Effective practices to increase women’s participation, advancement and leadership in US academic STEM

Women’s Leadership Development Programs

“…More than 150 universities across the United States have now received direct funding or indirect support (through partnerships for application, innovation, and dissemination) from ADVANCE to improve women’s recruitment, advancement, retention, and leadership in science and engineering. These projects include a dual emphasis on equipping women faculty to better navigate the academic pipeline through leadership development, networking, coaching, and mentoring programs as well as simultaneously implementing culture-change initiatives such as training and educating department chairs and deans (women participants’ middle and upper managers) about implicit gender bias, leadership development coaching of department chairs, conducting faculty climate (engagement) surveys to improve micro (departmental) climates, establishing organization-wide networks and advisory councils on women and minorities, instituting family-friendly and academic career flexibility policies, enacting child care initiatives, and targeting the increase of women in leadership positions (Bilimoria & Liang, 2014).…”

Beyond the Chilly Climate

“…One of the most prominent explanations for these disparities is the notion of the “chilly climate,” a term originally coined in 1982 by Hall and Sandler. Studies documenting a chilly climate for women faculty pointed to harassment by students and colleagues, inhospitable department and classroom climates, biases in hiring processes, inequitable allocations of work responsibilities, and policies that penalize women’s greater role in managing work/family responsibilities (Armstrong and Jovanovic 2015; Bilimoria and Liang 2014; Sandler and Hall 1986). The concept has been popular; the notion that chilly climates exist and need to be improved has informed almost all recent significant efforts to promote gender equity on campuses.…”

The Effect of Women Academic Leaders on Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Professors

“…Moreover, the impact of women academic leaders on women STEM professors' workplace experiences remains under-examined despite evidence that women leaders positively influence academic workplaces (Chesterman et al, 2003;Tomàs et al, 2010); and that women role models can help mitigate gender bias in STEM (Dasgupta, 2011;Stout et al, 2011). Studies of gender bias in STEM leadership tend to, instead, describe the barriers that aspiring women leaders encounter (Mc-Cullough, 2011); women STEM leaders' experiences, including in industry contexts (Marinelli & Lord, 2014); initiatives to increase women's representation amongst academic leadership (Bilimoria & Liang, 2014); or the characteristics of effective women academic leaders (Tomàs et al, 2010).…”

“…Finally, evidence from the United States suggests that leadership candidates (e.g., for university/college president) tend to be sought via external national or international searches (e.g., Barden, 2010;Blumenstyk, 2005). Accordingly, the absence of initiatives designed to develop a supply of internal candidates (e.g., Bilimoria & Liang, 2014;Luna, 2012), means that existing hiring practices can be an additional barrier to leadership for qualified and interested women professors. Similarly, mid-career women STEM professors in the United States felt that the path to leadership was ambiguous and that they received little institutional support for their leadership ambitions (Hart, 2016).…”