A child touches her pregnant mother's stomach at the last stages of her pregnancy in Bordeaux April 28, 2010. |
Women are shunning academic careers in math-intensive fields because the lifestyle is incompatible with motherhood, researchers at Cornell University found in a study to be published next month in American Scientist Magazine. Universities have long been criticized for hiring and evaluation policies that discriminate against women, but the findings of this new study point to the female biological clock as a main reason why so few women end up as professors in fields such as math, engineering, physics and computer science. A woman who wants a family looks at the rigorous path to a tenured position and considers how old she will be before she can start a family and how little time she will have to raise her children. Many of those women opt for a more flexible career. "Universities have been largely inflexible about anything other than the standard time table, which is you kill yourself for years and only then would you consider getting pregnant," said Wendy Williams, a human development professor at Cornell who co-authored the study with her husband, Stephen Ceci. Williams and Ceci analyzed data about the academic careers of men and women with and without children. Before women became mothers, they had careers equivalent to or more successful than their male peers. But once children entered the equation, the dynamic changed. Women in other academic fields such as the humanities and social sciences face similar hurdles and often leave academia as well. But because there are so many women in those Ph.D. programs, enough ultimately stay to amount to a critical mass of female professors. In math-heavy fields, however, women make up a tiny minority of the graduate students. So when the rare few who make it through a Ph.D. program leave because universities are insensitive to their needs as mothers, the net result is virtually no women represented on faculty rosters, the study said. (Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.) (Agencies) |
康奈爾大學(xué)的研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn),女性很少在數(shù)學(xué)相關(guān)領(lǐng)域從事學(xué)術(shù)研究工作是因為女?dāng)?shù)學(xué)教授的生活方式和母親的身份相沖突。這一研究將于下個月在《美國科學(xué)家雜志》上發(fā)表。 長期以來,大學(xué)一直因為歧視女性的聘用和考評政策而受到抨擊,然而這一新研究的發(fā)現(xiàn)指出,女性生物鐘是女性很少在數(shù)學(xué)、工程學(xué)、物理學(xué)和計算機(jī)科學(xué)等專業(yè)擔(dān)任教授的主要原因。 當(dāng)一個渴望擁有家庭的女性看到通往終身教授職位的道路是如此嚴(yán)苛,想到自己成為教授后再生育時年紀(jì)已經(jīng)很大,撫養(yǎng)小孩的時間也很少,于是許多女性就選擇了更有彈性的職業(yè)。 康奈爾大學(xué)的人類發(fā)展學(xué)教授溫迪?威廉姆斯和她的丈夫斯蒂芬?賽西共同撰寫了這一研究報告。她說:“大學(xué)除了課程設(shè)置比較靈活外,其他很多方面都很僵化,也就是說,你要熬很多年才能得到穩(wěn)定職位,才能考慮懷孕生子?!?/p> 威廉姆斯和賽西分析了男性和女性(有孩子和沒孩子)的學(xué)術(shù)生涯相關(guān)資料。在女性成為母親之前,她們的職業(yè)和同行業(yè)的男性一樣成功,甚至更成功。但是一旦有了孩子,這一態(tài)勢就發(fā)生了變化。 在人文學(xué)科和社會科學(xué)等其他學(xué)術(shù)領(lǐng)域里,女性面臨著同樣的障礙,她們也往往因此離開學(xué)術(shù)界。但由于攻讀人文社科類博士學(xué)位的女性很多,所以才有足夠的女性最終留下來成為女教授,使這些領(lǐng)域的女教授數(shù)量達(dá)到一定規(guī)模。 不過,在數(shù)學(xué)相關(guān)領(lǐng)域里,女性只占據(jù)研究生的很小一部分。因此,研究指出,當(dāng)極少數(shù)獲得博士學(xué)位的女性又因為大學(xué)對自己生兒育女的需要漠不關(guān)心而離開,其最終結(jié)果就是,沒有幾位女性能躋身理科教授行列。 相關(guān)閱讀 (中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 陳丹妮 編輯:Julie) |
Vocabulary: tenured position: (教授等的)終身職位 critical mass: 臨界質(zhì)量,臨界規(guī)模,社會動力學(xué)中的群聚效應(yīng) roster: 列入名冊的人;花名冊 |