USU finds institutional structure, culture contribute to lack of female full professors

• Harvard president's suggestion of innate differences discounted

By Megan Roe

February 21, 2005 | Nationally, at the bachelor's degree level, men and women in the sciences are graduating at roughly the same rates. However, a 1996 study for the National Science Foundation reported that only 10 percent of full professors in these areas are women, while 90 percent are men.

The study also reports these percentages haven't changed significantly in 20 years despite dramatically increasing numbers of women graduating with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

Ronda Callister, a management and human resources professor at USU, said, "We're building up the pipeline, but we're not having women come out at the end."

USU was one of 10 schools awarded the National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant in 2003. The grant is a five-year, $3 million program that aims to increase women's recruitment, retention and advancement at USU, improve the climate and work/family balance for the faculty and to bring policies to continue efforts for advancement even after the five years are over. The program also intends to increase research opportunities for minority and women faculty and students, as well as to help other universities learn the successful elements of the program.

Callister, the principal investigator for the grant, said the foundation observed that women were dropping out of academic careers more quickly than men. They concluded institutional-cultural issues probably made it a somewhat more hostile environment for women, Callister said.

On Jan. 14, the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers suggested innate differences between men and women might be one reason why fewer women hold top science jobs. Callister, as well as Christine Hult, the associate dean of HASS and co-principal investigator for the grant, say they have found no evidence to support Summers' suggestion.

"It has to do with conditioning, upbringing and acculturation," Hult said. "Women are just discouraged early on from pursuing careers in those fields."

"Women may be more likely to become discouraged with the field because there is less social support and fewer role models," Callister said. "When a young woman says 'Can someone like me be successful in this field?' and if they look at a particular field and they only see men, they might not get a 'yes' answer."

Callister said there are many reasons why woman aren't filling those top science positions. She said one is that the system is structured in such a way that it's very difficult for women faculty members to have the same family structure as men. She said women who make it to a full professor usually are single, or to have fewer children than they would like to have.

Many women also have issues with timing. She said the six-year period toward tenure is the most intense years of a career. For many women, those are also years when they need to start a family because their biological clock is ticking. This can force women to choose between having children and doing the research necessary to be promoted.

Hult said the university is looking at ways to be more flexible about time toward tenure, to allow part-time tenure tracks, or let women take leave during those six years.

Being promoted isn't the only problem women face. In a 2003-04 survey conducted at USU in the colleges of agriculture, natural resources, engineering and science, tenured women reported greater isolation and greater intention to quit, lower sense of empowerment, lower job satisfaction and perceived they had less access to information. They also reported worse relationship quality with colleagues as well as conflicts with their personal life.

"My guess would be that women who actually get faculty positions and arrive at their goal, are really, pretty happy," Callister said, " but it's overtime that discouragement can set in."

Hult said many women have less time for their research because they usually have more service assignments and they advise more students. She said if there is only one woman in a department, that woman is usually put on all the committees. This makes her workload much larger.

Callister said, for 2002-04, 16 percent of tenure-track women in the sciences and engineering left USU. Only 4 percent of men left.

Hult said one reason women leave USU is that they feel left "out-of-the-loop" in their departments, forcing them to miss out on grant opportunities. This makes it much harder for them to receive information and resources.

"Men researchers tend to collaborate with other men that they know, and they get the grants," Hult said.

Hult said before ADVANCE, no one had ever tracked how many women were hired in each college at USU. She said the deans of USU's colleges will be informed of the percentages of women coming out of each degree program and see if it matches the percentage of women they are hiring.

A dual career assistance program will also be implemented, Hult said. If a female professor's husband or partner is a professor, he/she will also have a chance to be hired. This will improve retention rates of women faculty.

Hult and Callister said USU is creating ways that awareness and progress for women won't stop after the five-year grant is up. A new position, the associate vice provost for women's issues, has been created. Female faculty will be able to go to this person with complaints. USU also wants to create collaborative seed grants that would make women more involved. They will also help the newer professors have other professors working with them on projects and being mentors to them. These seed grants could help faculty gain larger grants. Callister said they have implemented a program that brings in an outside consultant who interviews members of a department then, at a retreat, discusses problems and issues with the department. ADVANCE representatives will then help the department find resources to solve their problems.

"To try and shift the whole university to change something is very difficult. You keep pushing, but things happen relatively slowly," Callister said. "The goal is to make improvements in the departments we work with and the whole university. If we can do that then we'll see benefits for the women faculty."

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