Diane Sicotte

More Than a Pipeline Problem: Labor Supply Constraints and Gender Stratification Across Academic Science Disciplines

Employing a nationally representative sample of science faculty in U.S. colleges, we investigate 3 explanations for persisting differences in womens faculty representation across science fields even after adjusting for womens variable representation among doctoral recipients. First, we examine labor market factors: (a) differential growth rates and “critical mass” in the supply of women doctoral recipients, (b) growth or contraction in academic and nonacademic job opportunities, and (c) presence of foreign-born scholars. Second, we control for institutional explanations such as differential rates of faculty unionization and less receptivity to women at prestigious or research-oriented universities and fields that are “applied,” “soft,” or “nonlife” sciences. Third, gender role explanations are addressed by controlling for gender differences in work experience, work interruptions, and the prestige of doctoral credentials. After finding that none of these explanations account fully for distinctive patterns among science fields in the faculty gender composition, we discuss how they may reflect differences in academic “cultures.”

The Ecology of Technological Risk in a Sunbelt City

In this paper we examine the spatial distributions of four types of technological hazards in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area. The focus is on the locations of hazardous industrial and toxic waste sites in relation to the demographic composition of adjacent neighborhoods. Our interest is to determine whether hazardous sites, including industrial facilities in the EPAs Toxic Release Inventory, Large Quantity Generators of hazardous wastes, Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities, and federally identified contamination sites, are disproportionately located in areas with lower income and minority residents. We examine patterns of environmental inequity in Phoenix, a sprawling Sunbelt city with a growing post-Fordist industrial sector. First, using 1996 EPA data for four types of technological hazards, and 1995 Special Census data for Maricopa County, we employ a GIS to map the spatial distributions of hazardous sites and to analyze the demographic characteristics of census tracts with and without point-source hazards. A second methodology is used to produce a cumulative hazard density index for census tracts, based on the number of hazard zones—one-mile-radius circles around each facility—that overlay each tract. Both methodologies disclose clear patterns of social inequities in the distribution of technological hazards. The cumulative hazard density index provides a spatially sensitive methodology that reveals the disproportionate distribution of risk burdens in urban census tracts. The findings point to a consistent pattern of environmental injustice by class and race across a range of technological hazards in the Phoenix metropolitan region.

Neighborhood Effects on Youth Substance Use in a Southwestern City

This study examines neighborhood influences on alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use among a predominantly Latino middle school sample. Drawing on theories of immigrant adaptation and segmented assimilation, the authors test whether neighborhood immigrant, ethnic, and socioeconomic composition, violent crime, residential instability, and family structure have differential effects on substance use among youth from different ethnic and acculturation backgrounds. Data are drawn from self-reports from 3,721 seventh-grade students attending thirty-five Phoenix, Arizona, middle schools. Analysis was restricted to the two largest ethnic groups, Latino students of Mexican heritage and non-Hispanic Whites. After adjusting for individual-level characteristics and school-level random effects, only one neighborhood effect was found for the sample overall, an undesirable impact of neighborhood residential instability on recent cigarette use. Subgroup analyses by individual ethnicity and acculturation showed more patterned neighborhood effects. Living in neighborhoods with high proportions of recent immigrants was protective against alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use for Latino students at different acculturation levels, whereas living in predominantly Mexican heritage neighborhoods (mostly nonimmigrants) was a risk factor for alcohol and marijuana use for less acculturated Latinos. There were scattered effects of neighborhood poverty and crime, which predicted more cigarette and alcohol use, respectively, but only among more acculturated Latinos. Inconsistent effects confined to bilingual and more acculturated Latinos were found for the neighborhoods proportion of single-mother families and its residential instability. No neighborhood effects emerged for non-Hispanic White students. Results suggested that disadvantaged neighborhoods increase substance use among some ethnic minority youth, but immigrant enclaves appear to provide countervailing protections.

Women Scientists in Academia: Geographically Constrained to Big Cities, College Clusters, or the Coasts?

Women scientists in academia have been shown to be less geographically mobile than their male counterparts, a factor that may exacerbate gender inequities in faculty representation, tenure, and salary. This study examines the extent to which the jobs of academic women scientists are disproportionately concentrated in large cities, areas with many colleges and universities, and regions where most doctorates are granted. We also investigate whether jobs in these locations affect salary, tenure, full-time faculty status, and employment outside ones field of training in ways that differ for women and men. Our analysis is guided by arguments that geographic constraints on womens mobility are rooted in social factors, such as gender roles and mate selection patterns. Data are drawn from over 13,000 faculty respondents in the national Survey of Doctoral Recipients, representing 22 science and engineering disciplines and over 1,000 4-year colleges or universities. Regression analysis reveals that, irrespective of their family status, women faculty are more likely than their male counterparts to reside in doctoral production centers, areas with large clusters of colleges, and large cities. Responsibility for children intensifies womens geographic concentration more than marriage does and in ways that differ from men. Geographic concentration also appears generally more harmful to womens careers than to mens. Women in doctoral production centers are less likely to have tenure and more likely to work part time; those in larger cities are more likely to be in jobs off the tenure track. Locales with many colleges appear to present somewhat better career prospects for women.

Environmental equity in a sunbelt city: the spatial distribution of toxic hazards in Phoenix, Arizona

Abstract This paper examines the spatial distributions of industrial facilities emitting toxic substances in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan region. The analysis relies on geographic information system mapping of hazardous facilities listed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) to assess the spatial distribution of polluting industries in relation to the demographic composition of host neighborhoods. The research addresses four questions: (1) Are there differences between the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods with and without polluting industrial facilities? (2) Is there a relationship between the volume of toxic chemicals released from industrial facilities and the socioeconomic characteristics of host neighborhoods? (3) Is there a relationship between the toxicity of the chemicals released from industrial facilities and the socioeconomic characteristics of those living in proximity? (4) Do alternative methods for determining the distribution of potentially affected populations produce different observed patterns of environmental inequities? The study concludes that there is a clear pattern of environmental inequity in Phoenix based on the location and volume of emissions of TRI facilities. Analysis of the toxicity of emissions found a more equal distribution of risk, reflecting the suburbanization of high-technology industries into predominantly white middle-class communities.

Some more polluted than others: unequal cumulative industrial hazard burdens in the Philadelphia MSA, USA

The aim of this study was to quantify inequities in environmental hazard burdening in the 357 towns and 12 city planning analysis areas in the nine-county Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area. Points were assigned to 14 types of hazards, including Superfund sites, hazardous waste facilities, landfills, trash transfer stations, waste tyres, incinerators, power plants, polluting factories, and sewage and sludge treatment facilities. When points were summed, 39 communities were in the 90th percentile for total hazard points. Risk ratios were calculated for community characteristics. The risk of extensive hazard burdening was significantly greater for communities bordering the Delaware River and for communities with more than 3% minority residents, more vacant housing units, and adults without a high school diploma. Risks were significantly lower for the most affluent communities. Results point to the need to reform environmental laws at the state level to prevent the concentration of environmental hazards in vulnerable communities.

Not a ‘Petro Metro’: challenging fossil fuel expansion

ABSTRACT In this article, we draw on archival research, participant observation and content analysis to examine urban sustainability, networked infrastructures and environmental justice movements. We do this by focusing on proposal to develop Philadelphia into a natural gas energy hub. The proposal aimed to fully utilize fracking in the Marcellus Shale by privatizing the city’s gas utility (PGW) and expanding gas infrastructure such as petrochemical complexes and large gas transmission pipelines. The proposed development was enabled by federal and state-level legislation favorable to corporate interests, and by support for selling PGW by the Mayor of Philadelphia. Resistance by local- and national-scale environmental and climate justice coalitions and local labor unions soon drew the attention of Philadelphia City Council members, who refused to authorize the sale. This resistance put in motion several important developments that effectively blocked re-making Philadelphia into the next energy capitol. While it should be seen as just one chapter in an ongoing struggle against the complete utilization of fracking in the Marcellus Shale, this case illustrates the power of local resistance to block the flow of fracked gas through cities, and to push for less environmentally destructive economic expansion plans.

The importance of historical methods for building theories of urban environmental inequality

Despite the large body of research, testable theories of the development of urban environmental inequality are still lacking. Instead, we have only a group of unconnected explanations for environmental inequality; the time in history in which they may operate, and the extent to which they can be generalized remain unspecified. Many (although not all) quantitative environmental justice studies use very small units of analysis, are cross-sectional, and use simplistic concepts of race and social class. The generalizability of historical qualitative studies tracing the process through which environmental inequality developed has not been specified. In this paper, I argue for the use of historical methods such as causal process tracing (CPT) to bridge the shortcomings of both quantitative empirical findings and qualitative historical case studies as material to build middle-range theory. Using material from my recent multi-method work tracing the development of environmental inequality in the Philadelphia area, I demonstrate the efficacy of historical methods (path dependence and CPT) for understanding the causal mechanisms that gave rise to environmentally burdened communities in the Philadelphia area. Hypotheses generated by the causal mechanisms and historical turning points identified in Philadelphia can be used to test the generalizability of middle-range theories of environmental inequality.

A Review of: “Bell, Michael Mayerfield. An Invitation to Environmental Sociology 2nd Edition.”

provides abundant examples of the role and importance of the land, environment, and nature in shaping places and the human response to them. Shaped by the West Wind is valuable for a wide range of audiences. It uses both theoretical and ‘‘on-the-ground,’’ local source approaches to examining the relationship between culture and environment, producing a study that is useful for professionals, academics, students, and the interested public. With training in public history, Campbell has endeavored to produce a work that is relevant and accessible to a wide audience. She has succeeded admirably in this task. As she states, ‘‘I wanted to study Georgian Bay as an academically trained historian but also as someone who has loved the Bay since childhood. This is not hard to do—because in my mind’s eye I am still simply looking out to the Open, listening to the water and the wind in the pine’’ (22).