Many of these are interesting. Nice interview with Nobel winner Carol Greider at the end...
-----Original Message-----
From: wicb at ascb.org [mailto:wicb at ascb.org]
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:42 PM
To: Weisz, Ora Anna
Subject: WICB Network Messages (4)
November 2009
WICB Network Message 1
Subject: Helping Women in 100-Hour Couples
September 29, 2009
By Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy
Educated women's relationship with work today is located at the crosscurrents of some significant demographic and societal shifts. Perhaps the most important of these changes, the stunning educational achievements of women during the past 50 years, opened doors to a wide variety of interesting and well-paid careers, including academe. Women, and married women in particular, increasingly entered fields that had long been considered male bastions. Given the opportunity to prove themselves academically and professionally, educated women marched headlong into the workforce. After a century of increasing female labor force participation, then, many were surprised when at the turn of the 21st century increases in the labor force participation of women stalled -- and in some cases, such as college-educated mothers of infants, declined dramatically.
While women have always moved in and out of the labor force, these most recent movements seemed different. The press began to identify women who, after investing considerable time and money in their educations, decided to leave prestigious and highly-paid careers. While the actual number of college-educated women who quit their jobs to tend to their children constituted a small fraction of working women, the phenomenon nevertheless fueled a heated public debate.
Arguments about the size of the phenomenon aside, the important part of this story is the valuable lessons about work and family to be learned from those who walked away from careers, high powered and otherwise. Our research on these women revealed issues faced by all mothers who seek to combine paid work and childrearing. While our sample was broad and included women from many different fields, academics were well-represented in our study, and so our findings have direct relevance for academic employers.
As women's commitment to the workforce rose dramatically in the late 1900s, at the same time, marital patterns began to shift. Paraphrasing Gloria Steinem, these highly educated women were becoming the men they wanted to marry. Instead of the professor marrying the department secretary, who then quit work to raise the family, now the professor is likely to marry another professor, or lawyer, or financial analyst. This dynamic gave rise to something we call "the 100-hour couple," or a couple who works extremely long hours for a combined total of more than 100 hours per week. At the same time as these highly educated women began to compete for academic, professional and managerial positions (along with their husbands), we began to see a surge in the work hours expected by employers. The expectations of employers for complete commitment to work -- with many expecting employees to be available on a 24/7 basis -- has risen substantially over the past few decades, as technology has made it increasingly possible for workers to be reached at all hours.
These changes coincided with cultural shifts in expectations for parenthood. While fathers certainly spend more time with their children than ever before, they still do not spend nearly as much time as do mothers. Today's mothers describe an intensification of motherhood that can be felt in the pressure to provide "mama time" for their kids by arranging play dates, driving them to activities, monitoring piano practice and homework, etc.
Compounded by ongoing expectations for women to manage household responsibilities, these cultural and demographic shifts came together to create a perfect storm of social forces that has led women to reevaluate their relationship with work. Aside from the trends described above, certain structural characteristics of the workplace inhibit women's ability to excel in their careers while creating the home life they desire. By addressing some of these structural barriers, employers can help to create a workplace that will attract and retain highly qualified women. The implications of our research for academic employers are myriad.
Most jobs and workplace norms, including those in academe, were structured originally for men who had wives devoted full-time to managing the home life. Typically designed by and for men, few careers offer alternatives to combine work and motherhood, without invoking a significant penalty in terms of advancement and pay. In the case of academe, for example, those stressful years leading up to tenure coincide exactly with a woman's prime childbearing years. Instances of a part-time tenure track are extremely rare, and if a woman gives up a tenure track job to take time to attend to family matters, it is highly unlikely that she will be able to secure another tenure track job. These constraints lead many qualified women to give up a chance at tenure in return for a lifetime of adjunct positions. Creating an alternative model in which parents can reduce their time commitment at work while still remaining on the tenure track (albeit delayed) would be a major step that colleges and universities could take to retain highly qualified women.
Pregnancy, childbirth, and adoption can present major stumbling blocks, even to women who want to continue to work full-time. Institutions can take great strides to improve the lives of their female faculty and staff by creating and legitimizing pregnancy, childbearing, and adoption leave policies. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ensured that colleges offer employees at least 12 weeks within a 12 month period for unpaid leave for birth, adoption, or to care for themselves or their family members. Many institutions have expanded their parenting leave policies beyond those required by the FMLA, by providing some weeks of paid leave or a course reduction. Others provide a semester off with reduced pay. Unfortunately, the nature of academic work does not lend itself easily to taking a six-week leave, if that leave cuts into the academic calendar year. However, it can be done, especially when administrators provide support in terms of hiring replacement faculty or creatively configuring course loads.
Perhaps more important, however, is that even when these types of policies, generous as they may seem, are "on the books," women faculty may feel that they can't avail themselves without making it seem that they are uncommitted to their careers. Indeed many female faculty engage directly in actions to minimize even the appearance of allowing family obligations to interfere with work commitments. Typical strategies to avoid bias include returning to work too soon after childbirth, not requesting reduced teaching loads when necessary, or even missing important events in their children's lives. Ensuring that women are not punished for taking advantage of flexible work options, then, becomes a significant step that administrators can take to retain these women.
A dearth of high quality childcare presents another significant structural barrier to mothers' employment. High quality, affordable childcare is often unattainable for many families. In some cases the care is available, but expensive. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, a family can expect to pay $24,000 per year to enroll an infant and a toddler in a full-time, center-based child care facility. And even when quality care is available and affordable, the inflexibility of opening and closing times, with most child care centers charging by the minute for late pick-ups, do not mesh with employer demands outside of the traditional 9 to 5 workday.
Of course, care responsibilities are not limited to children. Elder care is becoming an increasingly important drain on workers, and will only worsen as the nation's baby boomers age. And since women are having children at increasingly older ages, we can expect to see a rise in the numbers of workers who have child and elder care responsibilities at the same time.
Studies have shown that employers who assist their workers with child care see improvements in productivity and morale. By providing and/or subsidizing child care for their employees, universities and colleges can expect to see improved worker performance and reduced turnover and absenteeism. As an added bonus, employers do not pay employment taxes on benefits, and so institutions can reduce their tax burden by casting some of an employee's compensation as a child care subsidy.
Some believe that the women who left their jobs did so because they were not successful, didn't like the work, or lacked ambition, all ideas contradicted by our research. Many of the women we interviewed had been phenomenally successful and loved their careers, but they also felt that workplace structures limited their capacity both to raise their families and to continue in those careers. And this was particularly true for academics. One national study of highly educated women who had left their careers, found that only doctors seemed happier in their work than professors, with lawyers and M.B.A.'s being far more likely to report job dissatisfaction as a major reason for leaving their careers. It was not job satisfaction that drove the professors to leave their careers, but rather the structure of the job. Therefore, academic employers who are interested in recruiting and retaining talented women should direct their attention to making structural changes in their institutions, such as increasing flexibility in terms of the tenure clock, allowing women (and men) to reduce teaching loads and take parenting leaves as needed, as well as improving other benefits such as child care assistance.
Karine Moe, professor of economics, and Dianna Shandy, associate professor of anthropology, teach at Macalester College. They are the authors of Glass Ceilings and 100-Hour Couples: What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family, scheduled for release next month by the University of Georgia Press.
-----------------------------------------
November 2009
WICB Network Message 2
Subject: Women as Scientists Material from the NIH
http://science.education.nih.gov/home2.nsf/Educational+Resources/Grade+Levels/+Middle+School/F4DC786C2DC6E5548525733E0063F93F
Women Are Scientists is a series of FREE video presentations that showcases successful female scientists in their respective specialties, and informs students about educational requirements, rewards, and challenges of careers in the biomedical sciences. Each video presentation gives a detailed view of three women scientists, from various backgrounds, as role models for their particular career. This series is designed to motivate students to take more challenging advanced science and math courses and to enable them to successfully direct their own career paths.
-----------------------------------------
November 2009
WICB Network Message 3
Subject: NIH Awards Grants to Examine Factors Influencing Women's Careers in Science
The National Institutes of Health announced today that it will fund 14 grants focusing on factors that influence the careers of women in biomedical and behavioral science and engineering. The grants are estimated to total $16.8 million over four years.
The grants respond to a 2007 National Academies report that urgently called for a broad, national effort to maximize the potential of women scientists and engineers. The report, Beyond Bias and Barriers, led to the creation of an NIH working group charged with examining the issues and addressing the challenges in supporting the advancement of women scientists and engineers. "The National Institutes of Health is committed to building a diverse biomedical workforce," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "Our ability to train and retain women scientists is vital to our remaining competitive in meeting today's health challenges."
The new grants will examine many influences on women's career choices such as family and economic factors, institutional environments and broader social and cultural issues. Topics include the role mentoring and funding support play throughout women's academic careers to the impact of family-friendly policies in retaining women in the scientific workforce. The career paths of underrepresented and financially disadvantaged women will also be examined.
"Understanding the issues that impact the recruitment, retention, reentry and advancement of women in biomedical and behavioral science careers will help us develop strategies to assist women at critical points," said Dr. Vivian Pinn, director of the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health and co-chair of the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers. The NIH components funding the awards include the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Cancer Institute; the National Center for Research Resources; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute on Aging; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; the National Institute of Nursing Research; the NIH Office of AIDS Research; the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health.
The grant recipients are
-- Stephanie B. Abbuhl, University of Pennsylvania, "Women & Academic Medicine: A Randomized Multi-level Trial"
-- Mary Carnes, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Advancement of Women in STEMM: A Multi-level Research and Action Project"
-- Thomas Diprete, Columbia University, "Educational Pathways to Science and Other Careers for Academically Talented Women"
-- Karen Fruend, Boston University Medical Campus, "Longitudinal Follow-up to the National Faculty Survey"
-- Donna K. Ginther, University of Kansas, "Economic Explanations for Gender Differences in Biomedical Careers"
-- Deborah L. Helitzer, University of New Mexico, "Achieving a Critical Mass of Women Biomedical Faculty: Impact of 3 US Programs"
-- Reshma Jagsi, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, "Examining How Gender Differences in Outcomes Develop Among Physician Researchers"
-- Yael G. Levitte, Cornell University, "Entry and Retention of Women in the Sciences: A Cohort Comparison"
-- Richard McGee, Northwestern University, "Pivotal Career Decisions Guiding Potential Women Science Faculty"
-- Donna Nelson, University of Oklahoma, "Building an Evidence Base for Developing Effective Intervention Strategies for Women"
-- Joan Reede, Harvard Medical School, "Factors that Promote and Support Careers of Women of Color in Academic Medicine"
-- Virginia Valian, Hunter College, "Gatekeepers and Gender Schemas"
-- Amparo Villablanca, University of California, Davis, "Women's Careers in the Medical Sciences and Family Friendly Policies"
-- Wendy Williams, Cornell University, "Assessing and Reducing Gender Bias in STEM Recruitment, Mentorship and Evaluation"
For more information on the Women in Biomedical Careers initiative at NIH, see http://womeninscience.nih.gov/http://womeninscience.nih.gov/
To speak to an NIH official about the new grants, contact the NIGMS Office of Communications and Public Liaison at 301-496-7301 or email info at nigms.nih.gov <mailto:info at nigms.nih.gov.
-----------------------------------------
November 2009
WICB Network Message 4
Subject: Interview with Nobelist Carol Greider
A Conversation With Carol W. Greider On Winning a Nobel Prize in Science
By Claudia Dreifus
Q. IS IT TRUE THAT YOU WERE DOING LAUNDRY WHEN YOU GOT THAT EARLY MORNING CALL FROM STOCKHOLM?
A. Yes. I don't usually do the laundry so early in the morning, but I was already up, and there was all this laundry staring at me. I was supposed to later meet two women friends to take our morning spin class. People had speculated that sometime in the next five years, something like this might happen. And last year people said, "Maybe, it will be, " and it wasn't. Reuters had made this prediction that we might get it this time. But I really didn't have any idea. Maybe it would never happen. There are important fundamental discoveries that never get prizes. After I got the call, I sent my friend an e-mail: "I'm sorry I can't spin right now. I've won the Nobel Prize."
Q. DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO BE A BIOLOGIST?
A. My parents were scientists. But I wasn't the sort of child who did science fairs. One of the things I was thinking about today is that as a kid I had dyslexia. I had a lot of trouble in school and was put into remedial classes. I thought that I was stupid.
Q. THAT MUST HAVE HURT.
A. Sure. Yes. It was hard to overcome that. I kept thinking of ways to compensate. I learned to memorize things very well because I just couldn't spell words. So later when I got to take classes like chemistry and anatomy where I had to memorize things, it turned out I was very good at that. I never planned a career. I had these blinders on that got me through a lot of things that might have been obstacles. I just went forward. It's a skill that I had early on that must have been adaptive. I enjoyed biology in high school and that brought me to a research lab at U.C. Santa Barbara. I loved doing experiments and I had fun with them. I realized this kind of problem-solving fit my intellectual style. So in order to continue having fun, I decided to go to graduate school at Berkeley. It was there that I went to Liz Blackburn's lab, where telomeres were being studied.
Q. WHAT ARE TELOMERES?
A. The concept of telomeres was really laid out by H. J. Muller and Barbara McClintock in the 1940s, when they showed that there must be a special unit, a kind of cap at the end of the chromosome that holds it together. In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn, working with Joe Gall, identified the DNA sequence of telomeres. Every time a cell divides, it gets shorter. But telomeres usually don't. So there must be something happening to the telomeres to keep their length in equilibrium. When I went into Liz Blackburn's lab in 1984 and began working on this, the most exciting question that was being asked there was, "If we know that telomeres get short over time, how can they be relengthened?" I set out to look for evidence that there was such an enzyme as telomerase that would relengthen the telemeres once they shortened. What I found out on Christmas Day 1984, through biochemical evidence, was that telomeres could be lengthened by the enzyme we called telomerase, which keeps the telomeres from wearing down. After, I found that out, I went home and put on Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," which was just out, and I danced and danced and danced.
Q. WHY WAS THAT IMPORTANT?
A. Because broken or shortened telomeres are implicated in a whole group of diseases. Five or six years later, we and other groups discovered that telomere shortening played a role in the inability of cells to divide after a certain number of divisions - as well as in cancer. So the possibility of a biochemical therapy for some of these diseases was now something that could be explored.
Q. IT'S BEEN SAID THAT YOU AND DR. BLACKBURN DIDN'T RECEIVE THE NOBEL PRIZE EARLIER BECAUSE IT HADN'T YET BEEN PROVED THAT TELOMERES AND TELOMERASE WOULD BE VALUABLE IN UNDERSTANDING DISEASE. DOES THE PRIZE THIS YEAR MEAN THAT THERE NOW IS AN ACCEPTANCE OF THEIR VALUE?
A. I certainly hope so. That's why Nobel Prizes are usually awarded long after the original discovery. It takes time for the medical implications to become clear. I think it's clear now that the basic science we did is important to understanding cancers, some human genetic diseases and the age associated degenerative diseases. The clinical relevance still needs to be understood in the medical community.
Q. MANY REPORTERS HAVE ASKED WHY TELOMERES RESEARCH SEEMS TO ATTRACT SO MANY FEMALE INVESTIGATORS. WHAT'S YOUR ANSWER?
A. There's nothing about the topic that attracts women. It's probably more the founder effect. Women researchers were fostered early on by Joe Gall, and they got jobs around the country and they trained other women. I think there's a slight bias of women to work for women because there's still a slight cultural bias for men to help men. The derogatory term is the "old boys network." It's not that they are biased against women or want to hurt them. They just don't think of them. And they often feel more comfortable promoting their male colleagues. When Lawrence Summers, then the Harvard president, made that statement a few years ago about why there were fewer successful women in science, I thought, "Oh, he couldn't really mean that."' After reading the actual transcript of his statement, it seems he really did say that women can't think in that sort of scientific fashion. It was ridiculous! I mean, women do things differently, which is why I think it would be important if more women were at higher levels in academic medicine. I think people might work together more, things might be more collaborative. It would change how science is done and even how institutions are run. That doesn't mean that women necessarily have a different way of thinking about the mechanics of experiments. I think it's more a different social way of interacting that would bring results in differently.
Q. DO THIS YEAR'S NOBELS MEAN THAT WOMEN HAVE FINALLY BEEN ACCEPTED IN SCIENCE?
A. I certainly hope it's a sign that things are going to be different in the future. But I'm a scientist, right? This is one event. I'm not going to see one event and say it's a trend. I hope it is. One of the things I did with the press conference that Johns Hopkins gave was to have my two kids there. In the newspapers, there's a picture of me and my kids right there. How many men have won the Nobel in the last few years, and they have kids the same age as mine, and their kids aren't in the picture? That's a big difference, right? And that makes a statement.
Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine was one of three women who won a science Nobel last week, which puts her in some rare company. Only eight women had won in physiology or medicine, and there has never been a year when three women won Nobels in the sciences. Dr. Greider shared her prize with Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak for their research on telomeres. You can see Dr Greider and her kids in the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75WrEZAViRY.
Sent: Tue. November 10, 2009
to Unsubcribe: send email to: hberman at ascb.org with unsubscribe in the body of the message.
