This is Part II of a guest post by Dr. Stephanie Meyer, offered in response to my call for women willing to write guest posts that contest the “narratives of oppression and victimization” that dominate social psychology and the social sciences. Part I is available here. Dr. Myer earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Physics at CU Boulder in 2011 and is currently a research associate at the University of Colorado Denver. She blogs at notthatgungho.com. Everything below is her's, except for the pictures.
Synposis of Part I: There are many reasons why there are fewer women than men in physics and other STEM fields. Discrimination is in the mix, but probably minor, compared to other factors, such as women preferring other life paths especially motherhood, the work culture in some STEM fields is pretty harsh, and women may be less willing to accept it, etc. In Part II, here, Dr. Meyer continues with her analysis suggesting issues surrounding motherhood, more than discrimination, constitute obstacles to more women entering academic stem positions, and with recommendations on how to make STEM fields more welcoming to women.
There are strong beliefs that motherhood is slavery and your career is what matters [11]. This way of thinking cheats women out of what can be the most fulfilling part of life and a very special form of love; that attitude is hurting women, not helping them. If young women push their career at the expense of their personal life, finding a mate,
and forming a family, they may regret this. Women are most fertile in the 20’s and fertility declines in the 30’s, but many modern women who have swallowed the “career is what matters” lie don’t realize how important having a family is to their happiness until it is too late. Academic science, as currently practiced, is pretty incompatible with motherhood. All the focus on “work life balance” only demonstrates this by highlighting the fact that it is a huge problem or we wouldn’t be talking about it all the time. Most of the women I know with hard science PhDs who “left the pipeline” due to motherhood are happy with their choices. If you want to make academia more attractive for women who are “in the pipeline,” don’t make them chose between being good mothers and a successful career in academic science.
As a 35 year old women who earned a PhD in physics by putting off finding a compatible mate, I would trade my PhD to be a stay-at-home mother to a man who wants kids and is a provider. I’d prefer not to have to choose either/or due to the few years that children need intensive nurturing. However, I don't want to go back to a world where I never had the opportunity for an education. I certainly never want to go back to a world where women's views and ideas were dismissed out of hand because they came from a female. I'd much rather work towards a world where the potential importance of motherhood to the female brain and biology is acknowledged; towards a world where motherhood isn’t seen as a “side project.” Whether or not a woman feels it important in her individual life to become a mother, the importance of it to the species is undeniable and we all, as a society, benefit from smart, ambitious, talented ladies having babies and being mothers to their children.
I think anyone without a PhD in physics needs to keep their mouth shut about how to get more women in physics and start listening to the successful women in physics [12]. If you want to change things, implement policies that allow more women to embrace their feminine nature as nurturers and still succeed in these fields.
I want to warn every young female scientist I know, motherhood could trump your career in importance one day, and you may regret privileging your career. Until science/the academy/institutions create family-friendly practices, these may be at odds. They don’t have to be. If science wants women, it needs to accept motherhood as part of what it means to be a woman, or admit it doesn’t actually want us. If it does want females, let’s make it possible to do both well. Until that day, expect many women to continue to choose based on what evolution has formed us for, motherhood.
But I suspect Mother-Scientists/Scientist-Mothers could have a lot to contribute to my field, if it could open its mind to the idea and realize that, yeah, maybe we need to slow down our research programs for a short while to nurture our little “research programs”, but we’ll come back inspired and excited, full of even more inspiration to study the universe which not only evolved us, but allowed us to bring another human into life with the magic of our bodies. And what better inspiration can a woman have?
Specific suggestions that might help increase participation of women in academic STEM:
1. Part time or other flexible options for women are important during the early years of family formation. Currently, they are hard to negotiate.
2. Remove abusive graduate advisers for the sake of everyone, change the culture of science to respect that scientists, including graduate students, are people with physical, psychological and social needs outside of the lab.
3. Training to be a good manager should be a requirement for every professor who manages graduate students and postdocs.
4. Graduate training should include psychological tools to be a good scientist and learn how to embrace failure, build confidence, and negotiate in your own best interests. This is good for men and women.
5. Hard limit on PhD of 5-6 years, as is done commonly and successfully in European universities. Family leave offered for graduate students can put the clock on hold.
6. Better high schools or magnet programs so gifted students can start college ready for higher level coursework.
7.Provide mentoring and outreach to young women who show promise in STEM fields.
Single-gender schooling seems to breed more female scientists. This needs be investigated further from an unbiased perspective.
8. Have students learn graduate level coursework in the last two years of undergrad, as is done in many European countries, so they can focus on research during their PhD’s.
References:
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-confidence-gap/…
[2] Young, Larry, and Alexander, Brian (2014) The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction
[3] Jablonka, Eva, Lamb, Marion J., Zeligowski, Anna (2014) Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/academic-science-isnt-…
[5] http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber.php
[6] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required-ability-ac…
[7] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/20…
[8] Lynn, Richard, and Kanazawa, Satoshi (2011) A longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence at ages 7, 11 and 16 years, Personality and Individual Differences, v. 51, pp. 321-324.
[9] Travathan, Wenda (2010) Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health
[10] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/474/back-to-scho…
[11] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical…
[12] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/when-scientists-choose-moth…
