Dr. Michelle Cardel is an obesity and nutrition scientist, registered dietitian, the Director of Global Clinical Research & Nutrition at WW International, Inc. (formerly Weight Watchers) and a faculty member at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine, where she is also an Associate Director for the Center for Integrative Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases. Her research is focused on three areas, assessing the effects of psychosocial factors, including low social status and food insecurity, on eating behavior and obesity-related disease, the development and implementation of effective healthy lifestyle interventions with a focus on underserved populations, and improving gender equity within academia.
Leslie McClure is Professor & Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Dr. McClure does work to try to understand disparities in health, particularly racial and geographic disparities, and the role that the environment plays in them. Her methodological expertise is in the design and analysis of multicenter trials, as well as issues of multiplicity in clinical trials. She is currently the Director of the Coordinating Center for the Diabetes LEAD Network, and the Director of the Data Coordinating Center for the Connecting the Dots: Autism Center of Excellence. In addition to her research, Dr. McClure is passionate about increasing diversity in the mathematical sciences and devotes considerable time to mentoring younger scientists. Dr. McClure also Chaired the ASA’s Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Assault, which led the way in developing policies surrounding sexual misconduct for professional organizations.
Episode Description
The tenure track process at American universities is a grind – one shaped by the old adage to “Publish or perish.” But if a junior faculty member manages to successfully navigate the process – publishing as expected, learning to manage a classroom, participating in service – then they’re rewarded with tenure. Tenure is an almost permanent employment relationship at universities that’s designed to give faculty the freedom – because of their job security to pursue any area of inquiry they feel drawn to. The problem, of course, is that not everyone makes it through that grind. A growing body of research shows that women, though they receive more than 50-percent of all PhDs, are not making it through the tenure track process in the same numbers. That’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guests Dr. Michelle Cardel and Leslie McClure.
+Full Transcript
Pennington
The tenure track process at American universities is a grind one shaped by the old adage to publish or perish. But if a junior faculty member manages to successfully navigate the process of publishing as expected, learning to manage a classroom, participating in service, then they're rewarded with tenure of 10 years, an almost permanent employment relationship at universities. that's designed to give faculty the freedom because of the job security to pursue any area of inquiry they feel drawn to. The problem, of course, is that not everyone makes it through that grind. A growing body of research shows that women, though they receive more than 50% of all PhDs, are not making it through the tenure track process in the same numbers. The experience of women in academia is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories where we explore the statistics, mine stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me in the studio, our panelists John Bailer, Chair of Miami statistics department and Richard Campbell, professor emeritus of media journalism and film. Our guests today are doctors Leslie McClure, and Michelle Cardel, co authors of a recent study examining the issue of women in academia. McClure is Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She does work to try to understand disparities in health, particularly racial and geographic disparities and the role that the environment plays in them. She is currently the Director of the coordinating center for the diabetes lead network, and the director of the data Coordinating Center for the connecting the dots Autism Center of Excellence. McClure’s also chaired the asase taskforce on sexual harassment and assault, which led the way in developing policies surrounding sexual misconduct for professional organizations. Cardel is an obesity and nutrition scientist, registered dietitian and Director of Global clinical research and nutrition at ww International Inc, formerly weightwatchers. And a faculty member at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where she's also an Associate Director for the Center for integrative cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Her research is focused on three areas, assessing the effects of psychosocial factors on eating behavior and obesity related disease, the development and implementation of effective healthy lifestyle interventions with a focus on underserved populations, and improving gender equity within academia. Leslie and Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today.
Michelle Cardel
Thank you for having us. We're thrilled to be here now.
Leslie McClure It’s our pleasure. Thanks so much.
Pennington
Just to get the conversation started. You were among a team of authors who published this article in the Journal of women's health that was examining the experience of women in academia. Could you talk a little bit about sort of why you felt compelled to do this work?
Cardel
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, in 2013, Sheryl Sandberg came onto the scene and really changed this like conversation around women in the workforce. With this, these two simple words lean in. And the Facebook CEOs best selling books basically sent the message that women can tackle gender inequity, in part by overcoming what she described as their internal barriers, such as lack of confidence, or hesitancy to negotiate that prevent women's rise to the top. And on one hand, encouraging women to lean in can sound empowering. But on the other hand, this message places much of the responsibility for achieving gender equity on women, and the book's legacy was captured in that lean mantra. But asking women to lean in reinforces the view that not only are women the solution to the problem, but even worse, that they brought it upon themselves. And so our goal was to bringing this group of academics from very diverse backgrounds, you know, we had students involved department chairs, president of a professional society and kind of everything in between involved in this writing group, we really wanted to capture in a comprehensive way the literature surrounding gender equity and academia, and then to provide actionable strategies and how universities and other academic institutions can implement policies and procedures that would lead to improving gender equality, rather than this kind of lean in mantra, asking women to be the ones that are the solution to the problem.
Bailer
You know, I was really impressed that just as you just mentioned the breadth of disciplines that were captured, and you're in the team that worked on this, you know, how did how did the band get together?
Cardel
So the band originates in a Facebook Messenger group. Basically, we have a group of women who some of us went to grad school together. And then we've invited friends along the way. So we kind of have this conglomerate of women across the country in different positions, somewhere in academia, some are in industry, but all at some point have been academics. And we're all moms. And we use this Facebook Messenger group as essentially a support network, a support system, and where we talk about, you know, the day to day life as an academic Mama, and through those conversations, because so many of us experienced no discrimination or injustice, it just kept coming up over and over and over again. And these are some of the most brilliant people I know, who worked so hard and are incredible scientists, and to see the experiences that they were having over and over again, really prompted us to say enough is enough and have to do something about this. And we have to do it in a way that's going to get the attention of academic institutions. And one way in which to do that is through publishing.
Campbell
So where did you get the title? First of all, turning chutes and ladders? Women in faculty, I played Chutes and Ladders as a kid. And I'm 72. So this is an old reference. And also talk about your takeaway, the takeaway, and your study that kind of main points, I think that that is some of the discoveries you made.
Cardel
Yeah, absolutely. So the term Chutes and Ladders, many of us play that game, I think it's a childhood favorite. But everyone understands the feeling of almost randomness that occurs when you pull that dude's card, for example, or the excitement when you pull that ladder based card. But in academia, it's not random, there's plenty of data to suggest that is very much driven, when you pull that shoots card, it's not a random act, it's a reflection, often of your gender identity, or of your sexual orientation, or your race, ethnicity, or your ability status or any intersection of of these or, you know, other marginalized communities. And so we really wanted to get that illustration of the chutes, you know, as barriers, but those ladders that are meant to reflect policies and procedures that could be implemented, that can actually lift marginalized communities within academia to a more equitable space.
Pennington
I love the visualization that these create because the shoots really are like, it's just shooting you out, right? And that, you know, once you're on it, there's no way to get off of it, right. And the idea of the ladder being like, you know, this thing that you're using to climb up so I do think that's really helpful, because I think as a, you know, I just went through the tenure process at my university successfully. I am still standing. But there are all these moments are like my father died in my second year, my mother lives with me, I have a high schooler who, while she's going to be a college freshman now who I like, you know, I am thankful she was a preteen and a teen because I have colleagues and friends who have much younger children, who it is a struggle to sort of get through to, like, manage life, and, and manage work. And I think that some of these shoots that you've identified around, like the work life balance, I think, are the ones that I think can be very hard to talk about as academic women, because we're supposed to pretend that we don't have that other part of our life. And so I think I really appreciated the way that you've broken this down to like, you know, around around, you know, the recruitment process around sort of the mentoring process, but then also the fact that there are shoots associated with your real life, that academic academics don't always sort of take into account.
McClure
Yeah, I guess, you know, I wanted to add that I wasn't part of the original band, you asked about how the band got together, and Michelle reached out to me, we had overlapped at a previous institution. And I jumped at the chance to be involved in this because as a more senior academic, one of my goals is to help ensure the success of young people, particularly young women, because of the challenges I went through having a young family and, and going through the tenure and promotion process and so so I agree Shall I responded immediately to Michelle, who was leading this effort and doing so so ably and impressively. So I was thrilled to be involved. And I feel like it's really important that this message gets to senior people, because we need to ensure that it's not just the young people who are going through that process who are making these changes, the change has to come from all levels. And so highlighting those chutes and ladders and highlighting the changes that can be made systematically at institutions is really important. And I was really thrilled to be a part of this.
Bailer
You know, I'm still mad at Richard, once again, for stealing the question I really wanted to ask you. So this is not uncommon, but I thought it was a wonderful framing of what you wanted to describe. And I thought it might be useful and helpful to listeners to give an example of one of the categories that you considered, I thought then, and then an example of, of a shoot and a ladder that applies in that category, because I think you were very comprehensive in review and literature and reflecting on it. So just start there, please.
Cardel
Sure. So I think a shoe that's very tangible, is one that is based on teaching evaluations. We see consistently that women are rated more harshly than their male counterparts in their teaching evaluations. So as an example, there was a study that was conducted by Emily Curzon at the University of Florida. And they took 136 students in a synchronous online class and split them into two groups. So half the group was told that they had a male teaching assistant, and the other half were told that they had a female teaching assistant. And the students in the online class saw the photos that were accompanying the BIOS for each TA and the BIOS were very similar. However, the same exact person fulfilled the teaching assistant duties for the whole class. And they used a text based interaction in an online learning platform. So the gender of the TA was never observed, beyond the photos that were provided in the profile pictures. So despite having the same person be the TA for both groups. At the end of the semester, the students score the male TA higher on course evaluations, while the female TA got five times as many negative reviews.
Pennington
Yeah, welcome to the world.
Bailer
So there's now talk about the ladder that caught that might be in response to that.
Cardel
Absolutely. So we see evaluation byesies, not just for gender, but for other traditionally marginalized groups. And so you know, an example of a ladder that we could have is we could apply, you know, and you all are biostatisticians, so you would know how to implement this in a much better way than I would. But basically, you can have a bias range to scores to correct for the up to 20% difference resulting from sexism and racism that we see in teaching evaluations. And this is something that could be implemented across the board systemically like like Leslie mentioned, you know, we really want to be implementing things that are policy based procedure based. And so that's an example of a ladder that we can implement that could be done across the board and really address these evaluation biases in a systematic manner.
McClure
And I guess I would add that we can also just get away from using these types of evaluation systems that rely so much on students who might have these implicit biases. And you know, some of the things that we've tried to do are things like having other faculty come in to review the teaching, rather than just relying on student evaluations, and de-emphasizing scores and the promotion and tenure process. focusing more on other metrics of teaching that might be
Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories, and today we're talking about women in academia with Drexel University's Leslie McClure, and University of Florida's Florida's Michelle Cardel.
Campbell
So one thing that really interested me about your study now, it also touched on things that, that I experienced in 20 years, being a department chair at two institutions and, and always sort of worrying about this problem of, of diversity. One thing that I think's happened and this is related to service, the service and there was always this pressure to make sure women were represented on committees did service work, and often, they took on a big burden, even though they were still working on tenure, and I always felt like why Really want this person on the committee, but I also know that it's going to take a lot of time. So how do you balance that, especially I think you're finding one of your findings was, you know, 51% of women are assistant professors and only 32% are full professors. That's sort of stunning today, I think. But I felt like as a department chair I was always wrestling with, I'd hire really good women. And then I felt like they got used up as assistant professors. And then when they get tenure, they're asked to do all this committee work. So part of it is, so we have more diverse committees. So could you address that?
Cardel
Absolutely. So I think you're spot on. So institutions, we really want them to tune in to how service loads are distributed. So the research shows that service allocations are up to one and a half times higher for women. And they're difficult for junior faculty to decline, you know, your department chair asking you to do something, you want to make your department chair happy.
Pennington
Like host a podcast like me.
Campbell
So I do have to say, Rosemary, in 20 years, Rosemary was my best hire. So I didn't make her do this podcast right away.
Cardel
Well, though, that one and a half times higher service load we see is driven by internal service, such as departmental committees or, or doing a podcast, rather than the more prestigious external service, such as that which occurs within a professional society. And so you know, it's important that promotion and tenure committees recognize service, but that department chairs, Dean's and others in leadership positions, assess the service loads, and ensure they are distributed equitably. I hear you that, you know, you want representation from women on those committees. But let's be mindful about where we are placing women on these committees? We certainly want women to be on a promotion and tenure committee, for example, do we really need women to be on the party planning Christmas party committee, you know, like think, you know, thinking about the what is going to be the benefit to to your faculty, and are there resources that you can allocate, you know, allocate to assist in some of the less prestigious service that isn't really going to benefit your faculty.
McClure
And I'll add that this is also part of the reason why having mentors who aren't just the department chairs is important, because we need faculty to be able to go to their mentors to get input about whether a committee or a service obligation is one they should agree to. And if you're a department chair, you know, as a department chair, I have a vested interest. And when I ask someone to do a service activity, I want them to say yes, because otherwise I need to keep asking other people. But if I'm their mentor, I have an inherent conflict of interest. I also add that this is not a unique situation for women also for people of color and people from other minorities populations, that the service burden has been shown to be quite a bit higher than for other other groups.
Pennington
Um, there's so much in this study that I think we could just continue talking about for the whole episode. And I'm sure stuff parts of it will come up. But I do want to ask about the situation we're all living through. Now. I mean, you are our guest virtually, although the three of us, Richard, John and I are actually in the studio for the first time, physically since COVID. But I do wonder how COVID is complicating all of this, because already, you know, women, and other you know, people of other minority backgrounds are feeling overburdened, and are really sort of struggling through this again, you know, I survived the 10 year process, largely because I also like you, Michelle had a secret Facebook group of women, I went to grad school who we are all moms and it's funny, right? Like, Facebook sort of is like telling us all Sheryl Sandberg is telling us we should lean in and we're all using her platform to try to figure out how we lead out like, I think that's a really interesting point. But, you know, I COVID does feel like it is complicated. And I wonder if you guys could sort of weigh in on what you're seeing about how the pandemic is sort of, you know, highlighting, that's not the right word, sort of,exacerbating?
McClure
Yeah, if I could start, I know Michelle's done some research in this and I will quickly yield to her but I do want to say that, that as a department chair, but I've seen as an Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, that this has been difficult for all faculty. And, you know, I do want to highlight that the challenges that we will talk About that women are facing have been especially felt by everyone, particularly faculty with small children. But the research has shown that it is definitely disproportionately impacting women. And I'll, I'll turn it over to Michelle, I know she's done some work in this area.
Cardel
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more, Leslie, that, you know, this is really this global pandemic that has highlighted existing inequities in our society across all levels. And it's certainly the case for health inequities among black and brown communities as well as, you know, early career researchers and especially female early career researchers. So studies are showing that women are disproportionately bearing the load of additional caregiving domestic and school responsibilities, while schools and childcare facilities and resources are limited during the pandemic. And, you know, I'm sitting here today with a four year old and a seven year old, and school starts next week. And I feel like I'm in the same exact place as I was a year ago of trying to decide, do I put my child out of school do I send them but, you know, just ensure that they're wearing a mask all the time, despite our governor having a mask, like making it illegal, basically, for people to have a mask mandate, and in the state of Florida, you know, as a parent of children who are too young to be vaccinated, I am terrified. But these are the issues that have continued for so many who are trying to maintain their children in virtual school to decrease the risk of further COVID-19 infection. And so with Dr. Rebecca capacity and Rashmi Jagz, we conducted a study evaluating academic productivity differences by gender and child age in STEM in STEM faculty. So basically, the two months before the pandemic started, we saw that, regardless of gender, work hours plummeted for those whose youngest child was between the ages of zero and five. So generally, you know, studies show academics work anywhere between on average, like 50 to 62 hours, depending on what study you're looking at, per week. And across the board, we saw, you know, about 50 hours per week was being conducted, following the pandemic, except in that group that had a child, their youngest child was between the ages of zero and five, and basically it equated to about 15 hours less per week. So they dropped to about 34 hours per week, of being able to work when they have those young children at home. And then importantly, we know that there's intersectional risk factors particularly magnified for black women and other women of color, you know, they're at the same time they're experiencing COVID-19, then the nation decides to have like a national reckoning with racism and discrimination after the murder of George Boyd. So there were so many things going on over the course of the last 18 months, that I think it's really difficult to pinpoint what exactly is driving the increase in stress and anxiety and PTSD symptomatology that we're seeing among folks, but very much in the data is clear that among parents with young children, having those young kids at home, while still trying to maintain a full time workload has been increasingly difficult.
McClure
Yeah, that's it. And there have been a lot of reports in the media about the decline in women in the workforce across the board. And so I think there's been some estimates that it will take 20 years to recover to where we were in 2019, and making progress with women in the workforce.
Bailer
But you know, I think that among that work time that you're just describing, there's all the time of how do you teach in a different modality than you've ever then you maybe ever learned in? And how do you do it effectively?
McClure
And how do you do it on almost a moment's notice, right? So, and I will tell you, as an academic leader, that I've really struggled with empathy. And you know, from my perspective, the most important thing in the faculty for the faculty in my department is that they're healthy and that their families are healthy, but then I have to turn around and say to them, but I need you to do this and I need you to teach your class in a different modality and I need you to, you know, follow these guidelines and do these extra things and it's in direct conflict with how I feel personally and so it's been really challenging to to really try to support them in a way that they need but at the same time, you know, we've I've been giving given mandates that we need to continue moving forward in our in our academic lives.
Bailer
Yeah, that's gonna be an interesting challenge. Whether rewards and promotion systems will be tuned to how the expectations have changed.
McClure
So many institutions are implementing COVID impact statements that allow faculty to give whatever background they want about the impact of COVID on their academic productivity at Drexel, we're allowing it for the next six years. So the institution is acknowledging that it's not just a one year or two year impact on one's career, but rather, it's got some longevity in terms of the impact.
Pennington
Leslie, before we wrap up, I do want to ask you about your work with the asase Task Force on sexual harassment and assault, which you know, is not entirely tangential to this conversation. But I do think it's important that we bring it up before we wrap up our conversation today.
McClure
Yeah, so without getting into too much background about how the task force evolved, there's a lot of evidence that women leave STEM fields at higher rates, and that some of that may be associated with, with harassment and assault that they experience in the workplace. And so the aasa Task Force spent a little bit over a year, thinking about how the American Statistical Association plays a role in supporting women and supporting a culture that is inclusive. And so we came up with a set of guidelines. So actually, for as a member, when you join, when you agree to come to a conference, you now have to agree to abide by a conduct policy that includes a number of behaviors that you will agree not to engage in. In addition, the aasa now has an ombudsperson that is responsible for receiving notification about instances of sexual misconduct and adjudicating them and then reporting back to the aasa. And then the aasa has an internal policy about how to manage those and what the consequences are. And so the taskforce didn't actually develop that aspect of the policy, the US as a board did, but we provided input as to what we felt was important. And I think that a survey of ASE members was done in 2019, although time kind of gets compressed and expanded. And our hope is that the aasa will repeat that to see if instances of harassment and misconduct and assault have decreased and I don't remember exact numbers, but suffice it to say that any instances of assault and harassment are too many. And there were substantial numbers of of HSA members who reported being sexually harassed or or being treated differently on the basis of gender during during an HSA sponsored activity,
Pennington
Well, thank you both so much for being here today. There is one one line in this study that you guys produce that I do want to bring up as we wrap up, where you and your authors write gender, gender diversity among leadership has been positively correlated with profits, productivity and creativity. And I wonder if in an attempt to get people to do the right thing, putting pressure on the money might be a way to sort of work towards equity, as we sort of tried to fix everything else that needs fixing.
Cardel
Money Talks.
Pennington
Thank you both so much for being here today.
McClure
Well, thanks so much for having us. And thanks to Michelle for really leading this effort and doing it with such enthusiasm and energy. It's been great.
Cardel
We were just grateful to have had you join Leslie. You've made a huge impact on where we went with this work. So thank you for leadership and for always being such an advocate for women and other traditionally marginalized communities. It's great to see senior scientists taking that role.
Pennington
Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the program, Send your email to StatsandStories@Miami.Oh.edu or check us out at StatsandStories.net and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.