Christine L. Nittrouer

Gender disparities in colloquium speakers at top universities

Significance Recently, research has focused on identifying gender gatekeepers—people or practices that may (unintentionally) engage in, create, or maintain gender disparities. In the current research, we examine gender differences in academic colloquium speakers. Colloquium talks lead to enhancement of a researcher’s reputation, networks, research collaborations, and sometimes result in job offers. Results from our three studies indicate that women are underrepresented relative to men as colloquium speakers across six disciplines. To examine the role of self-selection, we find that women neither decline talk invitations at greater rates nor question the importance of talks more than men do. Finally, we show that the presence of women as colloquium chairs (and potentially committee members) increases the likelihood of having female colloquium speakers. Colloquium talks at prestigious universities both create and reflect academic researchers’ reputations. Gender disparities in colloquium talks can arise through a variety of mechanisms. The current study examines gender differences in colloquium speakers at 50 prestigious US colleges and universities in 2013–2014. Using archival data, we analyzed 3,652 talks in six academic disciplines. Men were more likely than women to be colloquium speakers even after controlling for the gender and rank of the available speakers. Eliminating alternative explanations (e.g., women declining invitations more often than men), our follow-up data revealed that female and male faculty at top universities reported no differences in the extent to which they (i) valued and (ii) turned down speaking engagements. Additional data revealed that the presence of women as colloquium chairs (and potentially on colloquium committees) increased the likelihood of women appearing as colloquium speakers. Our data suggest that those who invite and schedule speakers serve as gender gatekeepers with the power to create or reduce gender differences in academic reputations.

The Emergence of a Human Services Cooperative to Support Families and Young Adults with Disabilities: Implications for Disability Services and Supports

This paper documents the experiences of a group of parents who came together to form a human service cooperative in their local community to address the needs of their adult children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Each parent felt that their childs needs were not (or could not be) met by existing providers. Parent leaders who formed the Board of Directors of the human service cooperative were interviewed, and key themes in the emergence and growth of the cooperative were identified. Issues in the development and implementation of innovative services and supports are summarized, and implications for policy, research, and practice are outlined.

Using a Collaborative Process to Develop Goals and Self-Management Interventions to Support Young Adults with Disabilities at Work.

Purpose: This study examined the impact of using a collaborative process with person-centered teams and a functional assessment of problems in the workplace to design individualized goals and self-management interventions to support young adults with disabilities. These young adults had achieved employment through a customized employment process but were beginning to face challenges maintaining and advancing in their job roles. Method: A single subject, multiple baseline study was conducted with three individuals ages 22–29 years with autism and/or intellectual disability to determine the impact of the intervention on on-task behavior and job task completion. Results: The results suggest that the process can lead to meaningful change in the on-task and job completion behavior of young adults with disabilities in inclusive employment settings, although there were limitations. Conclusion: The findings, outcomes, and implications confirm and extend our understanding of the impact of person-centered teams, goal setting, functional assessment, and self-management after young adults with disabilities are employed in community-based settings.

The impact of biomedical students’ ethnicity and gender

Purpose There has been a great deal of research published on the lower success rates of women and underrepresented (UR) students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics-related (STEM) occupations. For biomedical scientists in particular, many of the obstacles to success occur during graduate training and may be related, at least in part, to certain demographic characteristics (i.e., gender or ethnicity). In particular, women and UR students may be positioned disproportionately into labs with fewer resources and less productive faculty advisors. Design/methodology/approach The present study examines the distribution of biomedical science graduate students into research laboratories, based on the gender and ethnicity of both students and faculty advisors. This is archival data that was collected via publicly available information on the Internet. Findings Results indicate that female (versus male) students and UR (versus White and Asian) students are paired with advisors who are less successful...

The Inevitable Stigma for Childbearing-Aged Women in the Workplace: Five Perspectives on the Pregnancy-Work Intersection

The most commonly researched group of women of childbearing age are those who get pregnant and/or have young children in the workplace. Given employers’ anticipation that employees will invest the majority of their physical and psychological time and energy to their work (Greenberg et al. 2009), deviations from these expectations often result in negative perceptions of both male and female employees. But stigmatization toward childbearing-aged women is not just reserved for those who are pregnant. Childbearing women who, for a variety of reasons (e.g., choose not to, cannot physically have them), do not have any children (e.g., Lisle 1999) also face stigmatization. Similarly, recent evidence suggests that working women who choose to have only one child also face a barrage of inappropriate questions and associated stigmatization (e.g., Lombino 2011; Zamora 2012). This chapter takes a broad approach to examining the intersection of pregnancy and the workplace by examining five different groups of childbearing-aged employees: women who are not pregnant and do not ever plan to have children (Group 1), women who are not pregnant but plan to have children (Group 2), women who are currently pregnant with their first child (Group 3), women who are currently pregnant and already have at least one child (Group 4), and women who have at least one child and do not plan to have any more children (Group 5). For each group of women, we provide descriptive statistics and a content analysis of items asking them about their biggest worries, advice to past-selves, and how successful they have been at attaining their goals.