Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies with Kelly Bedard

In many highly educated professions, we see a pattern in which the number of female workers drops off over time, as does the share of women in the top earners cohort. Many of these professional tracks have an “up-or-out” quality, like making partner at a law firm or earning tenure at a university. This phenomenon is consistent with women entering lower-income fields or leaving them altogether: what mechanism might explain this effect, and what other implications might this pattern have? The final WAPPP seminar of the semester featured Kelly Bedard, Department Chair and Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, describing the results of a study on tenure clock-stopping policies in major university economics departments.

Over the last few decades, many universities have instituted “clock-stopping policies” for tenure. If a young academic has a child before receiving tenure, they may have an extra year before their tenure evaluation – rather than the usual six years to tenure, a new parent could have seven years of work evaluated, with their tenure clock stopped for one year.  Having children is a productivity shock that, though these policies, is taken into account in gauging lifetime productivity.

These clock-stopping policies come in two-flavors: in early iterations, only women were eligible for clock-stopping; more recent policies are gender neutral, such that anyone who has a child can stop their clock. Some universities started with a female-only policy and then switched to gender-neutral. Professor Bedard’s research asks: what are the distributional consequences of these policies? How might these policies change the way people think about publishing and fertility strategies?

The simple story would be to consider two individuals, Person A and Person B, going up for tenure. Person A, a woman, has a child, stops her clock, and does no research for a year. Person B, a man, has a child, stops his clock, but does not change anything about his productivity during that year. Under a gender-neutral clock-stopping policy, Person A was not hurt in her tenure evaluation—her productivity was the same in the other years, even with a year of no research. This is precisely what the policy was designed to do, to ensure that faculty who take parental leave are not harmed in their tenure evaluations by their decision to do so. Person B, however, benefited from the policy, with an additional year to write papers that might factor into his tenure decision. Other faculty who did not have children and did not stop their clocks would be just as unaffected as Person A. This benefit to Person B, while the policy is net neutral for everyone else, is something of an odd result – this is not what the policy was designed to do.

If tenure decisions are imperfect – that is, not made strictly on the basis of the six-year timeline, excluding any time in which the clock was stopped – Person B is now pushing up the bar for tenure with his additional year of productivity. Person B will still be able to achieve tenure, but Person A and anyone who has not had a child will have a more difficult time getting over that threshold. This gender-neutral clock-stopping policy therefore has the possibility for some odd distributional consequences, which may be compounded by the additional productivity costs of being pregnant or departmental variation in teaching relief or other parental leave policies.

In addition to tenure decisions, these policies may also affect publishing decisions. Economists tend to focus on the top five journals, which each have a long lag in time to publication. These journals have a low likelihood of acceptance, but a high return if one’s article is published. Lower-ranked journals have a higher likelihood, but a lower return. Clock stopping adds an additional time period to this publishing game – with only one time period, a researcher might decide to send a manuscript to a lower-ranked journal for the added likelihood of publication. Without a top-five journal article, they may not receive tenure at their current institution, but likely will somewhere else. With two time periods, faculty are incentivized to send manuscripts first to the top-ranked journals; if the manuscript is rejected, it could always be sent to a lower-ranked journal in the second time period. If this strategy works, there will be obvious gains to those who stop their clocks versus those who don’t.

There are multiple avenues through which this effect could be occurring: clock-stopping could change an individual’s number of papers and where they are published and could affect tenure decisions and ultimately fertility decisions, which themselves may have publishing or productivity effects.

To test these possibilities, Professor Bedard assembled two unique datasets, one of the clock-stopping policies for each of the top 50 economics departments, as well as an exhaustive list of all assistant professors from 1980-2010. Using course catalogs, online CVs, and LinkedIn, she assembled a dataset of 1600 assistant professors who started their careers at a top 50 economics department who published at least two papers in eight years, along with their complete job histories and publication records.

The first considered metric was probability that an individual would get tenure at the school at which they started their career. In general, tenuring rates are fairly flat for both men and women, though the average rates are higher for men. What happens with the introduction of clock-stopping policies? Accounting for a series of controls, including flexible gender-specific time dummies and gender-specific university fixed effects, female-only clock-stopping policies have almost no effect on tenuring rates. However, gender-neutral clock-stopping policies have an enormous effect: with a gender-neutral clock-stopping policy, male tenure rates rise by 18 percentage points, and female tenure rates fall by 19 percentage points.

What is the mechanism for this effect? Fortunately, these clock-stopping policies do not impact the likelihood of getting tenure somewhere; instead, women seem to be moving and getting tenure at schools other than where they start. Using the complete job histories, Professor Bedard suggests that, conditional on getting tenure somewhere, once clock-stopping policies enter into place, fewer female faculty move to lower-ranked departments. While there is very little upward movement, this means that female faculty are more likely to move laterally, receiving tenure at a school ranked similarly to the one at which they started.

What are the effects of these policies on publishing? Over the first seven years of their careers, 40-50% of female faculty are not publishing in the top five journals, and those that do publish on average one article. Male faculty are somewhat more likely to publish in the top five journals, but still not to a significant degree. Comparing schools with clock-stopping policies (of either flavor) versus those without, over time female faculty at schools with clock-stopping experience, on average, a drop in publishing. By contrast, men experience a consistent increase in publishing success, such that men have, on average, half a publication more in a top 5 journal. Given that most people only publish one article in a top five journal, clock-stopping has a big effect for men with major impacts for publishing success.

The first version of Professor Bedard’s paper did not contain any analysis on fertility, but so many people wanted to know that she added an additional section. One major difficulty of studying effects on fertility is acquiring the data: most of the collected data is administrative, and few faculty report whether they have children on their CVs. Instead, Professor Bedard sent emails to each of the faculty members for which she had emails – around 85-90% of the dataset – asking whether the individual had children and, if so, in what year the children were born. The response rate (around 65%) was surprisingly high, but of course was entirely non-random; those who had left the profession were unlikely to respond, while those at higher-ranked schools were far more likely to respond. At schools with a gender-neutral clock-stopping policy, about 56% of pre-tenure faculty have a child, compared to 46% of those without a gender-neutral clock-stopping policy. Based on these data, it appears that clock-stopping does not change total fertility, but may change the timing of fertility.

These results for tenure, publishing, and fertility illuminate the side effects of clock-stopping policies and how they might eliminate burdens for women but confer additional benefits on men.

Paradoxes in Transformations in Higher Education: Comparative EU-US Perspectives with Kathrin Zippel

How can global university reform help us design institutional change to promote gender equality in academia? This week’s WAPPP seminar featured a comparative EU-US study by Kathrin Zippel, Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University and former WAPPP Resident Fellow for AY2016.

The “leaky pipeline” problem is a familiar one—at every level of academia, fewer and fewer women ascend the ranks. However, there have been broad transformations in academia that may plug these leaks and promote greater gender equality. In particular, Professor Zippel points to the globalization of scientific knowledge and academic neo-liberalism, characterized by global competition of knowledge economies, constellations of state-market relations, and an increase in managerialism within universities. These transformations change the way academia operates as an industry and thereby changes the conditions for gender inequality. Gender inequality is now seen as not having the luxury of excluding half the population, but we should instead be thinking of gender equality as a mechanism to make academia better.

Professor Zippel outlines four main approaches to promote gender equality in academia:

1. Fixing women – past interventions such as FP5 in the EU and fellowships in the US
2. Fixing institutions – current interventions, including EU FP7 structural change projects and the US NSF ADVANCE program, which provides grants to involve more women in STEM and improve the hiring, retention, and promotion of women in academia 
3. Fixing knowledge – in the EU, FP Horizon 2020 now asks for gender dimensions in research; NIH grants in the US promote including more women in clinical trials
4. Fixing problems – as part of Horizon 2020, the EU includes gender equality as part of “responsible research and innovation.” In the US, researchers have to explain how their findings will impact broader society, including gender equality

Interventions like NSF ADVANCE grants contain positive ingredients for change, according to Professor Zippel. The grant program encourages institutional self-reflexivity, creates statistical consciousness-raising in requiring data on women in science, and creates communities for change by building gender and diversity competences.

Common Challenges in Promoting Gender Equality in Higher Education

Managerialism
The increase in academic bureaucracy may be a boon for female academics. If departments exhibit gender bias or operate as “old boys' clubs,” women may find new allies in deans and provosts.

Redefining Excellence
We put a great deal of faith in “objective” measure of quality, but processes that look meritocratic can still contain bias. Even transparent evaluations are created in a social and political context – someone has to decide which journals are most prestigious and what “good” academic work looks like. We’re seeing a continuing trend of devaluing “feminine qualities.” The work that women do is either invisible or valued less in ranking systems.  Universities need to consider the “soft” and “hard” aspects that are critical to running the institution and to establish a clear link between gender equality and excellence.

Mobilizing the “Majority”
Why do we need to mobilize the majority? Because they’re the ones in power! Family policies and fair evaluations also benefit men in academia. To promote gender equality, we must think about mobilizing allies, building common ground, and demonstrating how dangerous biased metrics can be for all of us.

Involving Leadership
Gender equality shouldn’t be imposed from the outside, but instead integrated into the way academics think and evaluate each other. Instead of bringing in consultants to instruct faculty, Professor Zippel says, have senior professors instruct each other. Using their status within the institution lends credence to the value of gender equality.

Multiple Inequalities
As tenure track positions have dissipated, more and more academics have been stuck in temporary adjunct roles. These are particularly a trap for women; in an adjunct role, it can be more difficult to get enough publications and grants to establish oneself. The project to promote gender equality in universities tends to ignore these structural issues, focusing instead on how to make women more competitive with their male colleagues. However, gender is not the only inequality that academia perpetuates, and we need to be very intentional about the intersectional aspects at play. Rather than complaining about the pool of diverse candidates being too small, institutions should enact structural reforms to help create that pool.

Globalization of Academia
The increasing globalization of academia has given rise to “glass fences,” the international equivalent of glass ceilings. Women are finding it increasingly difficult to move laterally between countries because global science is also a gendered organization. However, there is a positive development in this space, which Professor Zippel refers to the “.edu bonus.” Because US science is seen as the global “gold standard,” when academics receive training in the US, that privilege travels with them. This higher status opens doors, particularly for women and other marginalized groups, and helps to overcome the glass fences problem. This is particularly important because moving laterally can help with rising vertically, given how important international collaborations are in science. These discoveries raise important questions about how we can mainstream gender into internationalization strategies and integrate global aspects into academic careers.

Promising Future Steps

How can we change university structures and cultures to allow men, women, and gender non-conforming individuals to enjoy and succeed in learning and discovery? External pressures on universities, from funding agencies, professional associations, and networks of university and research institution leaders, may help to promote gender equality. Global efforts like International Gender Summits bring together stakeholders to think about how to promote gender equality as a global movement. According to Professor Zippel, the most fruitful approach will be to combine examining gender inequalities in university structures and including a gender dimension in future research. We can embed gender in institutional logics – universities are already concerned with competition for rankings. Making gender equality a component of this competition can alter the norms of research communities and promote greater equality in academia.

Professor Zippel’s forthcoming book “Women in Global Science: Advancing Academic Careers through International Collaboration” will be available in February 2017.

The responsibilities of being a "Token" minority

Lauren Lyons, a Masters in Public Policy alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School, is a rocket scientist (literally, she used to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab) and a space and technology policy expert. An engineering graduate of Princeton university, Lauren serves on the UN's Space Generation Advisory Council, and conducts Space exploration public outreach.

She just wrote an absolutely stunning blog post about being a Black woman in elite academic and professional situations in America. Being even a minority in a room is a major step towards breaking glass ceilings; accordingly it can come with certain responsibilities---but also pain and frustrations.

Lauren was kind enough to let us feature that brilliant piece here. Please read the whole thing...

The Curious Conundrum of the Code-Switching Tokenized Teacher

A student raises her hand in a political science lecture, and confidently proclaims: “If people are to be treated equally under the law, then policies that single out minorities for special advantages are not only unfair and unnecessary, but are unconstitutional. President Obama is evidence that class is what determines your success in America, not race.”

People of color who have attended elite academic institutions might be able to identify with the following, oft reflexed, 3-step stream of consciousness:

Step 1: Jaw drops reactively in forming of the classic “WTF?” face.

Step 2: Calm down. Quickly straighten out the “WTF?” face, and try to appear nonplussed.

Step 3: Decision point:

a) Sit quietly and allow this person—and whomever in this room of 150 students agrees with her—to graduate from here actually believing this, be elected into Congress (because at this school, it really is a possibility), and then pass laws that curtail civil rights legislation, all while disappointing my ancestors who would have given anything for such a teaching moment on inequality and social justice, or 

 b) Take on the responsibility yet again, as the lone voice of color, to explain the “minority perspective,” subject myself to repeated Q&A, speak on behalf of every Black, Hispanic, and Native American kid who knows for certain that this country is in no way post-racial, deal with the fallout of receiving emails from classmates wanting to discuss it further a.k.a. try to prove me wrong and deny my experience, and risk now being forever marginalized at the resident thought leader on the Black experience even though my field of study is Science and Technology Policy.

Phew.

No, this is not an exaggeration. And as you can probably imagine, this thought process – although it occurs in the mere blink of an eye – is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting. And it seems that the more I find myself within elite academic, business, and social arenas where minority perspectives are vastly underrepresented, the more I find myself facing the Curious Conundrum of the Code-Switching Token Teacher. Allow me to unpack that a little bit... 

To continue reading the full article, please visit Lauren's blog: http://www.laurly.com/post/60174788163/the-curious-conundrum-of-the-code-switching-tokenized

Professors Are Biased Too

An ordinary e-mail once caught the eye of Modupe Akinola,Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. It was from a prospective Ph.D. student, an African-American woman, asking for a meeting.

Dr. Akinola wondered: “Would I have reacted differently if this was from a man? Would it make a difference if the request was for today and not next week?” She joined with colleagues Katherine Milkman and DollyChugh to turn these questions into research questions in a field experiment measuring discrimination in academia.

The creative and elaborate experiment started with putting together a representative sample of over 6,500 faculty members from 260 universities. The team used publicly available demographic information on professors to ensure a good sample. The researchers then created a few prospective Ph.D. students. The names of these imaginary students were tested and proved to be easily recognizable as either male or female and as Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese.

At 8:00 am on a Monday, e-mails from Brad Andersons, Latoya Browns and 18 others went out to unsuspecting subjects, asking to meet “today” in half the cases and “next Monday” in the other half. The research team was impressed by how quickly most faculty wrote back and how often they agreed to meet, but when and with whom they agreed to meet was more interesting.

One would think academia, with its affirmative action and enlightened world views, might be a post-racial, post-gender sphere. As it turns out – not so much, especially not when there is time to think about it.

In the now condition, Akinola, Milkman and Chugh found no significant difference between number of responses to white males and to others, but when the request was for later, white men received both more responses and more meeting acceptances than any other prospective students. The white men fared better than all other racial categories across almost all disciplines. The effect remained even when the race or gender of faculty and student matched.

According to construal level theory (CLT) immediate events demand concrete reasoning focused on feasibility, whereas decisions about distant events trigger abstract thinking and a focus on desirability of the event. Thus, future events create more room for unconscious stereotypes and biases to enter the decision-making process. In this study, for instance, the responses received to the “now” requests systematically displayed a focus on “how,” whereas the “later” e-mails were more likely to be answered with a request for credentials or more information – a “why” response.

The point of this experiment and other studies that spotlight the influence of stereotypes and biases on consequential decisions is not to call people racist or sexist. The point is to come up with ways to address the biases and to improve minority outcomes. For instance, referring all prospective students to the Ph.D. program coordinator would take the burden off individual professors and ensure that all students get their questions answered. This is just one option that an experiment like this might bring up for discussion.

Unfortunately, some faculty did not take kindly to the experiment. When debriefed and told that they had been used in a study of bias, many expressed outrage and demanded to speak with the Institutional Review Board.

To me, their reaction suggests the thorny subjects of race and gender are not studied enough in academia. Perhaps academia, more so than other spheres, makes it taboo to have biases, but shaming does not make biases go away! Nobody wants to be called a racist or sexist, not even a little bit, but simply feeling guilty is not productive. We can structure decision-making in ways that level the playing field, and we need creative researchers like Akinola, Milkman and Chugh to make that happen.

Anya Malkov is an MPP2 at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.