According to researchers at Cornell University, barriers for women in the sciences field comes from a combination of social, biological and institutional factors. Overt gender discrimination against female scientists in hiring, publishing and funding is “largely a thing of the past.”
The research by Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, psychologists at Cornell, was published yesterday in the journal Nature. The Ceci/Williams research is in sharp contrast to other reports that suggest discrimination is still an issue.
Regarding her research, Williams stated “[t]here are constant and unsupportable allegations that women suffer discrimination in these arenas, and we show conclusively that women do not.”
Ceci and Williams indicate that gender differences in the sciences are the result of a “broader set of societal realities”, particularly family formation and child rearing. They note that motherhood can influence the decision women make regarding research careers versus academic careers. They note that compromises between pursuing a career and raising a family, coupled with gender expectations, can influence the choices women make regarding their professional and personal lives.
I wrote a post yesterday at Compensation Cafe regarding compensation and cultural norms. That post discussed how gender expectations in Japan affect the decisions Japanese women make about their careers. Specifically, only thirty percent of Japanese women return to the workforce after childbirth. This has some significant implications for the characteristics of the Japanese labor market, male and female earnings in Japan, the gender composition of senior level positions, etc. The decisions women – and men – make in their personal lives has an impact on their professional lives.
While I acknowledge that, unfortunately, gender discrimination does exist, much of what may appear to be gender discrimination on the surface isn’t. An observed difference between men and women – whether in compensation, occupation, publishing rates, patents, or any other metric we choose to look at – does not automatically imply gender discrimination. Those differences may be attributable to the choices we make, and those choices are largely influenced by social and institutional factors.
These decisions manifest themselves even when comparing women against other women. My sister and I are the perfect example of this. We were both raised in the same household by a mother and father who taught us we could be whatever we wanted to be. We both had good educations and took art classes, ballet classes, and music lessons. We went to the Smithsonian, art galleries, and rodeos at the local fairgrounds. For all practical purposes, my sister and I (who are only three years apart in age) had the same upbringing and the same opportunities. But to compare us today, we’re quite different. My sister still lives in the same small town where we grew up. She has a good husband and a beautiful ten-year old daughter. She’s a good mother to my niece and a good daughter to my parents, looking after my father who’s not in the best of health. She works for a non-profit on a part-time basis. Because of this, she doesn’t earn very much money and doesn’t have a prestigious job title.
If we compare my labor market experiences with hers, just looking at things like age, education, job title, and earnings, we might infer that something negative happened to her in the workplace. We might even infer that she was the victim of some kind of gender discrimination. But her career experiences are not different from mine because of gender discrimination; the difference is because of the choices we made. She chose to remain in our hometown; I moved to New York City and then to Philadelphia. She chose a four-year college degree; I chose a Ph.D. She chose to have children; I chose not to have children. She chose to leave the labor market when my niece was born, in order to be able to stay home and raise her. She then chose to return to the labor market, taking a position that would not require her to work long hours or travel, so that she could be home in the afternoons to help with homework, listen to saxophone practice, and go to karate classes.
The different labor market experiences of my sister and I are attributable to the choices we made – and continue to make. Differences between men and women (or even amongst women) in the workplace are not always the result of discrimination. Sometimes they’re attributable to our personal decisions.