Kathrin Zippel

Women in Global Science

Advancing Academic Careers Through International Collaboration

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Scientific and engineering research is increasingly global, and international collaboration can be essential to academic success. Yet even as administrators and policymakers extol the benefits of global science, few recognize the diversity of international research collaborations and their participants, or take gendered inequalities into account. Women in Global Science is the first book to consider systematically the challenges and opportunities that the globalization of scientific work brings to U.S. academics, especially for women faculty. Kathrin Zippel looks to the STEM fields as a case study, where gendered cultures and structures in academia have contributed to an underrepresentation of women. While some have approached underrepresentation as a national concern with a national solution, Zippel highlights how gender relations are reconfigured in global academia. For U.S. women in particular, international collaboration offers opportunities to step outside of exclusionary networks at home. International collaboration is not the panacea to gendered inequalities in academia, but, as Zippel argues, international considerations can be key to ending the steady attrition of women in STEM fields and developing a more inclusive academic world.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. März 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 159mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 465g
• ISBN-13: 9781503600393
• ISBN-10: 1503600394
• Artikelnr.: 46497485

Autorenporträt

Kathrin Zippel is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University. She is the author of The Politics of Sexual Harassment: A Comparative Study of the United States, the European Union, and Germany (2006), winner of the APSA Victoria Schuck Award.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1A World of Opportunity: Science, Gender, and Collaboration
chapter abstract
Chapter 1 engages the reader by explaining the key questions, arguments,
and theoretical concepts for the book. What happens when academic work
globalizes, what kind of international research collaborations do STEM
faculty engage in? It introduces the core argument that globalization of
academia is a gendered process as global science is organized in gendered
ways, such as the framework of glass fences and .edu bonus. This chapter
also contextualizes U.S. leadership in global science and challenges to it
by providing cross-nationally statistical information about current
developments in the globalization of science and technological knowledge,
including international collaborations, co-authorships, and R&D spending.
2Traveling Abroad, Coming Home: Ambivalent Discourses on the U.S. Role in
(Global) Science
chapter abstract
Chapter 2 examines the institutional context (U.S. funding institutions and
universities) for faculty decisions about engagement in international
collaboration and research. By analyzing U.S. faculty constructions of
(global) science, it identifies how U.S. institutions position themselves
globally. Part of this dynamic is the construction of international
collaboration as an activity for elite faculty. And although claims to U.S.
scientific supremacy persist, there also the call for "national interest"
in maintaining its global position. The chapter further investigates the
contrast between faculty perceptions of international research and
collaborations as extremely positive-a highlight of their careers-and their
experiences of lack of institutional recognition and support. Not
surprisingly, given these competing imperatives, faculty members use
contradictory rationales to explain why international academic work is
meaningful to them in the context of constructions of U.S. superiority,
competition, the universality of scientific work, and international
research as a "risky" activity.
3The .edu Bonus: Gender, Academic Nationality, and Status
chapter abstract
This chapter explains the benefits offered to women in international
academic work. Cultural schemas for U.S. scientists reveal an .edu bonus
that depicts U.S. scholars as competent and overshadows stereotypes of
women as less so. Academics marginalized by gender, minority background, or
field can benefit from the .edu bonus, drawing on the positive aspects of
being a U.S. scholar in an international environment. Being a woman and a
foreigner is thus a positive combination rather than an accumulation of
disadvantages. Persistent stereotypes and myths hold that U.S. women
scientists are not effective in cultural environments where no native women
hold equal positions of power. But women scientists report that they are
seen foremost as foreigners and treated as such, making their gender status
less salient. This .edu bonus can serve to expand networks internationally
and demonstrates the importance of analyzing the intersection of gender and
foreigner status of U.S. scientists.
4Glass Fences: Gendered Organization of Global Academia
chapter abstract
Chapter 4 focuses on glass fences, the various gendered challenges in
international research collaborations. Academia is still organized in
gendered ways, and gender is embedded in the international collaboration
policies and practices of nation-states, funding agencies, universities,
and researchers. The chapter illustrates how these fences emerge in
specific international work settings and research practices, examining in
particular the implications for women's access to and opportunities to
participate in, organize, and operate international conferences, research
sites, and fieldwork. Fences emerge when institutions and individuals
construct safety abroad as a gendered issue. (Global) academia is gendered
through the organization of academic work around norms, values, and
expectations that fit the ideal of an elite male global scientist with the
personal, social, and academic resources to climb fences. The very
structure of international collaboration thus privileges men over women and
re-creates gendered inequalities in academia, globally and in the United
States.
5Families and International Mobility: Fences or Opportunities?
chapter abstract
This chapter challenges the conventional wisdom that family barriers make
it impossible for faculty to engage in international collaborations and
mobility. Despite discourse that suggests children amplify family burdens
for international research for mothers in particular, this chapter debunks
the notion that families (meaning young children) construct an
insurmountable fence for women and hinder international work only for
mothers. Instead, diverse family commitments in various constellations can
potentially be constraining, but they can also motivate and even support
research abroad. Faculty with international family ties might have extra
incentive to spend time in other countries and forge transnational academic
careers, while "portable" or "supportive" partners (or lack thereof) can be
another important factor in individual mobility and the ability to engage
in international collaborations.
6Toward an Inclusive World of (Global) Academia
chapter abstract
This chapter considers implications for institutions. Funding agencies and
universities need to design internationalization strategies that recognize
the diversity of both international research collaborations and their
participants and take gender inequalities at the international and national
level into account. The chapter suggests concrete ways to support
international research collaborations that are inclusive of women, for
example, being transparent about support allocation, eliminating obstacles
and fences through bureaucratic procedures and policies, and "broadening
participation" along demographic lines.