The unequal impact of parenthood in academia

Abstract

Across academia, men and women tend to publish at unequal rates. Existing explanations include the potentially unequal impact of parenthood on scholarship, but a lack of appropriate data has prevented its clear assessment. Here, we quantify the impact of parenthood on scholarship using an extensive survey of the timing of parenthood events, longitudinal publication data, and perceptions of research expectations among 3064 tenure-track faculty at 450 Ph.D.-granting computer science, history, and business departments across the United States and Canada, along with data on institution-specific parental leave policies. Parenthood explains most of the gender productivity gap by lowering the average short-term productivity of mothers, even as parents tend to be slightly more productive on average than nonparents. However, the size of productivity penalty for mothers appears to have shrunk over time. Women report that paid parental leave and adequate childcare are important factors in their recruitment and retention. These results have broad implications for efforts to improve the inclusiveness of scholarship.

Factors That Influence Career Choice among Different Populations of Neuroscience Trainees

“…However, they also stressed that the discourse of “personal choice” within an inequitable situation can obscure the systemic pressures that different groups face. For example, in man–woman partnerships, a disproportionate amount of family and household responsibilities falls to women who work full-time ( Schiebinger and Gilmartin, 2010 ; also see https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2018/05/18/450972/unequal-division-labor/ ), and, in particular, the difficulties of balancing caregiving responsibilities with full-time work in STEM may explain why women are more likely than men to leave academia or STEM employment entirely after having children ( Wolfinger et al, 2008 ; Goulden et al, 2011 ; Martinez et al, 2017 ; Cech and Blair-Loy, 2019 ) and may contribute to lower publication rates among women ( Morgan et al, 2021 ). This has never been in sharper relief than during the current pandemic, which has disproportionately affected women, especially women with young children ( Gewin, 2020 ; Kramer, 2020 ; Myers et al, 2020 ; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021b ).…”

Factors that Influence Career Choice Among Different Populations of Neuroscience Trainees

“…For example, in male-female partnerships, a disproportionate amount of family and household responsibilities falls to women who work full-time (Glynn, 2018;Schiebinger & Gilmartin, 2010) and, in particular, the difficulties of balancing caregiving responsibilities with full-time work in STEM may explain why women are more likely than men to leave academia or STEM employment entirely after having children (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2019;Goulden et al, 2011;L. R. Martinez, O'Brien, & Hebl, 2017;Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008), and may contribute to lower publication rates among women (Morgan et al, 2021). This has never been in sharper relief than during the current pandemic, which has disproportionately affected women, especially women with young children (Gewin, 2020;Kramer, 2020;Myers et al, 2020;National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021).…”

First-mover Advantage Explains Gender Disparities in Physics Citations

“…After this point, the publication gap starts decreasing again. These fluctuations in publication productivity can be associated with the disproportionate family responsibilities that women have to take on compared with men 23 . Although a researcher's productivity can be considered to be determined mainly by individual skills, the collaborative nature of scientific work makes it dependent on external factors such as other team members or departmental organization.…”