NSF Taps Rice to Address Gender Bias
By Jade Boyd
With the need for scientists and engineers growing, it might seem that educational programs that seek students and universities and businesses that hire scientists and engineers would be open to recruitment from every possible demographic group. Historically, however, that has not been the case regarding women, and the trend seems to be a tough one to counter.
Nationally, about 25 percent of the science and engineering workforce is female, but fewer than 20 percent of all science and engineering faculty at four-year colleges and universities are women. That number drops below 10 percent in some disciplines, such as math and physics. The figures decrease even further for women of color—minority women account for only about 2 percent of science and engineering faculty.
Numerous attitude surveys at university campuses across the country find the same result: women are consistently less satisfied with their jobs than their male counterparts, and the reasons are similar from survey to survey: isolation, work overload, and too little appreciation.
In an effort to increase the opportunities for hiring and advancement of women faculty in science and engineering nationwide, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Rice a $3.3 million, five-year grant to develop strategies for recruiting and enhancing the pool of women for junior faculty positions in science and engineering. The grant, awarded under the ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Program, also will allow Rice to examine administrative processes and encourage cultural changes to foster a more welcoming environment for female scholars in science and engineering and to remove artificial barriers to success.
If the program’s first workshop, held last October, is any indication, there is going to be a lot of interest. Titled “Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position: A Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering,” it was designed to teach upper-level women graduate students and postdoctoral fellows how to find and secure a faculty position that’s a good match for their career interests. More than 700 women applied for the workshop’s 46 available spots.
“Rice has an extraordinary opportunity to impact gender and ethnic diversity over the coming decade because of faculty retirements,” says Rice president David Leebron. “More than one-third of our faculty in science and engineering will reach normal retirement age during that time. Rice is not content to be a follower on this issue. We are already leading the nation in appointing women to positions of leadership within science and engineering, and we intend to lead by example in recruiting, retaining, and nurturing junior faculty women and men. ”
Rice’s record on gender equity in science and engineering, like that of other research universities, is mixed. Rice is the only top-tier university in the nation with female deans in both science and engineering, and it is above the national average in the percentage of women at the rank of full professor. However, at the time it applied for ADVANCE funding, Rice scored below the national average in the ranks of women assistant and associate professors in science and engineering. While recent recruiting has boosted the number of women in several departments and the university far exceeds the national average for female faculty in several science and engineering disciplines, including bioengineering, mechanical engineering, and life sciences, some of Rice’s departments lack women faculty and women of color.
Program leaders at Rice say they hope to meet the challenges of increasing the percentage of women faculty to better reflect the national pool of women earning doctoral degrees in science and engineering by studying and implementing ways to enhance pools of qualified candidates and by examining policies, practices, and perceptions that might cause women to avoid careers in those fields. If achieved, this goal will effectively double or triple the current national averages for the percentage of women faculty in most Rice departments.
“Recruiting more women who are qualified provides only part of the answer,” says Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and a principal investigator on the grant. “We also need to address the subtle biases or stereotypes women face in academia. Sometimes it can just be the way things are phrased. For example, research has shown that if you’re searching for faculty candidates and you call a professor and ask them to recommend someone from their group, they’ll tend to mention the men first. It’s unconscious, and both men and women do it, but research also shows that you can balance that bias by simply asking if they have any promising women in their group.”
Matthews says there are many examples of these subtle biases. Unlike conscious acts of discrimination, these have almost negligible effect when looked at by themselves. But though each act is small, the consequences are cumulative, and the overall impact can be pernicious and discouraging.
“For decades, we’ve addressed these issues by placing the onus on women, asking them to behave differently in order to fit into academic culture,” says fellow principal investigator Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. “Today, we’ve realized what we really need to do is focus on changing the culture.”
Matthews says one way Rice hopes to improve its climate is by calling attention to as many of these unconscious stereotypes and biases as possible in a series of workshops and lectures that target all segments of the campus—from senior faculty to graduate and undergraduate students.
“We don’t want to advantage women over men,” says Keller-McNulty. “We want to remove the disadvantages faced by women, and in doing so, we will raise everyone’s awareness and improve the climate for both men and women and the quality of research and teaching for all. ”
Co-principal investigators include bioengineering department chair Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering; chemistry department chair Ken Whitmire, professor of chemistry; and Mikki Hebl, associate professor of psychology and management. Hebl, an expert in studying the interactions between stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals, will play a key role in assessing the effectiveness of each program element.
“Because of its small size and its interdisciplinary, cooperative culture,” Matthews says, “Rice is the perfect place to rapidly and rigorously test new approaches for the advancement of women and to get the word out about what works and what doesn’t.”
