More on women academics

In the Dec. 15th, 2000 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Joan Williams makes the following observation in her article "What Stymies Women's Academic Careers? It's personal":

There are two ways for an academic to reach a top institution. One is to start out there. The other is to start elsewhere and work one's way up. For the second path (and sometimes even for the first), relocation is extraordinarily important. Academics may have to move not once but several times, because in many fields, only a few jobs open up in any given year--and those jobs are likely to be spread out across the country. Even academic stars may start out in Topeka. But to reach Cambridge or Palo Alto, they have to move.

Since the 1970's, many studies have reported that a lack of geographical mobility seriously limits the careers of many women. Probably the most recent re search is an as-yet-unpublished study conducted by Phyllis Moen and her colleagues at Cornell University (with financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation), based on interviews in 1998 and 1999 with faculty and staff members at two major research universities in New York State. The study found that 44 percent of the men and 49 percent of the women said the husband's career took priority, while only 17 percent of the men and 19 percent of the women said the wife's career did.

When the researchers asked whether the subjects had ever had a career or educational opportunity that would have required their partner to make significant changes (like moving to a different city or taking another job), 49 percent of the women but only 24 percent of the men said they had. One-third of the men, and half of the women, had turned down such an opportunity.

You have to have a subscription or a library card to an academic library to read the whole thing, you get the point.

Another day, another statistic. I know. Still makes me think.