scholarly journals The unequal impact of parenthood in academia

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. eabd1996
Author(s):  
Allison C. Morgan ◽  
Samuel F. Way ◽  
Michael J. D. Hoefer ◽  
Daniel B. Larremore ◽  
Mirta Galesic ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tenure Track ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Publication Data ◽  
Unequal Rates ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
Business Departments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Gender Productivity Gap

Across academia, men and women tend to publish at unequal rates. Existing explanations include the potentially unequal impact of parenthood on scholarship, but a lack of appropriate data has prevented its clear assessment. Here, we quantify the impact of parenthood on scholarship using an extensive survey of the timing of parenthood events, longitudinal publication data, and perceptions of research expectations among 3064 tenure-track faculty at 450 Ph.D.-granting computer science, history, and business departments across the United States and Canada, along with data on institution-specific parental leave policies. Parenthood explains most of the gender productivity gap by lowering the average short-term productivity of mothers, even as parents tend to be slightly more productive on average than nonparents. However, the size of productivity penalty for mothers appears to have shrunk over time. Women report that paid parental leave and adequate childcare are important factors in their recruitment and retention. These results have broad implications for efforts to improve the inclusiveness of scholarship.

The Value of Postponing Pregnancy: California’s Paid Family Leave and the Timing of Pregnancies

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1467-1499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirlee Lichtman-Sadot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Status ◽  
Hispanic Origin ◽  
Monetary Benefit ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Lower Education ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Conditioning a monetary benefit on individuals’ family status can create distortions, even in individuals’ seemingly personal decisions, such as the birth of a child. Birth timing and its response to various policies has been studied by economists in several papers. However, pregnancy timing – i.e. the timing of conception – and its response to policy announcements has not been examined. This paper makes use of a 21-month lag between announcing California’s introduction of the first paid parental leave program in the United States and its scheduled implementation to evaluate whether women timed their pregnancies in order to be eligible for the expected benefit. Using natality data, documenting all births in the United States, a difference-in-differences approach compares California births to births in states outside of California before the program’s introduction and in 2004, the year California introduced paid parental leave. The results show that the distribution of California births in 2004 significantly shifted from the first half of the year to the second half of the year, immediately after the program’s implementation. While the effect is present for all population segments of new mothers, it is largest for disadvantaged mothers – with lower education levels, of Hispanic origin, younger, and not married. These results shed light on the population segments most affected by the introduction of paid parental leave and on the equitable nature of paid parental leave policies.

scholarly journals Paid Parental Leave Laws in the United States: Does Short-Duration Leave Affect Women's Labor-Force Attachment?

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (5) ◽  
pp. 242-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya S. Byker
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Short Duration ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Program Participation ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Maternal Labor Supply ◽  
Paid Leave ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
Labor Force Attachment

I analyze the effects of short-duration paid parental leave on maternal labor supply. Using monthly longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, my event-study research design estimates impacts of paid leave laws in California and New Jersey on women's labor-force outcomes around childbirth. I find that paid leave laws are associated with a substantial increase in labor-force attachment in the months directly around birth. While US-style short-duration leave is unlikely to change prolonged exits from the labor force, my findings imply that paid leave laws induce some women stay more attached to jobs, particularly low-skill women.

scholarly journals Paid Family Leave to Strengthen the STEM Workforce

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Alex Hsain ◽  
Ryan Tam ◽  
Ishita Kamboj ◽  
Hanna Berman ◽  
Ryan Dudek
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Family Leave ◽  
Stem Leave ◽  
Paid Family Leave ◽  
The Family ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
And Mathematics

In the United States many women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) leave their careers after becoming a parent. Attrition is simultaneously occurring with workforce shortages in STEM with two million jobs potentially unfilled by 2025. While there has been an increase in STEM recruitment of women over recent decades, policies aimed at decreasing departure of women in STEM have not been prioritized. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) guarantees workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, but has not shown to increase workforce attachment of new mothers. Instead, studies suggest that short durations of paid leave (6-12 weeks) increase workforce attachment. Medical consensus suggests that a leave of 26 weeks is necessary for maternal health and a leave of 40 weeks is optimal for infant well-being. Coupled with recently introduced paid parental leave legislation in Congress, we recommend timely action to decrease the departure of women from the workforce and to strengthen gender equality in STEM. We recommend instituting 12 weeks of federal paid family leave (PFL) under the recently introduced national family leave insurance program in the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act; S. 463/H.R. 1185).

scholarly journals The Impact of Paid Parental Leave on Labour Supply and Employment Outcomes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Broadway ◽  
Guyonne R.J. Kalb ◽  
Duncan McVicar ◽  
Bill Martin
Keyword(s):  
Labour Supply ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Employment Outcomes ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals COVID-19-Related Changes to Pregnant People's Work-Plans Increase Prenatal Depression

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Sherin ◽  
Theresa E. Gildner ◽  
Zaneta M. Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Depression Score ◽  
Prenatal Depression ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Significant Depression ◽  
Eligibility Requirements ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
The U.S

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented rates of unemployment in the United States. Pregnant workers may be especially affected as they are over-represented in low-wage service and hospitality industries impacted by the pandemic. We surveyed an online convenience sample of currently working pregnant people living in the U.S. (n = 1,417) to determine whether COVID-19-related changes to how long individuals planned to work during their pregnancy, and uncertainty about these changes, were associated with prenatal depression. As hypothesized, both COVID-19-related work-plan changes (OR = 1.81, 95% CI 1.36–2.42, p < 0.001) and uncertainty about the precise nature of these changes (OR = 2.62, 95% CI 1.14–6.0, p = 0.022) were associated with significantly higher odds of a clinically-significant depression score. These effects appeared to be even greater among individuals who continued working outside the home during the pandemic. Since the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that does not guarantee paid parental leave, pregnant people may be forced to choose between keeping their jobs and risking infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results demonstrate a need for immediate suspension of the eligibility requirements for the Family and Medical Leave Act and/or universal access to both paid family leave and prenatal depression screening. This would help to alleviate these concerns and provide pregnant people with more options while preserving their employment status and financial security.

Exploring the Assimilation of GLM-Derived Water Vapor Mass in a Cycled 3DVAR Framework for the Short-Term Forecasts of High-Impact Convective Events

2020 ◽  
Vol 148 (3) ◽  
pp. 1005-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junjun Hu ◽  
Alexandre O. Fierro ◽  
Yunheng Wang ◽  
Jidong Gao ◽  
Edward R. Mansell
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Length Scale ◽  
Mixing Ratio ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Forecast Performance ◽  
Water Vapor Mixing Ratio ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The recent successful deployment of the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on board the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R series (GOES-16/17) provides nearly uniform spatiotemporal measurements of total lightning (intracloud plus cloud to ground) over the Americas and adjacent vast oceanic regions. This study evaluates the potential value of assimilating GLM-derived water vapor mixing ratio on short-term (≤6 h), cloud-scale (dx = 1.5 km) forecasts of five severe weather events over the Great Plains of the United States using a three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) data assimilation (DA) system. Toward a more systematic assimilation of real GLM data, this study conducted sensitivity tests aimed at evaluating the impact of the horizontal decorrelation length scale, DA cycling frequency, and the time window size for accumulating GLM lightning observations prior to the DA. Forecast statistics aggregated over all five cases suggested that an optimal forecast performance is obtained when lightning measurements are accumulated over a 10-min interval and GLM-derived water vapor mixing ratio values are assimilated every 15 min with a horizontal decorrelation length scale of 3 km. This suggested configuration for the GLM DA together with companion experiments (i) not assimilating any data, (ii) assimilating radar data only, and (iii) assimilating both GLM and radar data were evaluated for the same five cases. Overall, GLM data have shown potential to help improve the short-term (<3 h) forecast skill of composite reflectivity fields and individual storm tracks. While this result also held for accumulated rainfall, longer-term (≥3 h) forecasts were generally characterized by noteworthy wet biases.

scholarly journals Maternity and Paternity Policies Available to Academic Librarians

2013 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Sara Connell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Librarians ◽  
Tenure Track ◽  
Research Institutions ◽  
Better Than

This study examines how frequently parental leave and other related childcare policies are available to academic librarians across the United States. It also looks at the relationships between policies offered and types of academic libraries that offer those policies. The author surveyed administrators at academic libraries serving baccalaureate, master’s, and research institutions and discovered that benefits available to academic librarians are not as generous as those available to faculty, and that tenured and tenure-track librarians fare better than counterparts who are not eligible for tenure.

Structural Hindrances or Less Driven Women? Managers’ Views on Corporate Quotas

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Þorgerður J. Einarsdóttir ◽  
Guðbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir ◽  
Margrét Valdimarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Business Leadership ◽  
Top Managers ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women ◽  
The Impact

AbstractHigh levels of women in politics and paid work, together with the availability of paid parental leave and public child care, make the gender imbalance in business leadership in Iceland all the more confounding. This study analyzes business leaders’ attitudes toward gender and leadership positions after a gender quota law for company boards was implemented in 2013. We explore support for gender quotas and whether it is related to how respondents explain women's underrepresentation in leadership positions. A questionnaire was sent to 1,349 managers in the 250 largest companies in Iceland. Our findings indicate that women are more supportive of gender quotas than men. The way in which the respondents explain the underrepresentation of women as top managers is strongly related to their support for gender quotas. Those who believe that women are structurally disadvantaged are more likely to support gender quotas than those who adhere to individual explanations. Furthermore, male dominance at higher company levels is related to negative views on gender quotas, whereas this does not apply at lower levels. The research emphasizes the impact of business leaders on the recruitment of women to business leadership positions and, at the same time, has implications for policy interventions.

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