Doctoral Education: Gender and Family Issues

Graduate Women’s Expectations in Doctoral Programs and Beyond: Marriage, Family and Career. Download:

Nerad, M. & Cerny, J. (1999). Widening the Circle: Another Look at Women Graduate Students. Communicator, VXXXIII. N 6, pp.1-7. Download: Widening the Circle: Another Look at Women Graduate Students

Nerad, M. (1992). Using Time, Money, and Human Resources Efficiently and Effectively in the Case of Women Graduate Students. Paper presented at the Conference Proceedings of “Science and Engineering Programs: On Target for Women?. Sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council/ Office of Scientific and Engineering Personnel. Download: Using Time, Money, and Human Resources Efficiently and Effectively in the Case of Women Graduate Students

Nerad, M. & Lynn Steward, C. (1991). Assessing Doctoral Student Experience: Gender and Departmental Culture. 31th Annual Conference of the Association of Institutional Research, San Francisco, CA. Download: Assessing Doctoral Student Experience: Gender and Departmental Culture.

Angela Ginorio

Dr. Angela Ginorio is associate professor in Women Studies, and adjunct associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle. She teaches courses on “Women and/Science,” “Issues for ethnic minorities and women in science and engineering” and “Women and Violence.”

She developed and directed the Rural Girls in Science Program that operated out of the University of Washington from 1992-2006. She just finished work as P.I. of the Sloan Foundation funded Interdisciplinary Social Science Approaches to the Participation of Ethnic Minorities in STEM. Her scholarship focuses on ethnic minorities and women in STEM, access issues in education for Latino/as and first-generation college students, and violence against women. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association.

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Elizabeth Rudd

Dr. Elizabeth Rudd is a social science analyst in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research, Division of Program Evaluation.

Dr. Rudd is an experienced evaluator of innovative doctoral education programs funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to promote interdisciplinary research. She is currently evaluating a new Ph.D. program that brings together lab scientists, ecologists, and engineers and builds the capacity of American Indian tribes to establish renewable energy systems.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the University of Michigan, Dr. Rudd studied maternity and family leave among women engineers and factory workers. Publications stemming from this work include Changing Landscapes of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports from the Field (2008). Her essay “Family Leave: A Policy Concept Made in America,” in M. Pitt-Catsouphes and E. Kossek (Eds.) Work-Family Encyclopedia, is available online. See more

Dr. Rudd’s Ph.D. thesis (U.C. Berkeley, 1999) investigated changing problems of work and family in former East Germany. It was based on qualitative fieldwork in Germany and in-depth interviews with more than 80 individuals. This work was published in Ethnos and Gender & Society.

CIRGE Report on Gender Equality Reviewed in Inside Higher Education

The recent CIRGE report: “Finally Equal Footing for Women in Social Science Careers” has received national attention. Inside Higher Education ran a feature-length overview of this important work which holds great potential for informing decision-making and speaks about progress for women that is still needed.

To read, click here: socsci

The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports from the Field

“In this beautifully rendered collection, we peer through so many different windows of American family life. Rural North Dakota parents reverently passing on farm values, if not the farm itself, to their children. Silicon Valley hi-tech family workers share long hours and high hopes in their electronic cottage. Affluent corporate executives and their stay-at-home wives still can’t control influences beyond the gates to their communities. Refugees from corporate life set up a small town pie shop hoping to find a better way to mix work and family life. The superb studies gathered here reflect the many ways families are trying to build the American Dream on an ever more eroded and shifting landscape.”—Arlie Hochschild, author of The Time Bind: The Commercialization of Intimate Life.

Rudd, E. & Descartes, L. (2008). The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports from the Field. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books

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Equality and Illusion: Gender and Tenure in Art History Careers

Using a national survey of 508 art history PhDs including data on graduate school performance and careers 10-15 years post-PhD, this study investigates gender, family, and academic tenure in art history, the humanities field with the highest proportion of women. Alternative hypotheses derived from three perspectives–termed here clockwork, two-body, and synergy–are evaluated with multivariate logistic regression. Analysis finds that marriage increases men’s tenure odds and decreases women’s, but that some types of marriages do not decrease women’s odds, and some types dramatically increase men’s. This study calls for attention to male advantage in female-dominated academic disciplines and demonstrates the potential to better understand the interactions of gender, marriage, and careers by conceptualizing different types of marriages.

Rudd, E., Morrison, E., Sadrozinski, R., Nerad, M., & Cerny, J. (2008). Equality and illusion: Gender and tenure in art history careers. Journal of Marriage and Family, No 70, pp. 228-238.

Download: Equality and Illusion

Widening the Lens on Gender and Tenure

Asks the question, if women are now receiving doctoral degrees in relatively equal numbers to men, can we anticipate nearly equal tenure achievement in the next decade? Uses data from the PhDs – Ten Years Later national survey to show that in fields where there are strong non-academic labor markets, women have equal chances of getting tenure to their male counterparts. However, in fields where most PhDs work in academia, men have better chances of tenure than women.

Aanerud, R., Morrison, E., Home, L., Rudd, E., Nerad, M., & Cerny, J. (2007). Widening the Lens on Gender and Tenure: Looking Beyond the Academic Labor Market, NWSA Journal, Vol 19. No. 3 , pp. 105-123.

Download: Widening the Lens

CIRGE Charts Work/Family Paths of Female PhDs

Evidence from the survey, PhDs—Ten Years Later suggests that gender equality in the career paths of PhD recipients is still hampered by conflicts between family lives and career structures.

Rudd, E. and Homer, L. (2005). CIRGE Charts Work/Family Paths of Female PhDs. in Women in Higher Education, September 2005, pp 36-37.

Download: CIRGE Charts Work Family Paths

Widening the Circle: Another Look at Women Graduate Students

Today, graduate women are still lagging behind their male counterparts. In this paper we will try to explain, both historically and empirically, the situation of women doctoral students and what problems keep them from parity with male students. We will present practical suggestions for graduate deans on how to improve the present situation and how to truly welcome women into the circle of doctoral students.

Nerad, M. & Cerny, J. (1999). Communicator Vol XXX11 (6)

Download: Widening the Circle: Another Look at Women Graduate Students