Are Women Getting All the Jobs?
Panel Discussion Tries to Defuse Mounting Tensions over ``Reverse Discrimination''

Allyn Jackson

Reprinted from Notices, 41(4), April 1994, pp. 286-287.

Allyn Jackson is a staff writer for the American Mathematical Society.

Do women mathematicians have an unfair advantage in the job market today? That was the subject of a panel discussion hosted by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Cincinnati in January. Getting a job in mathematics seems to get tougher every year, so any appearance that someone has an unfair advantage is bound to stir discontent. The AWM decided to organize the panel to try to defuse the resentment by an open discussion.

The title of the panel, ``Are Women Getting All the Jobs?'', had just the right touch of overstatement to bring in a crowd. The room was packed to capacity, with a few people sitting on the floor and peering in through the doorway. As panelist Helen G. Grundman of Byrn Mawr College pointed out, the answer to the question posed in the title is clearly no, because there aren't enough new women doctorates being produced to fill the jobs that are open. So, being an algebraist, she tried a permutation of the words and rephrased it this way: ``Are all the women getting jobs?'' The answer to that is also clearly no, as data from the AMS-MAA Annual Survey show. Grundman pointed out that, according to the data about new doctorates, 85.5% of the males and 88.2% of the females were employed (the figures refer to new doctorates whose employment status was known). Looking at the numbers, she noted that if only five jobs that had gone to women had gone to men instead, the percentages would have been virtually the same.

``Some departments are making sincere attempts to get more women on the faculty, and I think that's good,'' Grundman declared. But she noted that sometimes there is too much emphasis on interviewing women candidates as opposed to actually hiring them. She told of cases in which women were brought in for interviews only to find that the department had already decided to hire someone else but had to meet an affirmative action quota on the number of women interviewed. She also said she has heard stories of women being hired as assistant professors and then ``it's made clear to them that they're not expected to stay.'' Further, looking again at the data for new doctorates, the average starting salary for male faculty members stayed the same over the past year, while for women it dropped by $1,000. From this and other data she concludes, ``So even if women are getting more jobs, they're not getting the high-paying ones.''

These days, recent doctorates are usually expected to have some postdoctoral experience under their belts in order to land good tenure-track positions. Are women getting more than their share of the nation's top postdocs? To get a rough answer, the Notices telephoned twenty-four departments offering named instructorships or multiyear postdoctoral positions. Out of eighty-two people hired in these positions to begin in the fall of 1993, thirteen, or about 16%, were women. According to the AMS-MAA Annual Survey, women comprised 24% of 1993 doctorates. As for the National Science Postdoctoral Fellows, out of thirty-nine who began their fellowships in fall 1993, about one-quarter were women.

At the Employment Register during the Joint Mathematics Meetings, it is clear that women jobseekers are much sought after. However, institutions with what are generally considered the most desirable positions usually do not interview at the Employment Register. A follow-up survey conducted by the Joint Committee on Employment Opportunities after the Employment Register in San Antonio in January 1992 asked employers about the importance of various characteristics in their assessment of the candidates interviewed; one of the characteristics was ``specific gender''. None of the fifty employers answering this question said that a specific gender was ``required'', but 26% of them said it was ``preferred'', and the remainder said it was ``not important''.

Panelist Melvin Rothenberg of the University of Chicago said that he did not think women were getting more jobs than they were entitled to. He said that, at the ``elite'' departments (meaning the top five departments in the country), the percentage of women at the junior faculty level is far below the percentage of women doctorates from these departments, and, at the tenured level, there are almost no women. The representation of women in elite schools is especially important, said Rothenberg, because such schools have power, access to resources (such as money for visitors and conferences), and prestige, all of which influence directions in mathematical research. That there are few tenured women faculty at such institutions means that women are ``locked out'' of this power and influence, he said.

Rothenberg also spoke of a sense of ``demoralization'' among women students who notice the lack of women faculty and who sense the presence of the ``glass ceiling'' before they even reach it. Women suffer, and so does mathematics, he said. ``When you deprive a talented group of people, you lose their potential contributions to the field.'' Rothenberg believes that the elite schools must take the lead and increase the number of women on their mathematics faculties. Of course, he noted, ``this is not a popular proposal among my colleagues'' at elite institutions. But what happens in hiring, he said, is that one sets minimal standards for a position and then looks at the pool of people who apply. Certain other criteria may apply; for example, the department may feel it needs a topologist or an algebraic geometer. ``What if the department needs a woman?'' he asked. ``There are excellent women mathematicians who could and should be appointed to tenured positions at the elite institutions. This would in no way compromise the research quality of these institutions. What's lacking is the will to do it.''

Panelist Lynne Billard, a statistician at the University of Georgia, said that the data she has seen show that the percentage of women getting assistant professorships in the last five to six years is about the same as the percentage of women doctorates. However, she noted that women are paid less than men, they are less likely to be full professors, and they take longer to achieve tenure.

The idea that hiring more women in elite institutions would necessitate a lowering of standards is ``the old copout'', said Billard. A number of studies have shown that both men and women tend to judge work done by women as being of lower quality than that done by men. Billard discussed one study from 1983, in which a research paper was sent out to 180 male and 180 female reviewers. One-third of the papers listed the author as John T. McKay, one-third as Joan T. McKay, and one-third as J. T. McKay. The lowest ratings (by both men and women) went to the paper ``authored'' by Joan T. McKay. (It should be noted that the study used a paper in the social sciences, not in mathematics.)

The panel provided some views countering the perception that women have an unfair advantage in the job market. However, no one presented the opposing view, which some might label as ``politically incorrect''. But privately, some men will confess to feelings of resentment over what they see as reverse discrimination. They say they look around and see their women contemporaries getting more interviews, more offers, and better jobs. Various stories circulate; for example, one new Ph.D. who has been on the job market a number of times in the past few years told of one woman who had received twelve offers. Her advisor said that she was not his strongest student, and yet his male students were having trouble finding jobs. Another recent Ph.D. told of a woman who had her pick of tenure-track offers from top schools and a postdoc at one of the elite universities. Although her qualifications were exceptional, he noted that her offers were more numerous and more generous than those of men at her level.

One panelist, Mark Winstead of the University of California at San Diego, a recent Ph.D. who has been active in the Young Mathematicians Network, pointed out that the perceptions of reverse discrimination are sometimes based on anecdotes that cannot be trusted. He said that fellow students and jobseekers were the source of many of the stories he heard about women having an advantage, and such people may not be in the position to judge the qualifications of women who allegedly got hired because of their gender. In addition, he said that he thought that because of various social factors, women usually face a tougher road to getting a doctorate than men; so it is quite probable that the average female mathematician is better qualified than the average male mathematician.

In addition, the past few years have brought changes in what qualifications schools are emphasizing. Amy Cohen of Rutgers University pointed to two women who had just finished their doctorates at Rutgers and who had gotten better jobs than their male counterparts. She said that some of the men were grumbling about reverse discrimination. However, she noted, these two women both had had previous corporate experience, they had good teaching records, and they were skilled communicators--all attributes that made them desirable on the job market. Schools today are looking for a wider range of skills and not focusing solely on research prowess. Said Cohen, ``The men didn't seem to realize that the times have changed.''

The men who complain of disparate treatment usually do not say that the women are poorly qualified. What they see is that men and women with similar qualifications and skills do not seem to have equal footing on the job market. David Atkinson is a recent Ph.D. who started a tenure-track job at Western Kentucky University this year. He said he considered himself neither worse nor better than his female counterparts in graduate school: ``We were all friends working toward a common goal.'' But then, he began to feel a sense of unfairness when he found ``after years of hard work that many hiring decisions [were] heavily influenced by the presence or lack of the Y chromosome.'' At one school where he interviewed, the department head told him that he anticipated considerable difficulty with the affirmative action officer if the department did not hire a woman.

Some would argue that, in making hiring women a priority, departments are simply trying to fulfill their responsibilities to provide role models for women students. Although some male jobseekers will concede that this is important, others say that they believe men or women can provide good role models for students of either gender. Said Atkinson, ``the representation of females in many departments is lower than we would like, [but] I cannot agree that discriminating on the basis of gender is the solution. To me, the issue is whether females are discriminated against or discouraged,'' he went on to say. ``That is wrong, and where it occurs action is warranted $\dots$ . I don't believe that the gender or race of the person standing in front of your classes is nearly as big a factor in a person's career decision as an individual's upbringing, talents, and interest. To say that only women provide suitable role models for women is a divisive and unsubstantiated argument to me.''

Are Women Getting All the Jobs? Panel Discussion Tries to Defuse Mounting Tensions over ``Reverse Discrimination''

Allyn Jackson

Are Women Getting All the Jobs?
Panel Discussion Tries to Defuse Mounting Tensions over ``Reverse Discrimination''