Tag: Inequity

All situations related to equal treatment, equal access, equal opportunity.

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Women do a majority of office ‘housework’; Women of Color do a majority of DEI in Tech and Engineering

This article compares workload distributions among faculty in Tech and Engineering. It documents that women do more of the work to keep things running smoothly, often referred to as office “housework.” Such work rarely earns formal credit or recognition. In technology fields, women of color report that they are asked to lead HR or DEI . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Beyond Productivity Metrics: Call for a Paradigm Shift in STEMM

In this essay, a group of scientists advocates for paradigmatic change in the academic scientific enterprise. Specifically, they point to biases in STEMM measures of success, normative standards that support a subset of scholars and narrow the career pathways for others, and call out those in positions of power for engaging in advocacy performances rather . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Chicken or the Egg: Is pay in a field low because women enter it or because women tend to prefer lower paying jobs?

We recently acknowledged March 15th as equal pay day, the date when women’s pay for the prior year finally equals what men earned. In other words, women must work 2-½ months longer to make the same amount and Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous women have to work even longer. Why? A popular explanation is that women . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: High school chemistry textbooks fail to advance positive role of women in field

Many young people are introduced to professions like Chemistry in high school and textbooks play a major role in informing students about the discipline and the people who work within it. An article in Chemistry World shines a light on what happens when textbooks are biased in their representation. A study of four widely used . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Gender Inequities in Academic Medicine and the Life Sciences

You may have read the article in the New York Times that came out recently about women physicians earning 2 million less over their lifetimes than men physicians.This study and a variety of research topics on gender inequities within medicine and the academic life sciences are discussed in a recent Freakonomics MD podcast led by . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Foundational Strategies to Create Equitable Systems for Faculty

As pandemic effects continue, fostering equitable climates to retain high quality faculty and staff is more important than ever.  The UMass ADVANCE team outlines four foundational strategies: communication, resources, flexibility, and adapting equity-informed strategies. Meaningful communicative interactions and supportive resources are critical to faculty and staff job satisfaction.  In addition, flexible policies and practices remain . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Metastudy on Biases in Student Teaching Evaluations

Research into Student Teaching Evaluations often focus on what such evaluations actually measure and the inherent biases about instructors that can disadvantage or advantage particular faculty. This article in Inside Higher Ed reports on a metastudy that addresses both measurement and equity biases in student evaluations and suggests strategic responses for higher education institutions. One . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Do you promote safe space for discussions of authorship that are fair and equitable?

It is well documented that women are underrepresented in senior author positions on published and scholarly works, and more harshly treated in the peer review process. Women are also more likely to be involved in disagreements about authorship than men, and face greater negative consequences of such disagreements. This is one of the findings reported . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Physicians’ perceptions can create health care disparities

Did you know that more than sixty-one million Americans have disabilities? Although legislative actions and conversations about the impact of living with disabilities are increasingly common in workplaces and social places, a study by Iezzoni et al. (2021) identified physicians’ perceptions of people with disabilities contributes to health care disparities.  In a small national study, . . .