities are confronted with amplified forms of these biases and barriers throughout all STEMM fields.
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cumulative disadvantage; such as interest on debt, and disadvantages, such as lower salary and delayed promotion, which accrue over time f. expectations that they must work harder, including working extended hours, to fit the ideal worker norm despite having had fewer role mod els who have successfully managed these expectations, fewer culturally competent mentors, and less access to informal professional networks FINDING 2-4: There is less research on the factors that drive the underrepresentation of women with disabilities, LGBTQIA women, and international women, but the available research suggests that these groups face significant barriers in STEMM due to their intersectional identities.
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FINDING 2-7: Notwithstanding their overrepresentation at early career stages, women in medicine remain underrepresented among senior leadership roles in medicine. As of 2018, women accounted for only 18 percent of hospital CEOs and 16 percent of deans and department chairs.
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Adherence to these ideal worker norms disadvantages both men and women who have commitments and duties outside of work and has a disproportionate impact on women of color because their multiple identities and their small numbers in STEMM departments contribute to an even greater perception that they do not demonstrate the characteristics of the "ideal worker."
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