In the Ivory Tower, Men Only

Before even applying for the first tenure-track job, many women with children have already decided to drop out of the race

Photo by Cristi M/iStockphoto/Thinkstock

In 2000, I greeted the first entering graduate-student class at Berkeley where the women outnumbered the men. I was the first female dean of the graduate division. As a ?70s feminist I cautiously thought, ?Is the revolution over? Have we won?? Hardly. That afternoon I looked around the room at my first dean?s meeting and all I saw were grey haired men. The next week at the first general faculty meeting of the semester I noted that women were still only about a quarter of the faculty, and most were junior.

Our Berkeley research team has spent more than a decade studying why so many women begin the climb but do not make it to the top of the Ivory Tower: the tenured faculty, full professors, deans, and presidents. The answer turns out to be what you?d expect: Babies matter. Women pay a ?baby penalty? over the course of a career in academia?from the tentative graduate school years through the pressure cooker of tenure, the long midcareer march, and finally retirement. But babies matter in different ways at different times. A new book I co-wrote with the team at Berkeley, Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower, draws on several surveys that have tracked tens of thousands of graduate students over their careers, as well as original research.

The most important finding is that family formation negatively affects women?s, but not men?s, academic careers. For men, having children is a career advantage; for women, it is a career killer. And women who do advance through the faculty ranks do so at a high price. They are far less likely to be married with children. We see more women in visible positions like presidents of Ivy League colleges, but we also see many more women who are married with children working in the growing base of part-time and adjunct faculty, the ?second tier,? which is now the fastest growing sector of academia. Unfortunately, more women Ph.Ds. has meant more cheap labor. And this cheap labor threatens to displace the venerable tenure track system.

The early years are the most decisive in determining who wins and who loses. Female graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who have babies while students or fellows are more than twice as likely as new fathers or than childless women to turn away from an academic research career. They receive little or no childbirth support from the university and often a great deal of discouragement from their mentors. As one Berkeley graduate student who participated in our study put it, ?There is a pervasive attitude that the female graduate student in question must now prove to the faculty that she is capable of completing her degree, even when prior to the pregnancy there were absolutely no doubts about her capabilities and ambition.? And consider the postdoctoral particle physicist who brought a lawsuit that was settled. She was effectively blacklisted by her adviser when she had a baby. When she was pregnant, her adviser said he would refuse to write her a letter of recommendation unless she returned from her pregnancy leave soon after giving birth.

Before even applying for the first tenure-track job, many women with children have already decided to drop out of the race. They have perceived a tenure-track job as being incompatible with having children. In our study of University of California doctoral student, 70 percent of women and more than one-half of the men considered faculty careers at research universities not friendly to family life. Others are married to other Ph.D.s; the ?two body? problem. In those cases, one body must defer to the other?s career and that body is far more likely to be the woman?s. Or their husband?s career, not in academia, limits their choices. As one biology graduate student in our study said, ?My husband has a job he loves, but it will require that we don?t move: This limits my postdoc and career options significantly. I think the chances of staying in the same city throughout the career and finding a tenure track position are almost nonexistent. However, I am not sure I care any more.??

Then there is the job interview. One job candidate we interviewed said ? I also had the experience of being in an interview, mentioning my child, and seeing the SC?s [search committee head?s] face fall, and that was the end of the job. Although there could have been a million reasons, there is no doubt that having a child did not help my candidacy in that case.? Mothers are more likely to join the ranks of the second tier, or to drop out of academia

There is some good news for women. The second tier is not a complete career graveyard. We have found that a good proportion of those toiling as adjuncts and part-time lecturers do eventually get tenure track jobs. On the other hand, single, childless women get those first jobs at the higher rates than wives, mothers or single men?almost at the same rate as married fathers.

The pressure cooker years as an assistant professor leading up to tenure usually number four to seven years. At the end of this trial, the university decides ?up or out??tenure for life or dismissal. It is well established that women are less likely to be awarded tenure than men. There is a baby penalty, especially strong in the sciences?but women without children also receive tenure at a lower rate than men. There are other factors than children that cause women to fail at this critical juncture. The women who do make it often do so alone. Women professors have higher divorce rates, lower marriage rates, and fewer children than male professors. Among tenured faculty, 70 percent of men are married with children compared with 44 percent of women.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/06/female_academics_pay_a_heavy_baby_penalty.html

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