Parental and Family Leave for Graduate Students and Postdocs

“Parental and family leave for graduate students and post docs: Policies and experiences” was a panel at the January 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego. Some references are:

My slides from the panel.

A comprehensive and succinct report: A Forgotten Class of Scientists: Examining the Parental and Family Benefits Available to Research Trainees.

The web site of the National Postdoctoral Association which has “Family-Friendly Resources for Postdocs.”

 

“Underrepresentation of Women in Math-intensive Fields”?

Some characterize the situation for women in STEM as “underrepresentation of women in mathematically-intensive fields.” In the case of baccalaureates at least, the situation might be more accurately described in terms of salaries—unless you believe that engineering and computer science are more “mathematically-intensive” than mathematics.

This scatterplot shows median salaries on the horizontal axis and percent male on the vertical axis, by field, for recent baccalaureates in STEM. 

Comments on Bishop et al.’s Article on Boaler’s Work

This post makes a few comments on “A Close Examination of Jo Boaler’s Railside Report” by Bishop, Milgram, and Clopton (hereafter Bishop et al.), comparing its account with that of two articles written by Boaler and Staples: a 2005 conference paper and a 2008 journal article.

Disclosure: I am not and have never been a friend or collaborator of any author listed above. On the other hand, the math education world is small. I work on projects and communicate regularly with people who are or have been friends or collaborators of Boaler or Milgram.

No one that I know condones the actions of Bishop et al. in attempting to determine the identities of the schools in Boaler’s studies. However, at first glance, it is hard to determine what the two sides are claiming and its basis. Some claims are not connected with details of the study, the details are complicated, and the two sides seem to talk past each other. The comments below are intended to be helpful in making sense of the articles, rather than as an exhaustive discussion of their merits.

Considering What Evidence?

In February, the Brookings Institution released its 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education. These comments concern Part 1 of the Brookings Report, “Predicting the Effect of the Common Core State Standards on Student Achievement,” especially those pertaining to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

A minor oddity is that this section of the report begins by describing the CCSS as “written by teams of curriculum specialists.” This statement has a footnote which gives this URL. But the information at the URL says no such thing and is contradicted by the list of members of the writing groups here at the same web site.

The Pipeline and the Trough

In the U.S., women currently get about 29% of PhDs in mathematics. But, in PhD-granting mathematics departments only 13% of the faculty members are women.

Does this mean that women are dropping out between PhD and first job? No!

Does this mean that women are not getting hired in proportion to their share of PhDs? No!

The evidence is discussed in this article, called “The Pipeline and the Trough.”

The 29% and 13% are examples of what I call (respectively) “pipeline” and “trough” statistics. Relative to the “PhD pipeline,” a collection of tenured and tenure-track positions (e.g., positions in a math department) is like a trough. Periodically, the PhD pipeline feeds a few new PhDs into the trough, and periodically a few faculty members leak out, due to death or retirement. In general, the composition of the trough is slow to change.

Half of Women Do Not Have “Female Brains”

. . . and half of men do not have “male brains,” according to research of Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues. See Table 1 of Goldenfeld, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2005, Empathizing and systemizing in males, females and autism, Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 2, 338–345. More details are below.

Session on the Participation of Girls and Women in Mathematics at the Joint Meetings

Background. This series of talks will focus on the participation of girls and women in mathematics, and what can hinder or enhance it. Some speakers have documented and analyzed the participation of women and girls, others are engaged in projects that enhance their participation.

Here are some relevant statistics. (For discussion of other frequently used statistics (some incorrect), see “Statistics about Women in STEM” and “Rumors of our Rarity are Greatly Exaggerated.”) In the United States, women are:

since 1980, over 42% of bachelors degree recipients in mathematics and statistics (National Center for Education Statistics 2009, details and discussion here)