Underestimating the Gender Gap? An Exploratory Two-Step Cluster Analysis of STEM Labor Segmentation and Its Impact on Women

Gender inequality in science and technology fields takes various and complex shapes, from recruitment and retention across educational levels, to job entry and advancement barriers, to pay and compensation. Although the salary gap for women in these fields is well documented, much of the relevant research has relied exclusively on mean earned wages to estimate compensation differentials by gender. This approach may underestimate the actual extent of the gender gap more than if more comprehensive measures of compensation (e.g., wages along with health insurance and retirement benefits) were used. Through a two-step cluster analysis of the 2008–2010 US Census Survey of Income and Program Participation, in this study I considered wages along with access to employer-provided health and pension benefits, as well as job characteristics such as union membership, part-time employment, and access to employer-provided training, to explore labor segmentation in the science and technology workforce. The findings reveal a pattern consistent with labor segmentation, including the presence of clusters with secondary employment characteristics (i.e., low wages, part-time employment, and lack of health insurance and pension benefits). Significantly, women were overrepresented in such clusters, as well as in part-time and contingent work arrangements more generally. The findings both support and complicate the evidence from prior research on the gender gap by illustrating the cumulative impact that measures of total compensation can have in assessing the true extent of compensation disparities between men and women and by highlighting the stratification of highly skilled labor in the new economy

Managing the Academic Racehorse: Bioaccountability, Surveillance, and the Crafting of Docile Faculty in Mexican Universities

In this essay, we consider the “petty” managerial technologies of audit and surveillance that shape the lives of Mexican faculty and introduce the term bioaccountability to refer to the growing use of biometric control mechanisms implemented around the world to monitor faculty activities and performance. We draw on personal experience at three Mexican public universities to illustrate the chilling impact of encroaching (bio)accountability policies on academic culture, including the gradual erosion of academic freedom

Shifting Positionalities Across International Locations: Embodied Knowledge, Time-Geography, and the Polyvalence of Privilege

Despite a robust body of scholarship on positionality, the practice of international higher education research often neglects engagement with the varied, fluid, and complex positionalities of researchers across national boundaries. Through a series of vignettes, the authors argue for reflexivity that extends beyond rigid social identities and towards embodied knowledge, or selfunderstanding that is mutable and context-responsive. For international mobile researchers especially, new affinities can evolve through propinquity and social custom, and gradually become incorporated into self-knowledge with the passing of time. Beyond mere cultural competency, this article raises the importance of symbolic competency that simultaneously negotiates the multiple dimensions of language, various forms of capital, as well as evolving social identities in conducting research in different contexts

Not Waving but Striving: Research Collaboration in the Context of Stratification, Segmentation, and the Quest for Prestige

In this article we examine the ways in which institutional stratification and academic labor segmentation contribute to shaping faculty collaborative activities. We draw on interviews from science and engineering faculty at two institutions in the United States to highlight how collaboration, as an essential form of academic labor, is shaped by institutional factors like resource stress and isomorphic pressures to fit the ideal of the “world-class” research-intensive university. The findings suggest that a university’s relative position in the institutional status hierarchy has a significant impact on the types of resources faculty seeking to establish collaborations can access and mobilize, thus reinforcing existing patterns of institutional stratification where “striving” institutions can never catch up to their more prestigious peers. At the same time, the pressure to maximize institutional prestige can create paradoxical interinstitutional dynamics where seemingly successful “Mode 2” units that rely almost exclusively on external resources and partnerships with industry are expected to mold themselves more closely to the activity streams of traditional academic units

Fuera de lugar: Undocumented Students, Dislocation, and the Search for Belonging

This article presents findings from a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study on the experiences of six undocumented college students at a community college in the Midwest United States. We focused on two main research questions: What are some of the key developmental experiences of undocumented youth? What is the impact of these experiences on the students’ identity and sense of belonging in educational spaces, especially as they transition to college? The findings illustrate the experiences of the six participant coresearchers (PCRs) as they navigated the messy, fragile, and shifting nature of belonging. A common thread in their narratives was the recurrence across their young lives of moments of dislocation (or “being-out-of-place”) associated with their undocumented status. These moments of dislocation barred these undocumented students from fully inhabiting both educational and noneducational spaces; in addition, they affected their ability to develop a sense of belonging as they transitioned to the college environment. Dislocation entails a degree of vulnerability and liminality that is not necessarily encompassed in current models of student development theory, nor considered in institutional support structures created with majority-population students in mind. We argue that institutional agents require sensitivity to the multiple types of dislocation that undocumented youth may experience within and beyond educational settings

STEM Employment in the New Economy: A Labor Market Segmentation Approach

The present study examined the extent to which the U.S. STEM labor market is stratified in terms of quality of employment. Through a series of cluster analyses and Chi-square tests on data drawn from the 2008 Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), the study found evidence of segmentation in the highly-skilled STEM and non-STEM samples, which included workers with a subbaccalaureate diploma or above. The cluster analyses show a pattern consistent with Labor Market Segmentation theory: Higher wages are associated with other primary employment characteristics, including health insurance and pension benefits, as well as full-time employment. In turn, lower wages showed a tendency to cluster with secondary employment characteristics, such as part-time employment, multiple employment, and restricted access to health insurance and pension benefits. The findings also suggest that women have a higher likelihood of being employed in STEM jobs with secondary characteristics. The findings reveal a far more variegated employment landscape than is usually presented in national reports of the STEM workforce. There is evidence that, while STEM employment may be more resilient than non-STEM employment to labor restructuring trends in the new economy, the former is far from immune to secondary labor characteristics. There is a need for ongoing dialogue between STEM education (at all levels), employers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to truly understand not only the barriers to equity in employment relations, but also the mechanisms that create and maintain segmentation and how they may impact women, underrepresented minorities, and the foreign-born

If I didn’t have professional dreams maybe I wouldn’t think of leaving

In this qualitative multiple case study, I explored the identities of students in a Lengua Inglesa major in a northern Mexican university. By applying a theoretical framework of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991; Norton, 2000; Wenger, 1998), I examined the ways in which the identities of these students are negotiated as the students move within and across linguistic and cultural communities. I attempted to answer four main questions: What are the students’ imagined communities at the beginning of the program? What are the students’ imagined communities towards the end of the program? What may be the impact on students’ identity/imagined communities of receiving instruction in a foreign language while surrounded by their native language and culture? The study took place at a Lengua Inglesa major that operates within the School of Humanities at a university located near the U.S.-Mexico border. Data collection took place from February through April 2006, and consisted in two rounds of semi-structured interviews with five first-year students, four fourth-year students, as well as four full-time professors and three sessional instructors. I used an open-ended interview guide to facilitate the interview process. Since all of the participants were fluent in both Spanish and English, as I was, they were given the choice of conducting the interview in either language. The interviews were digitally recorded and subsequently transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically. The findings of this study suggest that students imagine a Lengua Inglesa degree will provide them with linguistic resources and knowledge necessary to access a wide range of imagined communities both within and beyond national boundaries. This vision seems to be reinforced by the futures that the Lengua Inglesa professors envision for Lengua Inglesa graduates, which includes the adoption of an identity as English-language-professionals. As part of this identity, Lengua Inglesa students are expected to develop professional skills and a strong work ethic that allows them gain access to a wide range of professional and academic imagined communities. This identity helps establish clear boundaries between Lengua Inglesa and surrounding learning communities that the Lengua Inglesa community perceives as having impoverished futures.Education, Faculty ofEducational Studies (EDST), Department ofGraduat