Social Science Grant Further Examines Impact of WSU Partner Accommodation Policies
Project Overview and Link to ADVANCE Initiatives
There is a growing trend to adopt official spouse/partner employment assistance policies. These policies are being written to guide the decision university administrators frequently face when deciding to hire a job candidate with a qualified academic partner. According to a 2008 study conducted by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, joint searches for employment are increasing. The proportion of academics that are hired as part of a couple has risen from roughly 3% per year in the 1970’s to 13% in the 2000’s such that academic couples currently comprise 36% of the American Professoriate (Scheibinger, Henderson, & Gilmartin, 2008). It is rare that a university has two concurrent open positions that match the qualifications of both partners, and yet Blossfeld and Drobnic (2001) argue that, for many couples, the decision to accept or be retained in an academic position can be contingent on a partner or spouse finding suitable employment. Thus, couple hiring represents an increasingly important issue for university administrators.
Spouse/partner employment assistance policies may have particular significance in the recruitment and retention of female faculty because they are more likely than male faculty to be partnered with other academics (Jacobs & Winslow, 2004). Further, spouse/partner accommodations are more often than not made to women. In Scheibinger et al.’s 2008 study, 74% of the partner hires were women. The case is similar at WSU, of tenure stream faculty hired into a tenure-stream position as a non-primary hire, 52% were women. Thus, understanding the effects of partner hiring will also have important implications for the recruitment and retention of female faculty at our university.
Spouse/partner accommodations is especially important for recruiting and retaining women in sciences, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) academic fields because they are especially likely to marry male academics in STEM fields. Drawing on a sample of roughly 1,200 tenure-line U.S. faculty in computer science, chemistry, electrical engineering, microbiology, and physics departments, Fox (2005) found that 59% of women were married to another scientist, compared to only 17% of men. Further, Fox found that women in subsequent marriages to academic scientists were among the most productive (where “productivity” is the number of publications in refereed journals in the three years prior to the survey) of women in the sample. Thus, one key to addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM academic fields (National Academy of Sciences, 2007) may be through spousal/partner accommodation programs. However, since little is known and much is misunderstood about the quality of faculty members hired as a part of such programs, our study is timely.
The disciplinary and conceptual framework for the study: The disciplinary framework of this study is from the field of economics with insights from sociology.
Discussion of the literature informing the research and testable hypotheses
In our previous work (Woolstenhulme, Cowan, McCluskey, & Byington, 2011), we modeled the incentives of universities and faculty job candidates in which some proportion of candidates are members of a couple. The model is built on observations of couple behavior. Many couples prioritize being together over other career considerations. Thus, one member of the couple may be willing to forgo her best available job to remain with her partner (Helppie & Murray-Close, 2010; Scheibinger, et al., 2008). If there are couples of mixed quality (i.e. a star-quality candidate and a good candidate are a couple), then the model predicts that universities flexible enough to hire the partner of a desired candidate are able to hire individuals of higher quality than they otherwise could have. We tested this prediction indirectly using tenure and salary data from WSU. The findings indicate that those who are hired through WSU’s accommodation policy are more likely to be granted tenure and have higher average salaries than their peers.
We propose to build on our previous research in three ways. First, we recognize that neither tenure nor wages are direct measures of quality or productivity. To address this concern, we have obtained a commitment from a private firm, Academic Analytics, to provide us with productivity data on WSU faculty (with the possibility of other universities) including publications, and citations, which they have been collecting since 2005. With productivity measures, we will be able to isolate the productivity effects and quantify how spousal/partner accommodation policies affect productivity.
This project will focus on faculty in STEM fields with both an analysis of the STEM subset of the data and an analysis that includes an indicator variable for STEM faculty in the larger entire data set. Since STEM women are likely to be partnered with another STEM academic, spousal/partner accommodation is a way to increase women’s presence in STEM fields at WSU. Our analysis will also allow us to evaluate the extent to which women’s representation, retention, and promotion in STEM disciplines is affected by spousal and partner accommodation policies.
Second, we propose to test empirically whether women who are hired as part of a dual hire couple incur a wage penalty relative to women who are not hired as part of a couple. Scheibinger, et al. (2008) find that women are more likely than men to refuse a job offer if suitable employment cannot be found for their partners. Thus, it may be the case that since women are more likely to refuse job offers in order to be with their partner, women may also be more likely to accept lower wages in order to be near their partner.
Third, we propose to examine how WSU’s experience compares with other universities, especially other major land-grant institutions. Virginia Tech has agreed to give us access to their data on who has received spouse/partner assistance. By performing the same analyses on faculty at Virginia Tech, we can assess patterns and differences that can give us insight as we make policy recommendations.
Data and Methods
We will use our existing data we have on WSU faculty, as well as the productivity data from Academic Analytics and faculty data from Virginia Tech to conduct our research. We will use econometric and statistical techniques that are similar to what was used in our previous work with the additional data to isolate the effects we are looking for.
Expected Findings
This research is likely to inform WSU policies and practices and the ADVANCE program’s goal of increasing the percentage of tenured and tenure-track women in STEM fields by quantifying how WSU’s spousal and partner accommodation policies affect the composition and diversity, retention, and productivity (which impacts tenure and promotion) of STEM faculty members. Our analysis of dual career issues will help address STEM women in their work-life dilemmas.
References
Blossfield, H.-P., & Drobnic, S. (2001). Careers of Couples in Contemporary Societies: From Male Breadwinner to Dual-Earner Families. New York City, Oxford University Press.
Fox, M. F. (2005). Gender, Family Characteristics, and Publication Productivity among Scientists. Social Studies of Science, 35, 131-150.
Helppie, B., & Murray-Close, M. (2010). Moving Out or Moving Up? New Economists Sacrifice Job opportunities for Proximity to Significant Others — and Vice Versa. In Working Paper: University of Michigan.
Jacobs, J. A., & Winslow, S. E. (2004). The Academic Life Course, Time Pressures and Gender Inequality. Community, Work and Family, 7(2), 143-161.
Scheibinger, L., Henderson, A. D., & Gilmartin, S. K. (2008). Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know. In Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research: Stanford University.
Sciences, N. A. o. (2007). Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering., The National Academies Press.
Woolstenhulme, J. L., Cowan, B. W., McCluskey, J. J., & Byington, T. C. (2011). Solving the Two Body Problem: An Evaluation of University Partner Accommodation Policies. In: Washington State University.
