MIT Faculty at Commencement, June 1984.
The historical exclusion of women and people of color from STEM academic spaces has resulted in less welcoming and supportive structures. This so-called “chilly climate” is defined as a group of subtle behaviors in which an individual is singled out, discounted, or ignored based on sex, race, sexual identity, disability, or age.
In the classroom, this negative climate may include discouraging specific individuals’ participation, omitting women’s achievements from the curriculum, subtly undermining career aspirations, making assumptions about family responsibilities or financial aid, nominating women for fewer awards, and relying on generically masculine language. Women graduate students may face heightened scrutiny around pregnancy, increased isolation, and limited mentoring.
For women faculty, the effects can include disproportionate service obligations, excessive attention to personal appearance, reduced administrative support, heavier teaching loads, devaluation of research, and inferior office space. Black faculty often face additional advising, service and teaching, in lack of mentoring and support, isolation, hostility from white students, addition to isolation tokenism, dissatisfaction with salary, and typecasting (Medina and Luna 2000; Sutherland 1990; Laden and Hagedorn 2000). Women administrators may experience professional isolation, criticism for addressing “women’s issues,” and scrutiny of their personal lives (Hall and Sandler 1982).
Across ranks, women faculty are also at greater risk of sexual harassment. It is estimated that up to 58% of women in the American work force have experienced sexual harassment (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering 2018). Only about one-third report to the organization. Often women, realize that reporting favors the institutions over them; those who do report do not often get positive outcomes (82). Programs that have been developed to remedy such issues have been criticized for not working to change the structure or culture of the university (O’Meara and Stromquist 2015).
This so called “chilly climate” can have consequences for retention. Women STEM faculty demonstrate a greater intention to turnover (Xu 2008) and are more likely to experience burnout due to workplace climate (Pedersen and Minnotte 2017). This chilly, or in some cases, hostile climate and lack of support is even more pronounced for female faculty of color (Allen et al. 2002; Jayakumar et al. 2017). Women of color face discrimination based on their sex and race or ethnicity (Sandler and Hall 1986). They are more likely to experience sexual harassment, greater isolation, and face even greater expectations for university service and student advising. Women faculty of color have also reported that their authority, teaching experience, and research expertise have been challenged in the classroom by white, male students (Pittman 2010).
Prolonged discrimination affects participation, retention, and can exact physical and mental health tolls. This provides additional stress to the already stressful duties of being in academia.
Graduate School
Women writers, poets, activists, and educators, at Spelman college in 1988, celebrating the University’s first Black female president.
Mitchell (1982) described her graduate experience in the 1970s as necessitating becoming “tricultural”. She describes that
“Students learn fairly early that there is a prescribed way to talk in a graduate community and that the name of that language is “academese.” […] blacks and other already bicultural minority students have to develop a third set of interactional styles and become, in effect, tricultural.” (Mitchell 1982 , 34).
During graduate school, she describes how she and other students heard derogatory comments about their admission. She says that
“Because it was the school’s policy to support affirmative action enrollment, we were the visible evidence of our university’s reparations for society’s past injustices. At the same time, we heard comments about how our minority admissions — Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Chicanos […] were lowering the academic standards of the university.” (Mitchell 1982, 35).
She states that she and other students were reluctant to ask for help from faculty on school work, fearing that it confirm low expectations.
The strong, masculine “white” culture of STEM fields can pressure students of color to in these fields to conform to the prevalent culture (Ong 2005). Challenges facing graduate students of color include culture shock, isolation and alienation, and marginalization, sexual harassment, a lack of faculty role models and mentors, research support and social and professional networks (Tuitt, Sagaria, and Turner 2007 ; Thompson and Dey 1998).
Grad students of color can face racial trauma (e.g. anger, self-doubt, depression) during graduate school (Truong and Museus 2002). During the doctoral socialization process, students of color may self-censor, question if they fit in the program, and struggle to adopt rules and norms (Gildersleeve, Croom, and Vasquez 2011). Academic environments can force students to engage with norms and rules that stifle creativity and development and question their ways of knowing. Socialization and racialized aggressions create a social narrative that dehumanizes doctoral students known as “Am I going crazy?”.
Unsurprisingly, there is a gap between faculty and student perceptions of attrition.
At one institution, faculty across a range of departments (i.e. oceanography, engineering, English, Mathematics, Psychology, and Communication) cited the most common-cited reasons for student attrition. These reasons were primarily that students “lacked” ability, drive, focus, motivation, educational training, or initiative (Gardner 2009). Others included that the student should not have come (21%), were allowed in because of a “screening” error, and had “personal problems” namely pregnancy or mental health issues (15%).
Students’ reasons for attrition were personal problems (relationship strains, childcare responsibilities, physical or mental health issues) departmental problems (bad advising, lack of financial support, toxic departmental politics), the “wrong fit” (institution or geographical region), or change in career (Gardner 2009). The interviewed faculty tended to take an abstract, negative tone towards students who left, and noted a distinct lack of reflection about structural issues or lack of support that students may face. On the other hand, students placed the majority of the blame on the department, faculty, or institution.
Rewarded for Masculinity
Unfortunately, some women faculty, particularly white women, may internalize this “chilly” climate and, in doing so, inadvertently perpetuate structural inequality. They may come to view it as normal or even necessary to demonstrate solidarity with STEM culture (Dryburgh 1999). Even at the high school level, white and economically privileged girls were less likely to identify gendered barriers in engineering and were more likely to normalize long engineering work hours (Bystydzienski and Brown 2012). White women scientists, particularly those at higher ranks, report feeling greater influence within their departments (Settles et al. 2006). In contrast, women of color are more likely to identify organizational barriers to career advancement and to place less faith in meritocracy than their white counterparts (Thomas and Hollenshead 2001)..
Rhoton (2011) examined 30 female STEM faculty (25 white) at a Midwestern University on how they contributed to maintaining gendered structures. The pattern of responses indicated a belief in gender neutrality and meritocracy in STEM. Though some respondents admitted to discriminatory incidents, they stressed their hard work and perseverance to overcome them. These responses, Rhoton argues, only perpetuates the stereotype of “ideal scientist” as objective, single-minded, with exclusive devotion to career.
Britton interviewed 102 women faculty (90% white) across 13 public, doctorate-granting, research-intensive universities. Many participants resisted characterizing their workplace climates as “chilly,” even while acknowledging specific instances of bias as isolated “storms” or “cloudbursts.” Britton suggests that such framing may reflect resistance to confronting systemic gender bias, with white women more likely to minimize or individualize these incidents.
Strategies aimed at reducing the “climate” typically advantage women faculty’s careers. Hunt et al. (2012) demonstrates that the NSF ADVANCE program was more favorable to the advancement of white women than women of color (Hunt et al. 2012). In the initial years of the NSF ADVANCE award, the award was not given to minority-serving institutions, focused on individual awards rather than institutional change, and used language in reference to racial inequality that potentially excluded Asian American women.
Weed Out Courses
Admissions process and curricula in STEM are structured to keep people out. Pre-admission exams like the SAT and Graduate Record Exams are described as “smokescreens”. These exams fail to take into account different environments, values, and cultures aside from the white middle class. Even white applicants who may be at a socioeconomic disadvantage, still tend to have better success in accessing higher education, even at less prestigious institutions (Davidson 1970).
“Weed out” courses, which are required introductory courses in core subject areas such as biology, also serve as “gatekeepers” for STEM majors. These courses typically are fast-paced, have large enrollments, and are challenging. “Gatekeeper” courses may act as a deterrent for STEM completion because of their lack of engaging pedagogy and highly competitive atmosphere (Crisp, Nora, and Taggart 2006). For example, students may be less likely to major is STEM if they realize that it will lower their GPA (Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner 2011).
A study examining students at a Latinx-serving institution from 2006-2008 revealed that earning a STEM degree depended on enrollment in introductory math and science courses and first-semester GPA. Enrolling in Biology I or higher in the first semester was negatively associated with earning a STEM degree (Crisp, Nora, and Taggart 2006).
Greater advising, mentoring, curricular flexibility, and improved instructional practices are needed at all levels. Federal financial aid and test-optional admissions can expand access: among 100 private institutions that adopted test-optional policies between 2005–2006 and 2015–2016, Pell Grant recipients increased by 3–4%, first-generation underrepresented minority students by 10–12%, and first-generation female students by 6–8% (Bennett 2021). The shift to test-optional policies during the COVID-19 pandemic further widened this pathway.
Students of color benefit from increased financial aid and structured academic support, including mentoring, peer study groups, tutoring, and cultural centers (Essien 1997; Rodriguez et al. 2000). At the faculty level, addressing burnout and isolation requires conflict-resolution training and transparent communication to ensure equitable access to information (Pedersen and Minnotte 2017). Still, while such measures may improve student retention and graduation, they do little to transform entrenched institutional structures. Without significant structural reform or legal accountability, research universities have limited incentive to change.
Women of color who persist in STEM often report engagement through disciplinary organizations, satisfaction with math and science curricula, and active participation in academic communities. Selective colleges and universities should therefore foster peer interaction, co-curricular involvement, and meaningful access to undergraduate research opportunities.
Conclusion
The numerous challenges faced by faculty in the 21st century threaten academic freedom, critical thinking, and creativity. The pattern of increasingly onerous standards for obtaining tenure, rather than achieving “excellence”, excludes anyone who cannot pursue a single-minded devotion to their research. This creates a hostile atmosphere for those with different life circumstances and passions. It also drives conformity and a valuation of profit over critical thinking. The so-called “pipeline” model became a convenient excuse for lack of diversity in STEM. This “model”, however, fails to account for stagnation in tenure-track job creation, the “prestige” factor, and racism and sexism. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted this exactly. Many academic careers were sacrificed because of caretaking responsibilities or pursuit of work unrelated to public health. Overall, strategies for promoting institutional and departmental changes, rather than placing the burden on the individual, is the more likely way to diversify faculty numbers in STEM.
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All very relatable to me- being a woman in academia.
Wow. Incredibly comprehensive, and the research backs up my own experience in graduate school.