Is the sexist scientific workplace really dead?

Newspapers are full of stories about the sexist workplace and there is no reason to think the scientific profession should be any different. So it was quite surprising to read a headline in the New York Times claiming “Academic Science isn’t Sexist”. The article by Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci is a brief resume of an extensive study they have just completed, and which is about to appear in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest co-written with the economists Donna Ginther and Shulamit Kahn, of Boston University. The study analysed data from US universities and colleges looking at salary, promotion, productivity and job satisfaction, as well as the number of women entering the different strands of academic science.

If the study is to be believed, we don’t have a problem anymore.

Since as scientists we need to look at the evidence, it is important to test the data they put forward for their claims, versus what else is out there. There are many other recent studies which directly contradict their assertions, and one has to wonder if they were asking the right questions and analysing the answers appropriately – and without confirmation bias.

It would be impossible for me to analyse each of their conclusions separately, so I’ll just focus on the issue of career progression as illustrative of the complexities underlying the interpretation of any data.

The first analysis of their article I saw pulled no punches, with a headline which referred to The flawed and offensive logic of “Academic Science Isn’t Sexist” in the @nytimes. In this piece Jonathan Eisen says, albeit with caution and caveats,

…the piece makes … a dangerous and unsupported connection. They lump together … ‘career progression’ topics (such as pay, promotion, publishing, citation, etc) with workplace topics (hostility and physical aggression against women). And yet, they only present or discuss data on the career progression issues.

In other words, one cannot conclude that hostility in the workplace does not exist just because women are getting promoted. I agree. Let’s look at this in more detail.

First of all, the evidence is out there that some women in science do indeed suffer hostility, physical aggression, outright sexism and harassment. A study from earlier this summer demonstrated this with disturbing clarity, when it explored responses from women regarding their experiences working in the field. About 26% of women had experienced actual physical assault of some kind, most commonly from more senior men (the 6% of men who experienced assault reported it as originating from peers). It is hard to believe that this does not amount to a sexist working environment, or that it doesn’t affect women’s desire to stick around in science.

Let me dissect one specific conclusion they draw from their report, one close to my heart: that of hires for physics faculty at the assistant professor level (roughly equivalent to a lecturer in the UK).

The authors claim,

out of the 124 hires made in physics … only 13% of the applicants were females (… much less than the percentage of females among PhDs …), but 19% of those invited to interview were women, as were 20% of those actually hired.

This tells me that more women than men are dropping out before applying for a faculty position at all. That may indeed be due to women’s choices, but the choice may be determined or at least affected by a hostile workplace – not discussed here – rather than by innate ability. Those who stick around may therefore not be typical: not only tough but particularly bright. This can only be speculation but it might explain why women are hired at rates higher than their presence in the application pool might suggest. Reading the study by Williams et al. it looks as if they wish to convey that all is so hunky dory that the higher percentage of female hires is down to a particularly beneficent environment.

The trouble is, as this specific illustration shows, that studies like these are incredibly difficult to interpret. Any analysis of career progression always is. I have examined promotion success rates in my own university and know that an equal success rate amongst men and women is encouraging, but certainly doesn’t tell me everything.

If women are actually waiting five years longer before they apply for promotion to professor, because no one encourages them to do so and they wait for that encouragement, then all is not equal. If women wait longer because they have found it harder to get research funding and so know their promotion chances are lower than their male colleagues, then we have to examine why women are less successful in grant applications, as is manifest both within the UK and in Europe.

If women are routinely cited less, that’s another way in which they will be marked down according to the criteria used in recruitment and promotion. Are they cited less because they travel less (less funding, more caring responsibilities perhaps) and consequently network less? Or that perennial spectre, the old boys’ network, actively excluding women?

All this shows that interpreting the evidence is complex even when hard numbers are available; things are never clear cut. Certainly no other study I have seen reflects the simplistic, upbeat commentary of the Ceci and Williams article, which implies the problems all lie in women’s own preferences and early life choices, having nothing to do with the world of work. I don’t believe it. This is not the first time these authors pushed this sort of message: nearly 4 years ago they attributed the paucity of women to choices regarding motherhood and not discrimination.

Cultural and societal messages affect the early life choices for many, and the harsh realities of a male-dominated world can still affect subsequent progression, including the common assumption that childcare is mother’s work. Not for all women by any means, and many men as well as women are working hard to change things – but so far a non-sexist workplace is only a dream for far too many.