Academic women still at a disadvantage

Check out these excerpts from The New York Times, September 18, 2006

"Panel Says Institutions Hinder Female Academics"
By CORNELIA DEAN

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and outmoded institutional structures in academia, an expert panel reported today.

The panel, convened by the National Academy of Sciences, said that in an era of global competition the nation could not afford such underuse of precious human capital. Among other steps, the report recommends that universities alter procedures for hiring and evaluation, change typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and provide more support for working parents.

...


For 30 years, the report says, women have earned at least 30 percent of the nations doctorates in social and behavioral sciences, and at least 20 percent of the doctorates in life sciences. Yet they appear among full professors in those fields at less than half those levels. Women from minorities are virtually absent, it adds.

The report also dismissed other commonly held beliefs that women are uncompetitive or less productive, that they take too much time off for their families, and so on. Their real problems, it says, are unconscious but pervasive bias, arbitrary and subjective evaluation processes, and a work environment in which anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a wife is at a serious disadvantage.

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I added the boldface.

Wow. Especially with all of our long talks about domestic work, this rings a bell for me that I don't want rung. Even in academics, where I tend to think that people understand the problems of sexism, the institutions are filled with the expectation that working people don't do the domestic stuff.