HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology

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The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology HBR Research Report FIGURE 2.1 Macho Cultures Across SET 80 60 64% 40 20 47% 46% 16% 33% 22% 28% 43% 37% 0 Up against a lab coat culture Up against a hard hat culture Up against a geek culture FIGURE 2.2 Predatory Behaviors Across SET Science Engineering Technology 80 69% 64% 16% 60 56% 44% 46% 16% 40 20 26% 27% 36% 32% 14% 0 Experienced sexual harassment Believe women are seen as intrinsically less capable Perceive bias in performance evaluation Science Engineering Technology Get unwanted attention from feminine appearance me of the antelope and lion footage you see in nature films. The culture is extremely predatory, and the women are the prey.” You can play out the scene in your head: the lone woman at the watering hole (read, luxurious off-site in Vegas), exposed and vulnerable as she pitches a great
The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology HBR Research Report idea, surrounded by hungry colleagues looking to take her down. You see the males circling, approaching in a pack, ready to swoop in for the kill (read, put their names on her breakthrough strategy). The stress has taken its toll; Jillian admitted that she’s now on medication and in therapy to help her function in her job: “One night I had to go to the ER because I was shaking uncontrollably.” The combination of several project deadlines, pressure to outperform just so she can be considered an equal by her male colleagues, and an upcoming performance review had pushed her over the edge. The ER doctor said to her “Oh, you’re from [X firm]. We see one or two of you women engineers a week.” Sensing that Jillian was not alone, we asked the women: “How many of you are seriously thinking about leaving in, say, a year?” Of the nine women present, five raised their hands. This is deeply disturbing, given the high level of commitment we uncovered in Chapter 1. Another sobering finding is the degree to which women at SET companies believe that their male colleagues consider females to be intrinsically less capable. In engineering and technology, more than a quarter of female respondents feel they are seen as genetically disadvantaged in SET fields. When Larry Summers, then-president of Harvard University, talked about how women have a “different availability of aptitude” in his infamous speech of January 2005, he was perhaps merely giving voice to a standard view!19 Some researchers are convinced that “the societal assumption that women are innately less able than men” is the foremost factor contributing to women’s slow advance in SET careers.”20 Upon meeting a woman at work, for instance, a male colleague will assume she is an administrative assistant. When he learns that she is in fact an electrical or systems engineer, the male colleague will evince surprise and exclaim, “Why, you don’t look technical.” The unspoken assumption is, of course, that women—especially attractive women—are not meant to be in technical roles and are The Lab Coat Culture Nancy Lane is a distinguished cell biologist at Cambridge University. In midlife she looks back at the “crunch” she experienced as a young scientist and wonders how she survived, as she was surrounded by talented women who did not make it. “In a way I was lucky. I was single when I did my postdoc and therefore able to dedicate full attention to my research. This enabled me to get ‘liftoff’ in my career.” But in a short space of time, she accepted a job at Cambridge University with heavy teaching and research responsibilities, got married, and started a family. That, she says, is when the juggling started in earnest. In those days she was working on “tight junctions” in invertebrates, and each research project required a series of delicate laboratory experiments that could last for a week or two. Embryonic tissues had to be prepared and put in a fixing solution and then samples had to be taken at set intervals over a series of days. When the tissues were ready, very thin sections had to be cut and painstakingly examined through an electron microscope. Each step involved a great deal of precision and needed to follow a strict timetable—you couldn’t put a sampling on hold for a family meal or a school run. She remembers feeling forced to make agonizing trade-offs, asking herself: Do you abandon an experiment or abandon a needy child? At one critical moment she found herself “backward mapping”—deliberately choosing research questions that allowed her to run experiments that could be fitted into a five-day week. She felt hugely envious of male colleagues who seemed to be able to work deep into the night and through the weekend—all that was needed was a quick call to the wife. Moreover, the situation was exacerbated by the disapproval of colleagues, faculty wives, and even friends: They were cluck clucking about “How can you do it?” How could she work as a serious scientist and pretend she was doing right by two young children? The guilt-inducing talk was seriously debilitating. 10
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HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-Athena-factor-Reversing-the-brain-drain-in-science,-engineering,-and-technology

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