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Testimony from the American Sociological Association (ASA) on Advancing Women of Color
in the Sociology Academic Pipeline for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Conference
“Seeking Solutions: Maximizing American Talent by Advance Women of Color in Academia”
Introduction
Since the 1960s, the American Sociological Association (ASA) has been focused on
improving the success of women and under-represented racial/ethnic minorities in the scientific
workforce. Founded in 1905, ASA now has over 14,000 members. Its nearly 50 special interest
sections have more than 21,000 memberships, and it publishes 9 scholarly journals and a
research-based magazine. As the national organization for sociologists, the ASA, through its
Executive Office in Washington, DC, provides a wide range of services to its members and
promotes the vitality, visibility, and diversity of the discipline.
Support Structure
ASA has been successful at improving the participation, visibility and status of underrepresented minorities and women in the discipline by focused efforts to create an organizational
support structure that includes appointed status committees, dedicated personnel, and innovative
programs. In 1970-71, ASA’s elected Council appointed a permanent Committee on the Status of
Women in Sociology (CSWS) and a Committee of the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in
Sociology (CSREMS). The mandate of both was “to increase the degree of participation by
minority and women sociologists in the opportunity structure of the discipline.” These Status
Committees remain vigorous today and reporting regularly the ASA leadership. Most recently,
the CSREMS prepared a study of differences between white students and students of color on the
importance of peer social climate, faculty mentoring and professional socialization. The CSWS
is currently studying time in rank, comparing faculty members by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Women of Color in Sociology
Sociology has the highest representation of minority women in sciences in American
higher education at all degree levels. Minority women are awarded slightly more than a quarter
of bachelor degrees in sociology, about 17 percent of master’s degrees, and 10 percent of
doctoral degrees. The difference between the percentages of women in sociology and physics is
more than seven-fold at all degree levels (see Table 1).
Table 1: Percent Minority Women among U.S. College Graduates by Degree and
Discipline, 2009
Baccalaureate
Master's
Doctorate
Sociology
25.8
17.2
10.1
Biological Sciences
19.6
12.1
8.8
Chemistry
16.8
9.6
5.7
Political Science and Public
15.8
16.8
8.7
Administration
Economics
9.9
5.1
2.9
Math and Computer Science
7.4
5.6
3.2
Engineering
5.6
4.8
2.8
Physics
3.6
2.2
1.3
Source: IPEDS Completions Survey by Race, 2009. Available at https://webcaspar.nsf.gov.
An important factor in the strong representation of women of color in sociology is the
discipline’s core fields of research. They include: social inequalities of race, ethnicity, class, and
gender; medical sociology; sociology of culture; sociology of education; occupations,
organizations, and work; and sociology of the family. Sociologists conduct scientific research in
these areas Women of color are more likely than men of color to participate in the ASA and
these in special interest sections.
ASA has supported programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels to increase
the representation and eventual career success of men and women of color in the discipline. Two
of the most successful programs are known by their acronyms, MOST and MFP.
At the Undergraduate Level
During 1993-1994, ASA began an innovative effort to foster diversity and excellence in
higher education by working with individual undergraduate sociology departments to bring about
systemic changes that impact the participation and place of minority students in the discipline.
The Minority Opportunities through School Transformation program (MOST) helped
departments bring about organizational change by specific changes in the curriculum, mentoring,
research, training, climate and pipeline. Eleven sociology departments participated in this 8-year
program, ranging from liberal arts colleges to large research-extensive universities.
MOST emphasized increased rigor in scientific methods, direct research experiences and
the integration of content on race, ethnicity, class, and gender in all courses and aspects of the
curriculum; the responsibility of all faculty members in a department to mentor all students; a
departmental climate sensitive to diversity; and increasing the number of undergraduates of color
going to graduate school. The outcomes of this program were overwhelmingly positive as the
course offerings including diversity content doubled and the percent of minority students who
graduated increased from 18 to 33 percent. ASA published a monograph of “best practices” and
principles so that other departments, regardless of discipline, could pursue similar models.1
At the Graduate Level
ASA’s now 38-year old pre-doctoral Minority Fellowship Program (MFP), provides
annual stipends, mentoring, training support, access to professional networks, and continuous
guidance and evaluation to individual scholars in close cooperation with host university doctoral
program. Through 2010, MFP was supported by a series of large T-32 training grants from the
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). After 2010, a discipline-wide pledge campaign
was instituted to ensure on-going support of the MFP from sociological organizations and
individuals. Sociologists for Women in Society, for example, donated $100,000 plus on-going
annual support. Through MFP, ASA has supported the training and career development of nearly
300 minority scholars earning the PhD in sociology. MFP Fellows are nationally recruited,
competitively selected by an appointed advisory panel each spring, and their progress monitored
both during and after the PhD.
Findings from Recent National Science Foundation-Funded Research about MFP
ASA received an NSF research grant to compare the past 13 years of MFP PhDs to a
random sample of sociology PhD recipients from the same period. We hypothesized that MFP
leveled the playing field and that Fellows would be equally successful at securing the “ideal”
academic career as measured by employment at research-extensive schools, number of peerreviewed journal articles (including in “top” journals), grants awarded, on-time tenure receipt,
1
Levine, Felice J., Havidan Rodriguez, Carla B. Howery, and Alfonso R. Latoni‐Rodriguez. 2002. Promoting Diversity and Excellence in Higher Education Through Department Change. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. and disciplinary recognition. Table 2 shows that MFP scholars are equally likely as the random
sample of largely white students to receive tenure, are more likely to receive grants, and are more
likely to become leaders in the discipline. They are, however, less likely to publish. However, if
their dissertation advisor was a minority faculty member, they were more likely to publish in
graduate school, suggesting the importance of increasing the number of minority senior scholars
in the discipline.
Table 2: Comparative Career Achievements for Tenure Track/Tenured Academic
Scholars in 2010
Variables
Career Achievements:
Tenured
Employed at a Research I university
Received at least 1 NSF and/or NIH research
grant
Elected as an ASA section officer (at least
once)
Graduate School Scholarly Productivity:
Published at least one article
by co-authorshipa
solo-authored
with someone other than advisor
with dissertation advisor
by kind of advisor:
Minorityb
White femaleb
White maleb
Post-PhD Scholarly Productivity through 2010:
Total number of articles and books publishedc
Total number of articles published in top three
sociological journalsc
a
Randomly
Selected
PhDs
MFP
Fellows
45.9%
26.5%
9.2%
43.1%
21.5%
15.4%
7.1%
13.8%
62.2%
50.8%
34.7%
30.6%
14.3%
18.5%
30.8%
15.4%
12.5%(8)
12.5%(32)
17.3%(52)
21.4%(14)
10.5%(19)
11.5%(26)
4.5(6.7)
0.2(0.74)
3.6(4.9)
0.1(0.21)
Categories are not mutually exclusive.
In parentheses is the total number of PhD graduates who had this kind of advisor. Advisors
with missing race/ethnicity are not reported.
c
Shows group means and standard deviations in parentheses.
b
Women in MFP
Women MFP alumnae have become leaders in the discipline in terms of scholarship and
service. Patricia Hill Collins is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the
University of Maryland. She became the 100th President of the ASA in 2009, both the first
African American woman and former MFP alumna to do so. Linda M. Burton is the James B.
Duke Professor of Sociology at Duke University. She recently completed her term on the
National Research Council's Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences. And MFP
alumna Patricia E. White is Program Director for the Sociology Program, Division of Social
and Economic Sciences, at the National Science Foundation. She has also coordinated the Social
and Political Sciences Cluster, was a senior analyst in the Division of Science Resources
Statistics, and Program Officer in the Methodology, Measurement and Statistics program, all at
NSF.
Despite the distinguished records of many MFP alumna of color, our recent study of MFP
Fellows finds that, in general, alumna are not doing as well as alumni in terms of achieving that
“ideal” academic career. Table 3 shows that MFP women are half as likely as MFP men to be
employed at research-extensive universities, half as likely to receive NSF and/or NIH grants,
about two-thirds as likely to become ASA section leaders, and have about half the peer-reviewed
journal publications since receiving their PhDs. More are full professors (4.8 percent compared
to 0 percent), and they are equally likely to have a publication in one of the discipline’s top three
journals (4.8 percent versus 4.6 percent).
This gap between women and men is not true for the comparison groups of non-MFP
minority scholars and white scholars. The data give one hint as to why there is this difference
among MFPs. Women in MFP may be less well socialized into the academic norms of the
discipline than MFP men. Publications in graduate school usually signal a career of scholarly
publishing that is forthcoming. Over three-quarters (77.3 percent) of MFP men had a least one
publication prior to receiving their PhDs, compared to 38.1 percent of the women. MFP men
appear to be better prepared by their dissertation advisors for scholarly careers; three times the
percent of advisors co-authored at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal with men
compared to the dissertation advisors of women (27.3 percent compared to 9.5 percent). This
gender gap among MFP alumnae/i is cause for concern and still requires further study and
improvement.
Table 3: 2010 Career Outcomes of MFPs Employed in Academia by Gender
MFP Fellows
Men
Women
Scholarly Productivity and Employment for 1997-2009 PhD Graduates:
Employed at a Research I University
31.8%
16.7%
At least One Publication with Mentor prior to
27.3%
9.5%
Graduation
Mean Total Number of Publications since PhD
5.5(1.5)
2.7(0.5)
Graduationa
At least One Article Published in Top Sociology
4.6%
4.8%
Journals
Received NSF and/or NIH Grants
22.7%
11.9%
ASA Section Officer Service
18.2%
11.9%
Rank of 1997-2002 PhD Graduates:
Full Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
a
0.0%
72.7%
27.3%
9.5%
66.7%
23.8%
Standard errors are in parentheses.
ASA will continue its research with particular attention to the issues women of color face
in MFP and in the discipline, including what impacts co-authorship networks during graduate
school, potential marginality in departments, and the effects of more MFP programmatic
emphasis on early post-PhD mentoring. ASA has formed a collaborative research network of
former MFP scholars to supplement the quantitative findings, with in-depth micro-level data on
motivations, perceptions, and experiences of individual minority graduate students and early
career faculty to explore gender differences in the roles of choice and social exclusion in
minorities’ pursuit of “ideal” versus other career trajectories. As such, ASA is moving to
continue MFP support into Fellows’ early post- PhD careers to help enhance grant and
publication productivity. And organizationally, ASA is working to increase the collaboration
between CSREMS and CSWS, ASA’s status committees focused on minority and women
sociologists, so that they can jointly examine both professional socialization and structural issues
of inclusion/exclusion experienced by women sociologists of color. Following the success of
ASA’s MOST report, ASA is planning a monograph “best practices” and demonstrated
principles for increasing the success of minority PhD candidates and early career faculty,
especially women, so that departments can continue to pursue successful program models.