Progress since NSF ADVANCE ESCALATE Project

In 2010, Wayne State University (WSU), an urban campus in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, employed 204 tenured and tenure-track (T/TT) faculty in STEM disciplines. At that time, women comprised just under 14% of these faculty overall. To address this gender inequity, WSU worked to diversify its STEM faculty through increased oversight of regular search procedures by the WSU Equal Employment Opportunity Office and by workshops that stressed the value of diversity and the risks of implicit bias. These efforts largely built off career development and climate change initiatives from WSU’s NSF SSE-ADVANCE PAID (2006 – 2009) Program led by Dr. Ece Yaprak, a woman STEM faculty member.

The result has been a steady, annual increase in the percentage of women in WSU’s STEM faculty since 2010, rising to 20% in 2018 (figure 1A). From an intersectional perspective, only 2.6% of STEM faculty are underrepresented minority women (as of 2019). While there have been improvements in increasing these numbers and strengthening pathways for career success, clearly boosting the success and career satisfaction of women faculty of all backgrounds and at all levels remains a priority at WSU.

“How, might you ask, can someone who loves their job feel burnout? Well, that is how I feel right now.”

Anonymous

WSU has developed mentoring programs and other initiatives to retain faculty and ensure their success. Outcomes include retention rates of 78% (women) and 65% (men) in 2017 for 29 tenure-track assistant and associate professors (9 women and 20 men) hired in STEM between 2009 and 2011. Of those retained in this cohort, 100% of the women and 92% of the men have been promoted. However, we have observed that women are disproportionately stagnated at the associate rank when compared to their male peers (Figure 1B).

[It] was a very bitter pill to swallow when I found out that certain faculty in my unit taught half-filled classes AND had a full course release the entire time leading up to tenure. I lost sleep and participating in my children’s lives for 6 years. This type of inequality needs to stop.

Anonymous

2016 campus-wide climate study

Aligning with WSU’s 2016-2021 Strategic Plan, institutional leadership dedicated resources to understanding the unique intersectional experiences of its employees. In 2016, WSU tasked a special committee to design and administer a campus-wide climate study. This study included an online survey meant to assess previously identified key areas of interest to provide future committees and initiatives with baseline data regarding areas in need of improvement. Of the tenure-track STEM faculty respondents (n=72), 40% self-identified as female, 60% self-identified as male.

Additionally, STEM faculty members participated in a support survey in the fall of 2017 (n=141) that focused on experiences with research, teaching, and professional development. Both, the climate survey and 2017 faculty support survey, included sections for commentary. Information from these surveys was further supported by a review of institutional data related to pay, promotion, and workload inequities among tenure-track STEM faculty conducted by a provost’s office-sponsored committee.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Anonymous

Several notable themes related to the experiences of women among STEM faculty emerged from the data review. The three most prominent barriers identified were (1) unfair treatment in the workplace, coupled with toxic environments and feelings of isolation; (2) uneven realities of balancing work/family/life responsibilities; and (3) unequal workload burdens. Trends included women reporting less support for their research, lower satisfaction with mentorship, and less support for future career advancement. Qualitative data from the support survey suggested women were less likely to advance in their careers because of high service workloads coupled with low rewards; and women in some departments face inequities in course loads and experience notable degrees of harassment and bullying.

The issues of advancement and rewards were corroborated by internal merit and survey data that both show women faculty members were, on average, providing more service than men. Institutional data also showed that women received higher merit ratings than men but have lower salaries and were underrepresented at the full professor rank. Data from the climate study corroborated commentary regarding toxic working conditions, revealing that a significant percentage of women reported being exposed to bullying (53%) and microaggressions (34%). While some of these experiences were reported by women across all disciplines, they were exacerbated for women STEM faculty partly because of the compounding factor of isolation. The impact of isolation was particularly profound for women STEM faculty from typically underrepresented racial identities.

2017 faculty support survey

Data from a WSU 2017 faculty support survey corroborate these gendered experiences. According to the STEM faculty survey results, men were more likely to strongly agree (19%) that they felt they were supported by WSU for their research than women (11%). Men (21%) were also likely to strongly agree they were satisfied with the mentoring they had received compared to women (13%).

Additionally, women were less likely (9%) than men (21%) to feel they have been supported for their professional development. That women felt less supported for their career advancement may be partly explained by their sense of workload inequities. As one woman stated:“[It] was a very bitter pill to swallow when I found out that certain faculty in my unit taught half-filled classes and had a full course release the entire time leading up to tenure. I lost sleep and participating in my children’s lives for six years. This type of inequality needs to stop.”