The Glass Ceiling: It Remains Firmly In Place

AUTHOR: RENEE TWOMBLY, p.1 Biochemist Mary Sue Coleman is a rarity--a woman who has shattered the glass ceiling, the invisible barrier that allows women to glimpse the peak of professional success but prevents them from attaining it. Coleman, who is leaving her position as vice chancellor for graduate studies and research at the University of North Carolina to become provost at the University of New Mexico, thinks she is lucky. She says she "sidestepped" her way past gender discrimination by being in the right place at the right time. Her chance to move into administration came in 1982 when the director of the fledgling cancer center at the University of Kentucky, where she was an assistant professor, suddenly resigned. In her favor was the fact that Coleman was one of the few researchers there to have funding from, and contacts within, the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, however, the dean of the school of medicine "was desperate" to fill the position, she says, "so I got the job on an interim basis." Looking back over a decade that was supposed to bring major advances to women in science, Coleman says she doubts she would have gotten ahead if she hadn't seized that one chance. "Science is still dominated by men, and women are still considered novelties in many fields," she says. "Nothing much has changed, except that some institutions are now aware that they [the institutions] have a problem." Ten years ago, the increasing numbers of female Ph.D.'s raised hopes that the sciences would make the same progress in gender equity seen in other fields, such as law and medicine. The hypothesis was that because of the increasing number of women entering the scientific work force--given safety and strength in numbers--many of them would advance to the top, to high academic and corporate posts. Now many women in science say they haven't budged much. Women are finding that their paths are still blocked, and many are leaving their fields in frustration. A study prepared last November by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology found that the glass ceiling for women scientists remains "firmly in place" in both academia and industry. Although wo-men by 1990 made up 40 percent of bachelor's graduates in science and engineering in United States universities and earned one-third of the master's degrees and 28 percent of the doctorates, the "picture is still one of astonishing difference between the sexes" in workplace advancement, says the study's author, Betty Vetter. As founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based commission, Vetter has been keeping tabs on women in science since 1963. In her latest report, Vetter concludes that in the scientific work force, "relative to men with similar credentials and experience levels, women in all of the sciences earn lower salaries, experience higher unemployment rates, are more likely to be employed in temporary positions, and find fewer and slower opportunities to advance, either in rank or toward management, or to obtain security in the form of tenure." The picture for women is equally dim in both academia and industry, Vetter says. At colleges and universities, she found that, in general, women scientists are "twice as likely as men to be appointed to temporary, non-tenure-track positions, and the relative proportions of tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track scientists and engineers in academic institutions has changed very little over the past decade." For example, in 1990, among chemistry faculty, women made up only 11 percent of faculty who were either tenured or in tenure-track positions. Recent figures from the National Science Foundation also point to gender discrimination in faculty hiring, and show why few women can move up the ranks. In the fall 1990 semester, at least 80 percent of the full-time faculty members teaching geology, engineering, and physics were white, non-Hispanic males. In industry, there is no "critical mass of women," says Mary Mattis, vice president of research for Catalyst, a nonprofit organization in New York that studies women in management. "Women are as isolated as they ever were, and there is a glaring lack of advancement to senior roles," Mattis says. In 1991 Catalyst looked at the situations of male and female engineers, for example, and found that women's satisfaction decreased as their career advancement and salary increases consistently lagged behind men's. Positions held by women were farther from upper-level management than those held by men, even when the comparisons were matched for age. Ann Preston, a labor economist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has documented the exodus of women from the scientific work force. By tracking employment figures from 1982 to 1989, she found that women were twice as likely as men to leave science. She said only a small percentage of the evacuees were women who left to take care of their children. "There was a lot going on here, including the overwhelming feeling that men were being treated deferentially," she says. "The long-term concern is that the small number of women already employed in these fields is getting smaller." At a January National Research Council (NRC) conference of women scientists in industry, a survey of more than 200 participants found that it was not as easy for women to move into management as it was for men. "A common statement made at the conference, shared across disciplines, across industries, at both large and small companies is that, yes, we do hit this glass ceiling," says Linda Skidmore, study director for NRC's Committee on Women in Science and Engineering. Some companies, such as Xerox Corp., have acknowledged gender differences in employment, and they are working on a solution. At Xerox's Palo Alto, Calif. research center, electrical engineer Marcia Bush, who leads a signal processing and recognition research team, participates in a company-sponsored advisory council that addresses the issue of women in Xerox's corporate research and technology organization. "There is a corporate-wide effort to develop a balanced work force, and in R&D that had not been met," says Bush. But moving women scientists along "is more of a business argument than one of a glass ceiling," she says. "The expectation is that relative growth in the work force will be larger among women and minorities in the next 10 years." Council chairwoman Linda Brandt says that although progress is slowly being made through the council, it is often a process of consciousness-raising both at Xerox and in society in general. Many people think that the "promises of the '70s and '80s have resulted in many women moving into executive positions," she says. "But the reality is that we are just holding our own, while making some progress toward more women in management and executive positions." And Brandt says that the root of the problem is that "corporate America still hires in its own image, and that is white male." After surveying 20 corporations in California, Stanford University researcher David Bradford agrees. He found that, while smaller companies are making some progress in hiring women in management, the top corporations staff their executive suites with white men. "I wouldn't say men conspire to place a glass ceiling over women, because the issue is so complex," says Bradford, senior lecturer in organizational behavior at Stanford's graduate school of business. "But they define success in terms of time commitment, and aggressive tactics, and they just worry they will have to learn a new corporate game if women sit around the table." Douglas Rebne also says that women are not victims of a conspiracy in academe. Rather, he argues that men do not know how to value women's work, and that they can learn to do so. Rebne, an assistant professor of management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, conducted a study that indicates women may lose promotions because they tend to conduct a different type of science from that done by men. He found, for example, that 10 percent of women in math and physics said they conducted "expressive research," or studies of policy and the scientific method, compared with 4 percent of men. Although Rebne says he doesn't know why women may opt for different types of research--it could be lack of funding that pushes them in a certain direction, or the influence of informal networks of women researchers--he says that it probably hurts them come tenure time because men may penalize them for straying from the mainstream. "Because men are setting the rules for tenure, women lose out," says Rebne. He adds that this may not be conscious discrimination but a matter of attitude. "This is more an issue of change in perspective," he says. "Rather than accusing men of actively discriminating, it may be possible to convince them that their field of scientific vision is too narrow, that the perspective women offer is unique." Women aren't getting far by attacking the system, so they need to work within it, says Catherine Didion, executive director of the Washington-based Association for Women in Science. "We are trying to change attitudes and accountability at the top of the faculty by talking about issues that benefit both sexes, such as dual tracks, flex time, guidelines for tenure." She cites Harvard Medical School's new effort to demystify the tenure process: Chairpersons are required to have an annual conference with each member of the tenure-track faculty, and the discussion is summarized in writing and signed by each participant. Coleman, the North Carolina administrator, is also utilizing the university structure to make op- portunities happen for other women scientists at her school. The campus has set up a UNC program called "Bridges" to teach faculty women some key administrative skills. "It's a step," she says. "At least some universities are beginning to look at themselves and think about how to offer opportunities." Renee Twombly is a freelance writer based in Durham, N.C.

The Glass Ceiling: It Remains Firmly In Place

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