On 2016 Sep 06, Hilda Bastian commented:

The authors of this paper state: “Our own findings as well as research by others show that the effect of children on women’s academic careers is so remarkable that it eclipses other factors in contributing to women’s underrepresentation in academic science”.

This paper fails to support this contention in 5 ways:

1. Addressing only a subset of the range of factors that potentially contribute to women’s underrepresentation.

2. Relying on a selected set of literature that fails to discount alternative explanations, in particular that there is no one single factor that accounts for the phenomenon of women’s underrepresentation in science. Multiple contributing factors, even small ones, can contribute to cumulative advantage for men in science (National Academy of Sciences (US), National Academy of Engineering (US), and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, 2007).

3. No method to quantify and comparatively weigh contributing factors that could underpin the single remarkable factor hypothesis.

4. Not satisfactorily demonstrating that motherhood consistently results in high levels of underrepresentation across disciplines of academic science, and not in all other academic careers.

5. It generalizes to all of academic science, based exclusively on American data of family responsibilities and science careers.

The authors rely heavily on their previous work: Ceci SJ, 2011. I have addressed that in a PubMed Commons comment (link to comment). That paper also does not contain adequate evidence to sustain the contention of the claim about the motherhood hypothesis presented here.

The only data sets presented in support of this hypothesis are (in order of appearance):

• A study including 586 graduate students in 1992 in the US, surveyed again in 2003 and 2004 (Lubinski D, 2006).

• A figure of the number of ovarian follicles women have by age from birth to 51, overlaid with key scientists’ career stages.

• A national faculty survey on career and family in 1998 (with over 10,116 respondents across scientific and non-scientific disciplines) (Jacobs, 2004).

• 2 selected examples of studies from their previous review chosen to illustrate their argument that there is a level playing field for women in the science workforce, along with a blanket claim that I do not believe the evidence in their review supports (Ceci SJ, 2011).

• A study that included 2 major components (Goulden, 2009):

  (a) Modeling of data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), which had limited data on potential contributing factors to women’s careers (see for example (Bentley 2004). Women with young children had a 4-13% lower odds of achieving tenure than women without, which is not a considerably higher contribution to gender differences than has been in other studies. (Note that age of children is one of the areas with relatively high missing data in the SDR (Hoffer 2002.)

  (b) A survey of 45 female doctoral and postdoctoral at the University of California, including 16 “new mothers”.

• A survey with 2,503 respondents from 2008/2009 which found that women were more likely than men to wish they had more children (Ecklund EH, 2011) (although it is not included in the article’s list of references, the study was readily identifiable). Williams and Ceci report “Often this regret is associated with leaving the academy”. However, Ecklund and Lincoln report that there was no gender difference in the desire to leave academic science among these respondents. Further, they conclude, “the effect on life satisfaction of having fewer children than desired is more pronounced for male than female faculty, with life satisfaction strongly related to career satisfaction”.

• A study of people early in their careers, graduating with MBAs from a single US business school between 1990 and 2006. It had a low response rate (31%) and including 629 women (Bertrand, 2010).

This data basis is inadequate to support the paper’s conclusions and presents highly selected data. The article included a separate extended bibliography, but the basis for the identification and selection of the studies in the bibliography and in the article is not given. In relation to the major review on which they rely (Ceci SJ, 2011), an unsystematic approach and lack of methods to minimize bias has resulted in a very misleading sample of data, and biased reporting and interpretation of that data (see my comment in PubMed Commons).

Finally, central to the argument presented here is the hypothesis that as societal and policy changes have reduced the impact of blatant and conscious discrimination, the salience of motherhood as a relative barrier to the progression of women’s scientific careers has assumed greater significance.

However, those same societal changes have also been affecting how people manage and accommodate family responsibilities and careers. For example, later childbirth and fewer children is an ongoing trend in the US (Matthews TJ, 2009, Matthews TJ, 2014), which partially results from, and contributes to, changing attitudes to motherhood and parenting over time. Similarly, increasing workforce participation by women has been changing, and continues to rapidly change, men’s roles in parenting Cabrera NJ, 2000. The authors acknowledge that there has been some accommodation by academic institutions, but their analysis remains largely one-sided.

For example, this statement is made with neither current nor longitudinal data cited in support: “Men more often have stay-at-home spouses or spouses in flexible careers who bear and raise children while the men are free to focus on academic work”. Indeed, a study they cite in another context found that both men and women scientists with children worked fewer hours than those without children, but similar hours to each other (Ecklund EH, 2011).

I agree with the authors that much remains to be done to accommodate family responsibilities of all types, not just motherhood. But that will not be a single magic bullet that counteracts the cumulative impact of biases and barriers affecting women related to gender, race, and more as well as family responsibilities. These authors have not made their case for the claim that, “It is when academic scientists choose to be mothers that their real problems start”.

In addition to comments here on PubMed Commons on the previous review by these authors that supports this paper, I have discussed it on my blog

Disclosures: I work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but not in the granting or women in science policy spheres. The views I express are personal, and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIH. I am an academic editor at PLOS Medicine and on the human ethics advisory group for PLOS One. I am undertaking research in various aspects of publication ethics.

On 2016 Sep 06, Hilda Bastian commented:

The authors of this paper state: “Our own findings as well as research by others show that the effect of children on women’s academic careers is so remarkable that it eclipses other factors in contributing to women’s underrepresentation in academic science”.

This paper fails to support this contention in 5 ways:

1. Addressing only a subset of the range of factors that potentially contribute to women’s underrepresentation.

2. Relying on a selected set of literature that fails to discount alternative explanations, in particular that there is no one single factor that accounts for the phenomenon of women’s underrepresentation in science. Multiple contributing factors, even small ones, can contribute to cumulative advantage for men in science (National Academy of Sciences (US), National Academy of Engineering (US), and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, 2007).

3. No method to quantify and comparatively weigh contributing factors that could underpin the single remarkable factor hypothesis.

4. Not satisfactorily demonstrating that motherhood consistently results in high levels of underrepresentation across disciplines of academic science, and not in all other academic careers.

5. It generalizes to all of academic science, based exclusively on American data of family responsibilities and science careers.

The authors rely heavily on their previous work: Ceci SJ, 2011. I have addressed that in a PubMed Commons comment (link to comment). That paper also does not contain adequate evidence to sustain the contention of the claim about the motherhood hypothesis presented here.

The only data sets presented in support of this hypothesis are (in order of appearance):

• A study including 586 graduate students in 1992 in the US, surveyed again in 2003 and 2004 (Lubinski D, 2006).

• A figure of the number of ovarian follicles women have by age from birth to 51, overlaid with key scientists’ career stages.

• A national faculty survey on career and family in 1998 (with over 10,116 respondents across scientific and non-scientific disciplines) (Jacobs, 2004).

• 2 selected examples of studies from their previous review chosen to illustrate their argument that there is a level playing field for women in the science workforce, along with a blanket claim that I do not believe the evidence in their review supports (Ceci SJ, 2011).

• A study that included 2 major components (Goulden, 2009):

  (a) Modeling of data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), which had limited data on potential contributing factors to women’s careers (see for example (Bentley 2004). Women with young children had a 4-13% lower odds of achieving tenure than women without, which is not a considerably higher contribution to gender differences than has been in other studies. (Note that age of children is one of the areas with relatively high missing data in the SDR (Hoffer 2002.)

  (b) A survey of 45 female doctoral and postdoctoral at the University of California, including 16 “new mothers”.

• A survey with 2,503 respondents from 2008/2009 which found that women were more likely than men to wish they had more children (Ecklund EH, 2011) (although it is not included in the article’s list of references, the study was readily identifiable). Williams and Ceci report “Often this regret is associated with leaving the academy”. However, Ecklund and Lincoln report that there was no gender difference in the desire to leave academic science among these respondents. Further, they conclude, “the effect on life satisfaction of having fewer children than desired is more pronounced for male than female faculty, with life satisfaction strongly related to career satisfaction”.

• A study of people early in their careers, graduating with MBAs from a single US business school between 1990 and 2006. It had a low response rate (31%) and including 629 women (Bertrand, 2010).

This data basis is inadequate to support the paper’s conclusions and presents highly selected data. The article included a separate extended bibliography, but the basis for the identification and selection of the studies in the bibliography and in the article is not given. In relation to the major review on which they rely (Ceci SJ, 2011), an unsystematic approach and lack of methods to minimize bias has resulted in a very misleading sample of data, and biased reporting and interpretation of that data (see my comment in PubMed Commons).

Finally, central to the argument presented here is the hypothesis that as societal and policy changes have reduced the impact of blatant and conscious discrimination, the salience of motherhood as a relative barrier to the progression of women’s scientific careers has assumed greater significance.

However, those same societal changes have also been affecting how people manage and accommodate family responsibilities and careers. For example, later childbirth and fewer children is an ongoing trend in the US (Matthews TJ, 2009, Matthews TJ, 2014), which partially results from, and contributes to, changing attitudes to motherhood and parenting over time. Similarly, increasing workforce participation by women has been changing, and continues to rapidly change, men’s roles in parenting Cabrera NJ, 2000. The authors acknowledge that there has been some accommodation by academic institutions, but their analysis remains largely one-sided.

For example, this statement is made with neither current nor longitudinal data cited in support: “Men more often have stay-at-home spouses or spouses in flexible careers who bear and raise children while the men are free to focus on academic work”. Indeed, a study they cite in another context found that both men and women scientists with children worked fewer hours than those without children, but similar hours to each other (Ecklund EH, 2011).

I agree with the authors that much remains to be done to accommodate family responsibilities of all types, not just motherhood. But that will not be a single magic bullet that counteracts the cumulative impact of biases and barriers affecting women related to gender, race, and more as well as family responsibilities. These authors have not made their case for the claim that, “It is when academic scientists choose to be mothers that their real problems start”.

In addition to comments here on PubMed Commons on the previous review by these authors that supports this paper, I have discussed it on my blog

Disclosures: I work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but not in the granting or women in science policy spheres. The views I express are personal, and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIH. I am an academic editor at PLOS Medicine and on the human ethics advisory group for PLOS One. I am undertaking research in various aspects of publication ethics.