Mary Blair-Loy - US grants

Recent decades have witnessed dramatic changes in women's lives in the U.S., including higher employment rates among mothers. Additionally, the 1996 welfare reform, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PROWRA), ended low-income mothers' entitlement to cash grants to care for dependent children and initiated time-limited support that mandates work as a condition of state support. This dissertation research analyzes evolving models of wage work and motherhood through the experience of low-income women facing welfare reform. While much of prior research portrays low-income women as passive recipients of state policy, this study theorizes them as agents creatively responding to cultural and moral definitions of work and family as well as to the financial resources given or withheld by the state. The research questions are as follows. To what degree do low-income mothers' work and family decisions reflect the cultural assumptions about paid work and family responsibility embedded in welfare reform? By the valorization of women's participation in wage work, does welfare reform reshape women's taken for granted definitions of being a good mother or a good worker? Or do low-income women reject and resist these cultural definitions? Finally, how do low-income women themselves actively engage and reshape present-day cultural understandings of work, welfare and family? The population of this multi-method case study consists of 1300 women in Spokane, WA, who have enrolled in a program intended to lead to self-sufficiency. Methods include in-depth interviews and a self-administered survey of a stratified random sample of this population. The qualitative approach in this study is designed to capture the meanings and self-definitions of poor women themselves in meeting the demands of work and family. The survey data allow comparison of themes and patterns found in the qualitative sample across a larger sample. This project will contribute to sociological understanding of work-family conflict among low-income women, a group largely ignored by work-family researchers. The research also demonstrates how social policy can develop out of broader social trends and cultural models while at the same time crystallize and reinforce these trends and models. This study brings together the publicly shared moral dimension of the welfare state with contemporary work and family practices. The study's broader impact will be its potential to inform the decisions of policy makers and others concerned about consequences for women and children in the wake of welfare reform.

This dissertation research, supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF, will examine how scientific evidence and credibility have been interpreted in the debate over conversion therapies. This project uses innovative research techniques and interpretive approaches to identify "hierarchies of evidence" within debates over reparative therapies, the factors shaping these hierarchies, and the consequences for diagnostic technologies and subjectivities. This research will employ interviews with scientists and other key actors in this debate over treatment efficacy in the United States from the 1950s to the present. Additional data will come from observation at scientific conferences and content analyses of scientific literature on this issue. To more clearly understand how contingencies have shaped evidence hierarchies, the work employs a comparison between a "pathology era" (1950-1973) of medicalization and a "normal era" (1973-present) following de-medicalization. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature in science and technology studies (STS), the sociology of social movements, and sexuality studies, the project will historicize these research practices by carefully examining the role of various influences on the credibility of evidence. Using a co-construction analytical approach, the research will show how diagnostic technologies and subjectivities have been mutually shaped in the process of research. Most notably, the work will identify and interpret the deployment of "truthing" technologies. Through this historical comparison, the research will show how professional struggles and political and religious activism have affected the credibility of truthing techniques relative to self-reports. This dissertation research stands to make important contributions to STS literature by examining a debate that is often coded as purely ideological, but that has significant connections to debates within science and corresponding technical developments.

SES- 1029668
Mary Blair-Loy
Erin Cech
Maria Charles
University of California-San Diego

Men and women continue to be employed in different sectors of the labor market with women occupying sectors that have less prestige, pay and power. This project studies how two culturally-informed, individually-held sets of beliefs, gender schemas (beliefs about the appropriate roles and ?essential natures? of men and women) and self-conceptions (gendered beliefs about the self), inspire decision-making that reproduces occupational gender segregation. Using a unique, NSF-funded longitudinal panel data of students from four institutions (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Olin, Smith and University of Massachusetts), and the co-investigator will study gender schemas and self-conceptions to determine if and how they influence students? major selections and their career decisions 18 months after graduation. The analysis consists of three parts: an examination of (I) the co-construction of gender schemas and self-conceptions over time and their variation by gender, race and ethnicity, sexual identity, socio-economic background and school; (II) whether these individual-level beliefs predict major selection and career launch; and (III) whether these beliefs lead to the development of gendered professional identities among a subsample of engineering students.

Broader Impacts

This research investigates why occupational gender segregation is so resilient, despite the steep rise and broad dissemination of egalitarian legal and cultural mandates over the last four decades. If culturally-informed beliefs about the self are indeed strong predictors of career-related actions, addressing this segregation would require either fostering reflexivity about the gendered nature of individuals? self-expressive actions. Study findings have implications for sex-typed professions facing a shortage of practitioners in the coming decades, particularly the recruitment of women into STEM fields and men into nursing and education. Also, findings may provide insights for K-12 efforts that reach students as they form their self-conceptions and gender schemas. Plans for dissemination include scholarly publications as well as research-based recommendations that would possibly be of interest to diversity program coordinators, policymakers and administrators for how to better recruit underrepresented students into gender-typed fields.

The University of California-San Diego is a premier research university with a focus on the STEM disciplines. In the current proposed project, the institution seeks to implement a multi-pronged approach toward a longitudinal social science study that will identify and analyze mechanism of cumulative disadvantage for women, minorities and LGBT faculty in the STEM fields. The two primary research questions include a focus on the disproportionate cumulative disadvantage of special populations of STEM faculty and on means by which disadvantages at the discipline, department and individual levels lead to disparities in career outcomes. Specific methodological tools that will be used to facilitate this project are longitudinal panel surveys, longitudinal salary analyses, salary and productivity analyses and interviews with various faculty from underrepresented groups.

Intellectual Merit
The proposed project will study the specific mechanisms of cumulative disadvantage for women, URM, and LGBT faculty across a four-year period with the goal of identifying individual, departmental, and disciplinary factors that influence a host of outcome variables (e.g., pay, productivity, advancement). The concept of cumulative disadvantage has been studied with computer simulations and qualitatively, but this proposed project represents the first, primarily quantitative investigation of an issue central to understanding the circumstances of various faculty groups.

Broader Impact
The University of California-San Diego project proposes to examine the impact of cumulative disadvantage for women, underrepresented minorities and LGBT faculty in the academic STEM disciplines that results in disparities in career outcomes. As such, the project will have a broad impact on special populations of women faculty who have been largely underserved by the ADVANCE community. This study represents the first of its kind and, if successful will contribute tremendously to advancing current knowledge regarding the underrepresentation of women faculty from a broad range of perspectives.

According to the American Cancer Society, nearly half of all U.S. citizens will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime. In 2012, approximately 40% of all new diagnoses for women were for breast or gynecological cancers, and 30% of all new diagnoses for men were for prostate or testicular cancer. Those diagnosed often need extensive treatment, which can result in the loss of function or removal entirely of gendered/sexed body parts (for example, impotency or infertility or the surgical removal of breasts or testicles). This disruption of the gendered body that cancer patients face provides a unique space to examine the salience of gender in everyday life. I argue that when people's bodies are altered, they must find new ways to experience and understand them. This dissertation examines how cancer and treatment of the disease can challenge or reinforce cultural scripts that define the gendered body. While cancer and its various forms of treatment can be understood as disruptive, their effects on the gendered body have been neglected in academic study.

In order to access medical discourse surrounding gender and the body, I interview male and female oncologists, knowing that their position gives them the distinctive authority to prescribe solutions to the gendered concerns of their patients. In addition, I interview men and women who have been diagnosed with prostate, testicular, breast and gynecological cancer to find out how they view the changes to their gendered body and subsequent changes to self and identity from undergoing treatment. Policy recommendations are generally made based on studies focused solely on the experiences of women with breast cancer. Knowing this, it is essential to study the experience of male and female patients with various forms of cancer, in order to improve patient care overall. This dissertation also promises to make significant empirical insights to improve cancer care and will provide noteworthy contributions to the sociology of gender, gender studies, sociology of the body, and cultural and medical sociology.

The underrepresentation of women faculty in STEM limits the potential for scientific creativity and reduces available role models for female undergraduate and graduate students pursuing STEM careers. Research on implicit bias indicates that women candidates for faculty positions are less likely to be selected than men. It is critical to understand the experiences of hiring committee members, and of candidates for faculty positions, in order to advance STEM academic hiring practices. Having a more diverse STEM academic workforce contributes to promoting the progress of science.

The project team will investigate whether and, if so, how bias against women creeps into the process of selecting and interviewing tenure-track faculty candidates at a highly ranked public research university. There are three studies: Study 1 analyzes the deployment and outcomes of faculty using evaluation rubrics in the processes of rating candidates and recommending them for interviews and for hire. The research team will compare rubric ratings and outcomes to its own assessment of scholarly production, impact and teaching quality, extracted from candidates' CVs. Also, video-recordings of the candidates' formal job talks will be analyzed to determine social interactions, such as the number and tone of questions and interruptions, which may vary depending on whether the candidate is male or female. Study 2 surveys advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and newly hired faculty to examine if men and women self-report being treated differently during academic STEM interviews, and to determine if men and women react differently to similar interview events such as interrupting. Study 3 surveys early career scholars to determine their perceptions of discipline-specific understandings and stereotypes about merit and how these perceptions may or may not affect how they navigate their own interview processes.

This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. The program supports the accumulation of robust evidence to inform efforts to understand, build theory to explain, and suggest intervention and innovations to address persistent challenges in STEM interest, education, learning and participation.

San Diego State University and the University of California San Diego have partnered to improve mentorship, sponsorship, networking, and institutional and disciplinary leadership capacity for women and other underrepresented minority faculty in STEM. Our Multi-Campus Transformation and Equity Network (MCTEN) will focus on transformative interventions that create and elevate a robust cross-campus network of faculty who will cement existing change, catalyze new efforts, and establish southern California as a regional center for diversity, inclusion and excellence in STEM. Adopting small group, network and community-building approaches, with a specific focus on intersectionality, MCTEN will create lasting intra and inter institutional connections to support meaningful and sustainable change in STEM fields, including sciences and engineering, and the academy. In San Diego, this regional transformation is critical in order to take full advantage of the innovation and research excellence from ethnically, racially and gender diverse faculty, and to adequately serve the students in the San Diego region who meet the critical STEM workforce needs of the nation.

MCTEN will bring innovative applications of documented and effective ADVANCE interventions to a multi-campus, regional network, using insights about organizational change drawn from small-group theory. We will also draw from network science, using networking, network development, and mentoring to reduce negative impacts of the lived experiences of isolation and stress reported by women and URM faculty in STEM departments. This partnership, which brings together California?s university systems in a region with demographics that reflect national trends, will demonstrate how ADVANCE interventions across campuses in a region can support and empower URM women faculty and can provide conditions needed for all scholars to thrive.

The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Partnership" awards provide support to collaborations among STEM professional societies and academic and non-academic non-profit organizations designed to broaden the implementation of evidence-based equity strategies and have a national or regional reach.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.