Women in Media

[firstfrost]

This article is really bugging me:

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/06/02/the_write_time/

It's about women getting their PhDs while having children. Which is a fine thign to write about, and there are some interesting points in the article. The thing that is bugging me is that as far as I can tell, the article assumes that having children is *entirely* a woman thing.

I'm sure that women are still the ones doing the majority of the child-rearing. But I think that's a different statement than something like "Doctoral candidates are more likely to have babies these days for the simple reason that women make up a greater percentage of doctorate recipients than they did 30 years ago" which seems to take as a logical given the fact that having babies is something that women have to deal with and men do not.

In addition, I honestly cannot tell if the article is about three single mothers pursuing PhDs. There is absolutely no mention of a father, or any other partner, anywhere in the article, but neither is there a mention of a lack of one. I don't want to suggest that the idea of raising a child on one's own is what I object to, but I can't tell whether that's what they're doing, or if that's just what the article assumes that they're doing because the fathers couldn't possibly be relevant to the subject.

Comments

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Wow, 49% PhDs are women? That is really surprising to me. I bet there is a *huge* variance given how few women there are in my field.

The idea that children only intersect with women, not men bugs me too. I have also heard that sometimes the fact that you are a woman and want to have a family works against you in academia, whereas if you are a man, starting a family is seen as a stablizing and good influence. if you are a woman, starting a family makes the employers concerned about your dedication to the job. (I think this may have been another article I was reading a year ago or something.)

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

My department (immunology) at Tufts was probably more women grad students than men; bio in general seems to have a higher density of women (thus leading to the whole "it's a soft science, not a hard science, so women like it better" claim...)

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Not just in academia, it's true in industry too, that marrying and having children increases men's status but lowers women's.

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

As a manager in industry, I don't really notice that perception. Both men and women are less likely to work extra hours when they have children. I don't see any men getting promotions or increased pay because they have children.

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

I have definitely noticed that married men, especially with children, get preferential treatment with respect to not being expected to work extra outside of normal hours. I don't think it hurts their promotion prospects the way an unmarried man's refusing such extra work would.

That said, I have seen raised eyebrows when child care responsibilities impact men's work within normal working hours.

I have not noticed that women are treated differently than men in these respects, but I probably don't have enough of a sample to draw real conclusions.