Do Babies Matter?: Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower

Introduction

1 Today, women receive slightly more than half the doctoral degrees granted in the United States.1 With women and men now feeding the academic pipeline in equal numbers, is it just a matter of time before we see gender parity in the professoriate? Regrettably, the answer is no. In two important measures of gender equality, the representation of women in academe and the family characteristics of women who do become professors, we see a serious imbalance. Put simply, there are far fewer women than men at the top of the academic ladder, and these women are much less likely to be married or have children than are the men at the top. In contrast, at the bottom of the academic ladder, among the ranks of contingent and part-time faculty, there are disproportionately more women, and these women are almost as likely as the men to have children. Mothers are more likely to sink to the second tier of academia or leave higher education altogether. This book draws on over a decade of research to offer the first broad examination of the effects of family formation on the academic careers of men and women across their professional lives.2 The story begins with graduate students and postdocs; moves to the critical assistant professor years, when careers advance or founder; continues with the midcareer years, in which some academics take on leadership roles, while others experience professional stagnation ; and finally, looks at retirement. It is important to note that this story is not just about women. Although family formation plays a more dramatic role in women’s academic careers, it does affect the choices that men make and how they manage to balance career and family. In particular, the status of fathers as equal caretakers is seriously challenged by many of the same professional obstacles that hold back mothers. Our research on the lives and careers of male Introduction 2 DO BABIES MATTER? and female academics, built on a multitude of rich data sets, describes these challenges at length. The “Do Babies Matter?” research project began at the University of California , Berkeley, in 2001. The previous year had been a milestone for graduate education at Berkeley: for the first time more than 50 percent of the incoming class were women. This landmark event reflected the national trend; the percentage of women among U.S. citizens receiving doctorates in the United States rose from 12 percent in 1966 to 49 percent in 2000 (today it stands at 51 percent).3 Still, in 2000 women composed only 23 percent of tenure-track faculty (pre- and post-tenure) at Berkeley, and in higher administrative posts they were scarcely visible. This was not simply a chronological lag. In 2000, women received 39 percent of all doctorates granted at Berkeley, but they represented only 28 percent of the new faculty hires. This disparity between the gender breakdown of the available pool and of hired faculty has been the norm for decades at American universities. The numbers may have changed somewhat, but the pattern has not: the gap between women’s Ph.D. receipt and faculty hiring has only grown at Berkeley and other universities in recent years.4 When our Do Babies Matter? project began in 2001, Mary Ann Mason was the first woman dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley, and Marc Goulden served as a senior research analyst. Nick Wolfinger, a family sociologist at the University of Utah, joined the team the next year. We began to investigate the effect of family formation on the academic careers of both men and women. To address this question we first turned to the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), a national data set sponsored largely by the National Science Foundation, with contributions from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other agencies. This ongoing biennial longitudinal survey, begun in 1973 and continually replenished with new respondents , tracks more than 160,000 Ph.D.s across the disciplines throughout their careers, until age seventy-six. It is arguably the best employment data set in the United States. Using the SDR we were able to examine the experience of Ph.D. recipients in the sciences, including engineering and mathematics, as well as in the social sciences and humanities.5 The SDR includes faculty members at liberal arts schools, community colleges, and research universities, as well as Ph.D. recipients working in the private sector or government. Our initial inquiry, funded by the...