Workshop Catalog
Two factors have stalled women’s advancement in science: implicit bias and lack of family-friendly policies. Mary Ann Mason, UC Berkeley, and Joan C. Williams, UC Hastings, have engaged in more than 20 years of original research to determine when and why women drop out of the pipeline and to develop tools to help universities retain women scientists.
Building a Department in an Era of Tight Budgets: It’s Cheaper to Keep Her (23 mins)
This workshop is designed for deans and department chairs. It is discussed in two basic parts. The first explains all of the ways that a department can save money by eliminating a chilly climate and instituting family friendly policies. An integral part of this is avoiding legal liability. There’s a new kind of lawsuit that is increasingly filed and unfortunately presents a different risk for universities than they have seen in the past. The second part of the video covers legal risks and gives information needed in order to avoid legal liability.
The Competitive Edge: Best Practices for Family Friendly Policies (18 mins)
Many universities have taken significant steps to create family friendly policies in order to recruit and retain parents. The federal agencies that support science have also begun to introduce family friendly initiatives. This video reviews promising policies and invites participants to examine their own university’s policies.
Do Babies Matter? I, II, III (15 mins)
This workshop addresses the fact that although women now receive more than 50% of PhDs, there are far fewer women than men at the top of the academic hierarchy; these women at the top are paid somewhat less than men, and they are much less likely than men to have children. Three versions are offered: version I is focused on women in STEM fields; version II covers postdoctoral scholars and graduate students; and version III covers academic women in all disciplines.
Launch Workshop: STEM Focus Launch Workshop: Postdocs Focus Launch Workshop: General Focus
Double Jeopardy?: How Gender Bias Differs by Race (24 mins)
This workshop explores how the experience of gender bias differs by race. It’s based on a study that was done for Tools for Change where we interviewed 60 women of color in science. What we have done is look specifically at how women of color experience gender bias and how that experience differs from the experience of white women.
Some Things Are Illegal (16 mins)
This workshop gives a short introduction to three developments that may make universities more vulnerable to lawsuits than they have traditionally been. The first is a new but rapidly growing area of the law called Family Responsibilities Discrimination. Title IX compliance is the second; it prohibits pregnancy discrimination and may require maternity leave for students, graduate students and postdocs. The workshop also provides an introduction to the kinds of gender stereotyping that can give rise to difficulties in the event of a lawsuit.
What Works for Women at Work (22 mins)
This workshop gives women individual strategies for navigating workplaces that are shaped by implicit bias. It takes 35 years of experimental social psychology studies and boils them down into four patterns. This module teaches women to recognize the patterns and also offers them very concrete strategies for how to navigate these patterns successfully.