Gender Equity Considerations for Tenure and Promotion during COVID‐19

Oleschuk, Merin

doi:10.1111/cars.12295

Cited by 164 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Assistant professors are evaluated for tenure near the end of a fixed probationary period of about seven years, giving them time to produce a portfolio of work that signals their true productivity. 3 A fixed probationary period disadvantages people who experience large, temporary negative productivity shocks, such as having children. In part for this reason, women are less likely than men to have children before tenure, and the gender gap in tenure rates is larger for those with children (Mason and Goulden 2002).…”

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies are now more common, and many universities that originally adopted a female-only policy have since converted to a gender-neutral version. 3 The American Association of University Professors (2014) guidelines state that the probationary period should not exceed seven years. This means that assistant professors are usually evaluated for tenure during year six.…”

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Antecol

Bedard

Stearns

2018

American Economic Review

301

230

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Many skilled professional occupations are characterized by an early period of intensive skill accumulation and career establishment. Examples include law firm associates, surgical residents, and untenured faculty at research-intensive universities. High female exit rates are sometimes blamed on the inability of new mothers to survive the sustained negative productivity shock associated with childbearing and early childrearing in these environments. Gender-neutral family policies have been adopted in some professions in an attempt to “level the playing field.” The gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies adopted by the majority of research-intensive universities in the United States in recent decades are an excellent example. But to date, there is no empirical evidence showing that these policies help women. Using a unique dataset on the universe of assistant professor hires at top-50 economics departments from 1980–2005, we show that the adoption of gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially increasing male tenure rates. However, these policies do not reduce the probability that either men or women eventually earn tenure in the profession. (JEL I23, J16, J24, J32, J44)

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Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tenure Clock Stopping Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Antecol

Bedard

Stearns

2018

American Economic Review

301

230

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The pandemic seems to have enlarged existing disparities, for example, in terms of the digital divide (Zhong, 2020 ) and research output between female and male scientists (Oleschuk, 2020 ). We are seeing more and more potential reviewers respond to peer review requests with accounts of their challenges with the many new demands on their time, including the work of reconfiguring their teaching for the alternative mediums that have become necessary, family responsibilities relating to the new realities of social restrictions and institutional shutdowns, and even sickness from the virus itself.…”

Section: Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial

Bakker

Wagner

2021

Educ Stud Math

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“…ECRs usually refer to PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and scientists who have 10 years or less of experience after the doctoral degree, although there is some flexibility in this definition 19 . Due to their career stage, ECRs often face job precarity, lack of available opportunities, low funding, and job insecurity 20 (e.g., untenured positions and temporary contract employees). These problems are augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic and may be experienced more in countries with a developing scientific system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating losses: How science diplomacy can address the impact of COVID-19 on early career researchers

López‐Vergès¹,

Urbani²,

Rivas³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Despite the failures to tackle early coordinated responses at national and multinational levels, the global emergence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic promoted unprecedented actions on the science-policy, science-communication, and science-diplomacy interfaces worldwide. With varying degrees of success, various actions within the realm of science diplomacy have accompanied the creation of knowledge related to COVID-19 through international collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill and also drew attention to the genuine need for science diplomacy. This pandemic highlighted the need of training opportunities in the interface of policy and diplomacy for researchers to be able to get grips on emerging health issues. Moreover, it is necessary to create specific platforms for experts to interact with decision-makers at the national and international levels, especially in the Global South. This crisis inevitably shifted the focus on scientific areas that directly address the pandemic response (epidemiology, public health, virology, immunology, pharmacology, human behavioral research, economics, among others). At the same time, some areas not related to the pandemic response have been slowed down due to inevitable physical and social restrictions that impacted certain aspects of the academic life. This does not only relate to daily access to the lab, scientific collections, or field sites, but also associates with furloughed employees and reduced funding to non-COVID-19-related research. Moreover, during the pandemic, women and (usually young) scientists with children have reduced their research efforts substantially, with future implications still difficult to quantify. While some researchers might have harnessed telecommuting and lockdown periods to focus on data analysis and publication writing, gender bias still exists. The slight increase in publications with pre-acquired data may still be followed by an immediate future impacted by the lack of data acquisition during the pandemic. These issues may create long-term effects due to reduced capacity for generating pre-requisite data for securing new funding, termination of research, reduced networking opportunities, restrictions to international collaborations, collectively having a negative impact on other disciplines. While most established researchers may not be affected hardly by the above-mentioned effects, early career researchers (ECRs), represent a more vulnerable population. ECRs usually refer to PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and scientists who have 10 years or less of experience after the doctoral degree, although there is some flexibility in this definition. Due to their career stage, ECRs often face job precarity, lack of available opportunities, low funding, and job insecurity (e.g., untenured positions and temporary contract employees). These problems are augmented by the COVID-19 pandemic and may be experienced more in countries with a developing scientific system. The impact could be higher for countries that are developing their research environment, are dependent on training their ECRs and conducting experiments abroad through international exchanges programs, which have been stopped due to the pandemic. Given these unprecedented times, it has been observed that international scientific organizations, policy-makers, scientific communities, and private stakeholders have strengthened their collaborations in response to the pandemic. We, as ECRs, strongly believe that science diplomacy can make a difference in addressing the challenges (emanated or amplified by the current pandemic) that ECRs would face inside and outside academia. Here we present such challenges, and discuss how the Global Young Academy (GYA), an independent organization of early to mid-career researchers across all disciplines and countries, has provided a platform for ECRs to practice science diplomacy, science advice, and science communication. The former by serving as a bridge between ECRs and governments, the second by hearing the voices of young researchers when enacting policies, and the latter by informing societies about the benefits of scientific research. Motivated by the described examples, we recommend measures for scientists, funding agencies, and international organizations to foster international collaboration in these unparallel times.

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Gender Equity Considerations for Tenure and Promotion during COVID‐19

Cited by 164 publications

References 38 publications

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

Editorial

Mitigating losses: How science diplomacy can address the impact of COVID-19 on early career researchers

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