Well then academia should change to be a place where you can work part-time and care for a family. Why it is so hard to believe that women want to work hard and do well at work, just like men? They also want to have a family. I just don't think these things should be mutually exclusive. I think academia is exactly what a lot of women want, and it has to wake up and facilitate women to have both a career and motherhood.[/quote]

But why is it so hard for people to understand that this has nothing to do with gender? As a professor, your publication record will always depend on the research output of the people working in your group. Your funding will always depend on your publication record. The prestige of your university will always be depending on the research output of your scientists. Why is it so hard to conclude that these institutions will always prefer and always hire employees that work a lot and thus, are not necessarily better scientist, but have a huge advantage? How is that ever going to change without a huge change of academia in general, which would affect almost everything. I don't believe that this will come any soon and I don't believe that countries all over the world would agree and implement such major changes together (if not together, than some countries will have advantages/disadvantages, you see that also for the introduction of fees for financial transactions. Either everybody does it or nobody does is)

What makes the whole issue worse is the massive excess supply of labor in academia. You could introduce changes if it was hard to find people with the expertise and willing to work at a university but the opposite is the case. People who receive 50 applications will probably always favor the woman that won't cause inconvenience such as sick child, parental leave or part-time work over the type of woman who seems to be a family person and seems to not focus 100% of her energy on her research. If they are equally qualified there is simply no reason to do differently.

Same is true for men. I said it before : Try to work part-time as a man or try to get parental leave and you will experience the same as women do. Even though its justified by law and you are allowed to take it, most bosses get pissed and let you know that they are pissed because you are slowing their research down regardless of the bosses' gender.


PS : A possibility would be maybe that you introduce a law in all country that restricts working hours in academia to, let's say 45 hours. No professor, lecturer, Post doc or PhD is allowed to work more than that, otherwise will face certain consequences. As long as people can work as long as they want, you will seldom get a chance if you are not one of them (because of family). Just my opinion.

Well you choose your family model, don't you? You are not forced to stay at home longer than your husband. In most European countries you are allowed to take equal amounts of time. Most families don't do that, but that is an individual problem that has to be solved by the individuals themselves. The basic condition and possibility is provided by the government. If you choose not to do so that is your own decision. I doubt that employees react more friendly to a husbands decision to take a break for 6 months compared to a woman that takes a 6 month break. Makes no difference to me.

I mean seriously, what are you going to do about that? Prefer people with families over people without families? I don't really see how else you could change that. It is natural and logical to hire someone that works more for the same money if he or she is equally qualified. Both women and men do that because it gives them an advantage.

You could introduce fixed hours in academia and everybody who does not stick to it has to face consequences. Force the people to work a reasonable amount of hours so family persons have no disadvantage, but who will support a change that will definitely slow down research? I doubt that you will find a majority who supports that in all countries.

I kind of see what you are saying here Dunham, but I think a lot of your argument assumes that, all things equal, there is no difference between the opportunities afforded to men and women in higher education. And that simply isn't true.

Career-breaks aside, there is a big pay gap in employees at the same level. For instance, at my university there are absolutely no female professors at level 3 (the highest level). Not a single 1. Across the entire university. And you can bet your arse there are male professors at that level.

You just need to look at the numbers, even those women who aren't taking career gaps to take care of children or relatives are not being paid equally to their colleagues that are men.

I recently read a paper that looked at the different language used in references for male and female students. It was fascinating, and is a clear indicator of unconscious bias that we all experience. Basically, references for men tend to use words like "leader" "innovator" "smart" while for women it's more "team player" "good communicator" etc. this demonstrates that we unconsciously favour, highlight and expect different qualities from women. And while it's okay for a woman to be thought of in this way, at management level you're looking for leaders yet these qualities for female applicants aren't highlighted. So of course the leader is going to be hired over the team player, even if the woman is in fact a great leader it's not emphasised on the reference.

Anyways, gender issues are fascinating to me. But we've massively derailed this thread. Perhaps we should start a new one? Or just all agree to disagree?

I am not saying that there are no cases where women get paid less, because that is definitely sometimes the case, but I don't like the generalisation of that debate. The reason why women are earning less on average are also influenced by the fact that they are more likely to choose a subject that results in a lower income. They are often not comparing the genders within one profession (with the same qualifications) such as engineers. It is not a secret that men tend to choose the more lucrative subjects and therefore of course have the higher average salary. I think they even had one figure where they showed that females in the US in their 20s are actually earning more than the males. However, I am of course not denying that there is a pay gap in some cases and that this has to stop. A step into the right direction would be that salaries are fixed and you can't negotiate about it. Research shows that men do that more aggresively, which in return results in higher salaries.

In case of the professors it depends if they are at the same age. If they spent the same time at the university and did not get level 3, while their male colleagues did, than this is not okay. However, if we compare a 40 year old female professor to a 70 year old male professor, thant you make the wrong comparison. They became professors at completely different times and of course things were different 30 years earlier. I honestly don"t believe that a university in 2015 hires a female and a male engineering professor and groups them differently. I'm not buying this. No university can afford something like that anymore. Furthermore you usually apply to a position and know in advance what level it is. Most new humanities professorships in Germany are rather W1 , while you will probably get W3 in computer science. I don't believe that someone says that the position was advertised as level 2 but gets a downgrade to 1 due to the female applicant ;)

Of course we are biased on gender. But don't fool yourself, women are biased as well. I would like to get a dollar when ever a woman dropped a male stereotype, whenever I heard something like "that's typical for men" or when a woman told me to do something because "you are the men". Happens daily but nobody considers it as sexism and let's be honest, most people would probably just laugh when a male would accuse a female of sexism ;) We perceive that in a comp-letely different way. Of course I don't wanna present men as victims in that debate. Just saying that we are all biased and there will probalby never be comple equality of both genders because we are not the same, otherwise we would not have two genders.

Yeah, we kinda got off topic. Maybe we should open a new thread for that :)

I see there's been some very interesting discussion while I wasn't here. I need to say that I agree partly with everyone. I definitely agree that a lot is down to our own abilities, experience, time spent on the job and I believe majority of our career will be down only to our actions - as they say: As you make your bed so you must lie in it. BUT... while I know that much will be down to us I still believe that the conditions around us are not equally supportive and because of the traditional family models and widely present expectations and pressures put on women, we are (in my opinion) put at a disadvantaged position from the very beginning. That's why I want to plan everything in advance, identify pros and cons, and think about 'the best' time to have a baby. I simply want to enjoy my private life but in the same time put myself in the best possible position to kick off my career and be no worse than all those males around ;-)

I can see that this post is a few years old but I thought I would add my perspective as I have just passed my viva with 6 weeks to go until my baby is due!!! My advice if avoid getting in this situation if you can as it's not easy BUT if you do decide to study whilst pregnant it is totally doable (I'm the evidence!) I've written about how I did it in my blog which you can find here- http://lifeasabutterfly.com/phd-pregnant-race-biology/