SBP: Major Disadvantages: Career Ambitions and Inequality by College Field of Study in Early Careers

Pech, Corey, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

This award is provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Elizabeth A. Armstrong at the University of Michigan, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating workplace gender inequality among recent college graduates. We know a good deal about mid-career gender inequality in the labor force, such as discrimination limiting women’s advancement opportunities and how burdens of work/family conflicts are borne unequally by women. Exposure to this inequality may cause women to change their professional plans early in their careers, however we know little about how early career experiences might contribute to this outcome. This research will identify when people’s workplace expectations begin to shift and if these are related to inequality experienced or observed at work, family expectations, or other considerations. Findings will lend insight into how women can be better positioned in the labor market, broadening their participation in high status jobs, and closing gender gaps that exists across the occupational hierarchy. The project will investigate men and women’s early career experiences from college internships to their fourth year in the workforce in order to learn when and how individuals begin to change their career plans and how these decisions are informed by workers observing or experiencing relational inequality at work. Relational inequality is a concept capturing how cognitive biases, along with explicit and implicit discrimination, explain how women are treated differently than their male co-workers throughout their careers. Research will be accomplished by collecting a third wave of longitudinal interviews with college graduates from four majors, two that are male-dominated (Engineering/Business), and two that are female-dominated (Communications/English). Previously, 91 college seniors were interviewed about their internships and 85 of them were retained for a second interview one year later after graduation. Research will meet three objectives: (1) uncover the pathways through which individuals change their career plans early in their careers, (2) explain how these pathways are shaped by experiences, or observations, of relational gender inequality, (3) investigate how these two processes vary by gender and college field of study. 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.