{"id":5983,"date":"2009-10-20T09:23:25","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T13:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=5983"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:40:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:40:12","slug":"gender-schemas-affect-women-in-science-says-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/10\/gender-schemas-affect-women-in-science-says-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Schemas Affect Women in Science, Says Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Virginia<\/a>
Virginia Valian of Hunter College meets with a grant team headed by Debra Kendall, right, associate dean of liberal arts and sciences. Photo by Frank Dahlmeyer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSome of the research I\u2019ll be presenting is very depressing,\u201d warned gender equity expert Virginia Valian, speaking to an audience of faculty, department heads, and students at UConn on Oct. 15 about why women\u2019s advancement in science and technical disciplines is slow.<\/p>\n

But, she added, \u201cPeople are working on this problem everywhere, including here at the University of Connecticut. It\u2019s a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valian co-directed one of the first National Science Foundation-sponsored gender equity projects at Hunter College, where she is a distinguished professor of psychology and linguistics.<\/p>\n

She was invited to speak and give workshops at UConn for department heads in the College of Liberal Art and Sciences by Dean Jeremy Teitelbaum. She also met with the provost and members of President Hogan\u2019s cabinet, and with a team that is writing a UConn proposal to the NSF ADVANCE program to increase diversity among faculty in sciences, engineering, and math faculties \u2013 the \u201cSTEM\u201d disciplines.<\/p>\n

Valian cited a 2006 NSF study of women\u2019s progress toward full professorships in STEM disciplines. It showed that 10 years post-Ph.D., 3.3 percent of men and 1.6 percent of women in academia were full professors. Ten to 19 years after receiving a Ph.D., 41 percent of men and 26 percent of women had achieved full professor status. Thirty years into their academic careers, 81 percent of men in the study and 75 percent of women academics were professors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen never fully catch up in science as a whole,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Valian discounted the explanation that there aren\u2019t enough women in the STEM pipeline to promote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pipeline selectively leaks women,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s as if the pipeline has little holes in it, and they\u2019re female shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those who stay in the pipeline and are promoted are not paid as well as men, she noted.<\/p>\n

The lack of adequate childcare arrangements also does not explain why women do not advance, she said, noting that women with children who stay in academia actually publish more than those who are childless.<\/p>\n

Her explanation for the gender gap is that both men and women share gender \u201cschemas\u201d that overvalue men\u2019s professional capabilities and underrate women\u2019s, and that an accumulation of small biases over a long period can have devastating effects on women\u2019s careers.<\/p>\n

Women face negative reactions even from job interviewers who believe they are equitable and have the best intentions, she added. Experiments have shown that subtle cues such as eye gaze and facial expressions can indicate a bias in job interviews that disadvantages women in seemingly small ways that add up to a bigger problem.<\/p>\n

Gender schemas are ubiquitous and hard to change because we may not even be aware that we have them, she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to feel guilty but you do need to take responsibility. We\u2019re flawed judges of other human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recommended that people develop procedures to check for bias, asking themselves whether they have developed an inclusive list for job interviews or colloquium speakers, for instance, or acknowledging women\u2019s ideas in committee meetings and making sure they are heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders must lead,\u201d she added, and not plead that other groups on campus won\u2019t follow or must be deferred to.<\/p>\n

She said that on balance, there is some reason for optimism: \u201cWe can put science to work to change how our institutions behave.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Q and A interview with Valian is available on the CLAS website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gender equity expert Virginia Valian discusses women’s advancement in the STEM disciplines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[38],"class_list":["post-5983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 12:08:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5983"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37155,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983\/revisions\/37155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5983"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=5983"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}