Banner Sexism In Academic Science Is Overstated

Article here. Excerpt:

'Academic science has been in a bit of a cultural schism; groups like the National Science Foundation and universities have spent billions of dollars promoting the idea that academic science is the only real science - discovery - which has led to a glut of PhDs who want to stay at universities.But when it comes to diversity and fairness, the corporate world is way ahead.

So academic science is better than the corporate kind, except when it's worse. Some discrimination is too obvious to be ignored - handicapped people and Republicans have normal representation at undergraduate levels but they can't get tenured jobs. Others are simply a difference in perception; everyone notices if physics is only 40 percent women but no one is concerned if the social sciences are only 30 percent men. 

But academic science is being harmed by its own public relations. Despite promoting the perception that it is non-corporate and therefore ethically superior, academic science is actually a lot like a small business of 4-5 employees. In a large corporation, maternity leave is not a problem but in a 4-person company, that is a drop in productivity of 25%. Female doctors juggle family and work just fine, they don't feel like they have to leave medicine when they have kids, and so there have been calls to adopt a little more of the private sector approach to both diversity and family practices in academic science.

What is odd is that the most drop-out in academia is not happening computer science or physics, like is claimed, it is happening in female-dominated fields like biology and psychology.

A new paper by psychologists and economists finds that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a level playing field for women in academia, especially in the hard sciences. This has been found in the past also - yes, women are less represented at the highest levels of some fields but that is because academics get tenure and in the past there were more men. When women apply, studies have found they are actually hired in an over-representative fashion, they are not penalized.'