It’s Cheaper to Keep Her: Business Case for Diversity, Legal Issues, Explicit and Implicit Biases

1. It’s Cheaper to Keep Her: Business Case for Diversity, Legal Issues, Explicit and Implicit Biases Joan C. Williams Distinguished Professor of Law Director, Center for WorkLife Law University of California, Hastings College of the Law Washington State University August 27, 2010

2. Overview • 1st: Building a department in an era of tight budgets • 2nd: Controlling risk • 3rd: Patterns of gender bias • 4th: Resources

3. Building a department in an era of tight budgets

4. Tight budgets • Institutional expenditures on research per professor > tripled since 1970 • During same era, state support declined sharply • One way to save money is to reduce costs; many “inevitable” costs are not inevitable… Sources:RG Ehrenberg, JM Rizzo, GH Jakubson (2003). “Who Bears the Growing Cost of Science at Universities?” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 9627. Mark F. Smith, Growing Expenses, Shrinking Resources: The States and Higher Education, Academe, (July-August, 2004); Dennis Jones, “State Shortfalls Projected to Continue Despite Economic Gains”, The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Policy Alert, February 2006 at 1

5. Best-practice programs enhance your ability to build your department in an era of tight budgets

6. High costs of attrition • Losing people costs hard cash • Departmental climate affects intentions to quit

7. Hiring people costs money • Average start-up costs (R-1) • Physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering • $390,237 – 489,000 • Senior science faculty • $700,000 - $1.442 million • Low end: $47,000 start-up package at state university

8. Lost grants • When someone leaves, so do her grants • “It can take 10 years for a new faculty member in science or engineering to develop enough of a positive revenue stream from grants to recoup start-up costs.” • National Academy of Science

9. Lost faculty productivity • How much time do you spend on each search? • One dean estimated she spends 2 full week reviewing applications for each search • Estimated that average search committee member spends 25 – 40 hours per search • Steep cost in terms of faculty productivity

10. High costs of churn and burn • Departments with a chilly climate for women incur these costs over and over again • So do departments without effective implementation of work-life policies

11. Outdated workplaces • Examining workplace ideals • Describe a real go getter • Who does this describe?

12. Workplace-workforce mismatch • 95% of U.S. mothers work <50 hours/week • Average female professor works 52 hours/week • Women earn 30% of Ph.D’s in STEM • What % of faculty in your department? • What % full professors?

13. Mismatch affects men, too • Sharp increase in number of younger men expect to play a much larger role in children’s lives • do not have non-employed trailing wives • 25% of professors here have spouses employed by university • 1/3 of academics – men as well as women – have considered leaving for other jobs

14. Opportunity missed: recruitment • “If you don’t have a department that appeals to women, you will limit your talent pool and end up with a lesser candidate.” • Chancellor George Blumenthal University of California at Santa Cruz

15. The best-practice edge • Some departments use best-practice policies to gain an edge in recruiting and retention • Individuals and couples are looking for departments that enable them to meet their family as well as their career needs

16. Risk management in an era of tight budgets

17. Classic tenure suits • Classic litigation against a university: tenure suit based on gender discrimination • Hard to win • Academic deference doctrine • Glass ceiling bias often is subtle

18. Family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) 400% increase 80 with verdicts or settlements over $100,000 20 over $1 million Before recent $250 million class action verdict Growth in potential liability

19. Meet FReD • Maternal wall • “Incompatible with the responsibilities of a full-time academician”($500,000 reported tentative settlement) • Chilly climate for fathers • “My request for family leave was met with a sneering denial by my chair.” • Gender bias – against men as well as women

20. Leave issues • >1/3 of academic institutions surveyed had leave policies that were likely or definitely noncompliant (Thornton, 2003) • Examples • Requiring mothers to find their own replacements in order to take leave • Treating mothers differently than other leave-takers

21. Interference and retaliation • Discouraging anyone from taking legally protected leave • Many reports in the sciences • Penalizing anyone from taking leave • Penalizing anyone for taking advantage of university policies • Stop the clock

22. Risk management • Mishandling work/family issues has become a risk management concern Business Insurance, 2006) • Claims can be expensive even when they are settled • $110,000 (public) • Plaintiffs > likely to win FRD suits

23. Patterns of gender bias

24. Four basic patterns • Maternal wall • Prove it again • The tightrope • Gender wars

25. Maternal wall

26. Maternal wall • Strongest bias • Matched resume study • 79% < likely to be hired • 100% < likely to be promoted • Offered ave. $11,000 < in salary • Held to higher performance and punctuality standards

27. Prescriptive bias • Hostile prescriptive bias • member of tenure committee told professor to stop worrying about tenure – just go home & have more babies • Benevolent prescriptive bias Source: Schneider, 2000

28. Descriptive bias • Role incongruity • “as a mother of two infants, she had responsibilities that were incompatible with those of a full-time academician” (reported settlement: $495,000)

29. Descriptive bias • Attribution bias • An absent man is giving a paper; an absent women is with her children • Leniency bias • Professor received stellar reviews until she had children; then her office hours (but no one else’s) scrutinized

30. Bias avoidance • Only 1/3 of nonmothers on tenure track ever have children • “At my campus, most women are afraid to admit that they even have children” Sources: Drago & Colbeck; Mason & Goulden; Toolkit

31. Chilly climate for fathers • “Fathers” held to lower performance and punctuality standards • Men who take time off for family care—lower rewards and performance evaluations • “My request for family leave was met with a sneering denial by my chair.”

32. Prove it again

33. Prove it again • Only 37.5% of FT faculty are women • Nearly 80% of full professors are men • The higher the status of the institution, the lower the % of women • Lack of fit • Men seem to fit; women don’t Source: Heilman

34. General principle • Stereotype-affirming information tends to be noticed, remembered and used in analyzing causation • He’s skilled, she’s lucky • Sources: Heilman, Krieger

35. Achievement v. potential • Men tend to be judged on potential; women strictly on their achievements • He’s a “nascent scholar…soon to blossom”; she lacks publications Source: Lam 1991

36. Attribution bias • “A man takes a big risk and makes a mistake, that’s considered risky, but he’s taking a chance; a woman does it, then it’s just a big mistake.” Source: Focus groups

37. Recall bias • Women’s mistakes are noticed more, and remembered longer “My achievements have been underplayed and my faults exaggerated greatly in comparison to my male colleagues.” Source: Lunbeck

38. Leniency bias • Objective rules applied leniently to men but rigidly to women • “You follow the same path in doing a particular task as the men that you’ve seen do it, and then you get slapped on the wrist…I just saw 5 men do it…[in] the past 6 months!”

39. Studies • Dept. chairs given identical ♀ & ♂ CVs • Significantly more likely to hire man as associate, women as assistant, professor • Recommendation letters • For men: “brilliant and original” • For women: “reliable, responsible, meticulous” • Polarized evaluations Sources: Wilson, 2004; Toolkit, 2007

40. The tightrope

41. The tightrope “To get ahead here [at MIT], you have to be so aggressive. But if women are too aggressive they’re ostracized…and if they’re not aggressive enough they have to do twice the work.” Do women need to choose between being liked but not respected…or respected but not liked? Sources: Nedis, Glick & Fiske

42. Liked but not respected • Warm • Considerate • Nice Source: Bettis & Adams [under review]

43. Liked but not respected • Mother, princess, pet: Are women who play stereotypically feminine roles taken into the in-group, while other are stigmatized? • Women in some departments expected to be “restrained and endlessly supportive” Source: Eagly; Deaux

44. Liked but not respected • I’d been doing this committee and…I said it’s time for somebody else to do it. They just said, “Oh boy well there just isn’t anybody else I can ask because, you know well there’s so-and-so but he’s writing a book, I can’t ask.” I said, “He’s writing a book? I’m writing a book! How come his book counts more?” Source: Focus groups

45. Liked but not respected • “I think the undergraduates are still full of sexist stuff….They expect the women teachers to be kinder and warmer and fuzzier and let them take a make-up even if they don’t have a good enough reason…Students expect their female instructors to be like their mother and forgive everything...” Source: Focus groups

46. Respected but not liked • Direct • Outspoken • Assertive • Competitive

47. Respected but not liked • “So if you’re stern …or you say no, then the immediate reaction is to call that woman a bitch, fight? If you’re a man, it’s just a no.” • “’Well, you toasted that guy! You were aggressive!’ And they felt like I has gone a little bit too far.’” Sources: Focus groups; Bettis & Adams [under review]

48. Respected but not liked • “I remember…finally…disagreeing with people and realizing that people found that offensive sometimes. And that’s gotten worse.” • “You think highly of yourself, don’t you?” Sources: Bettis & Adams [under review]; confidential

49. Respected but not liked • “A male colleague wrote a hostile, nasty e-mail to me and copied all the faculty members in my department. He was not reprimanded. When I wrote an e-mail asking a colleague about data errors in a report, my department head read my message to the assembled faculty and said she would not tolerate such hostility in the workplace.” • “When men assert themselves, it’s quirky, funny or amusing. When a woman does it, it’s a temper.” Sources: Focus groups, Bettis & Adams [under review]

50. Gender wars