Beyond Bias and Barriers facts for kids

Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (ISBN: 0309100429) is a major report about the status of women in science from the United States National Academy of Sciences. Published in 2006, the report closely examines the data, proposed explanations, and possible responses to the relative dearth of women in science and engineering higher education in the United States.

History

The report was written by the "Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering", a panel at the National Academy of Sciences. The Committee was chaired by Donna Shalala, and included college presidents, provosts, professors, scientists, and policy analysts. Committee members included: Alice M. Agogino, Lotte Bailyn, Robert J. Birgeneau, Ana Mari Cauce, Catherine D. DeAngelis, Denice Denton (who died before the release of the report), Barbara Grosz, Jo Handeslman, Nan Keohane, Shirley Malcom, Geraldine Richmond, Alice M. Rivlin, Ruth Simmons, Elizabeth Spelke, Joan Steitz, Elaine Weyuker, and Maria T. Zuber.

As is typical with NAS reports, after the Committee drafted the report, it underwent a peer review process within the NAS, in this case reviewed by another Committee of nineteen members.

Conclusions

The report first notes and documents significant gender gaps throughout the academic pipeline in the sciences, finding that the numbers of women in the sciences decrease "at every educational transition" from high school through fully tenured faculty positions. For instance, over the past 30 years women have earned more than 30% of the doctorates in the social and behavioral sciences and more than 20% in the life sciences; but they hold only 15% of the full professorships in those fields. Minority women are "all but absent from professorships".

The report then goes on to review ideas about the sources of the gender gaps, ultimately finding that the problem is "unconscious but pervasive bias", "arbitrary and subjective" evaluation processes, and a historic system which bases childrearing and family responsibilities on the concept of a professional spouse with a stay-at-home "wife". Specifically the report found significant evidence of bias: women are paid less, promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions. Although progress has been made in some areas—women are nearly at gender parity with men in entering graduate school in biology; when women are considered for initial promotion to associate professor they succeed at the same rates as men—there are still significant gaps.

The report found that widespread ideas about women's and men's differences were largely irrelevant, including theories advanced such as cognitive abilities or preferences, career aspirations and ambition, or productivity and work ethic issues.

Finally, the report reviews a number of potential solutions and makes a variety of recommendations to level the playing field and "stop the leaks" in the leaky pipeline. These steps include

• alteration of academic procedures for hiring and evaluation ("promotion and tenure"), at the institutional level;
• additional support for working parents at the institutional level;
• efforts across the field to monitor hiring practices
• efforts to institute blind-review in peer review processes to eliminate gender bias;

and other efforts.

Further research