Career Success of Women in the Chemical Industry, Part 2

Chapter 6

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Career Success of Women in the Chemical Industry, Part 2: Navigating Workplace Challenges Julie R. Arseneau,1 Penelope A. Asay,2 Jill D. Paquin,3 Heather M. Walton,4 Vanessa Downing,5 Melissa S. Roffman,6 and Ruth E. Fassinger7,* 1Southeast

Louisiana Veterans Health Care System, New Orleans, Louisiana 70161, United States 2Illinois School of Professional Psychology, Chicago, Illinois 60601, United States 3Chatham University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15232, United States 4Veterans Affairs Boston Health Care System, Brockton, Massachusetts 02301, United States 5Christiana Care Health System, Newark, Delaware 19718, United States 6Baptist Health, AgeWell Center for Senior Health, Jacksonville, Florida 32207, United States 7University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, United States *E-mail: [email protected]

This is the second of three articles where we report findings from Project ENHANCE, an investigation of the career experiences of women trained in science and engineering and working in the chemical industry. The project utilized both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, with the broad goals of identifying factors that impede or facilitate diverse women’s career success from the point of view of both women and management, and identifying corporate practices that contribute to positive workplace experiences for women in industrial chemistry. The first article in the series presents all of the project methodology and broad, overall findings related to success, satisfaction, advancement, company support, and the home-work interface. This, the second article in the series, focuses in particular on challenges in the workplace for

© 2017 American Chemical Society Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

diverse women, including organizational support and climate, mentoring, stressors and coping responses, and perceptions and use of company benefits. The third article in the series presents comparisons between women and management in their experiences and perceptions of women working in industrial chemistry, including their judgments regarding company initiatives aimed at supporting women, and also offers a brief discussion of leadership issues for women in this sector.


Introduction Women’s underrepresentation in science and engineering is well documented and much discussed. Although women scientists continue to approach parity with male scientists in employment (composing 44% of all chemists and material scientists in the American workforce as of 2012), they are much less likely to be employed in the industrial sector, the largest employer of science and engineering workers (1). Most previous research on women scientists and engineers has focused on women working in academia, and relatively little is known at present about the experiences of women scientists and engineers working in the chemical industry. Prior research on women’s career development, largely conducted by vocational psychologists, has revealed a number of important factors that affect women’s rates of participation and advancement in the workplace more generally, and particularly in fields traditionally dominated by men, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) occupations. For example, research has documented that female science faculty report less influence, fewer opportunities for leadership, slower advancement, and more social isolation than their male counterparts (2). Multiple negative factors within the workplace—which may be formal structures, climate-related features of the environment, or specific experiences (e.g., harassment)—have been found to hinder the success of women workers, and perhaps especially women scientists. Such factors limit opportunities, increase obstacles, and result in lowered success, satisfaction, and workplace longevity. Additional research on these factors is needed, as well as attention to how these features may interact with positive factors in the workplace known to enhance occupational success, such as organizational support and mentoring. To begin to address the knowledge gap regarding women working in industrial settings, our work in Project ENHANCE, carried out at the University of Maryland with support from the National Science Foundation, was aimed at investigating the experiences of STEM-trained women working in the chemical industry specifically. The first article (Part 1) (3) in this three-article series presents an overview of the questions that drove our investigation, outlines the methodology we used to conduct our multi-year study, and presents broad, overall results related to success, satisfaction, advancement, company support, and the home-work interface. This, the second article in the series, explores specific challenges for diverse women in the workplace, including organizational support and climate, mentoring, stressors and coping responses, and company benefits 146 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

available to and used by women working in industrial chemistry. The third article (Part 3) (4) in the series presents results specifically related to management perspectives, comparisons between managers and women employees, and leadership issues for women in industrial settings.


The Committed Company: Perceived Organizational Support One of the most extensively-studied and widely-cited influences on women’s career choice, retention, and success is the extent to which workplaces proactively support and encourage women employees. A number of different constructs compose a cluster of environmental “support” variables that use different terminologies (e.g., organizational support, workplace climate, social support) and methods of assessment; research also has explored a wide array of more specific sources or kinds of support (e.g., mentoring, sponsorship, supervisor feedback, co-worker attitudes, and the like). One articulation of this broad kind of workplace support that has been particularly robust in the literature is termed Perceived Organizational Support (POS) (5). Organizational support theory posits that the commitment of employees to their organization is influenced strongly by their perceptions of the organization’s commitment to them. Eisenberger and colleagues (5) hypothesized that because employees tend to personify their organizations—that is, they tend to view actions by agents of the organization as actions of the organization itself—employees develop global perceptions of the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. Employees use these perceptions to judge the personified organization’s readiness to reward their work effort. Employees thus become more committed to organizations that are perceived to be committed to them. This theory has been supported empirically, with evidence that perceived organizational support (POS) is a unidimensional construct that is distinct from general job satisfaction (5, 6). Various recognition, rewards, and employee benefits have been found to be related to POS, including compensation (7), perceived usefulness of work-life benefits (8), and organization-level recognition and rewards (6). Perceived organizational support has been found to be distinct from supervisor support, coworker support, and work-group support (6, 9, 10); however, POS is positively correlated with support from supervisors, coworkers, and the work-group. Employee perceptions of top management’s general expressions of support for employees have been found to have a significant relationship with POS, as has formal positive feedback directed toward individual employees; furthermore, when asked which source they thought was most influential in shaping their perceptions of organizational support, respondents in one study indicated that their immediate supervisors were most important, while people within their workgroups also were important (9). Perceived organizational support has been related to outcomes favorable to both employees and their organizations. In multiple studies, POS has been found to be related positively to employee attendance and performance (6), as well as to employee affective and organizational commitment (11). Results 147 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


have been somewhat mixed regarding the existence of a relationship between POS and employee turnover (6, 12). However, job satisfaction was identified as a positive outcome of POS in an important meta-analysis of research on the construct (6). Perceived organizational support therefore is a critical construct to examine when considering the satisfaction and success of women scientists and engineers working in industrial settings, particularly given evidence that perceived organizational support may differ by gender (13). Increased understanding of the ways in which other workplace variables are linked to POS might allow for more effective interventions aimed at supporting the success of women in the STEM workplace broadly and industry specifically.

Mentoring: Helpful but Hard To Find? A specific form of organizational support that has received considerable attention in the career development literature is mentoring. Mentoring has been defined as an interpersonal process in which a more experienced colleague provides support and guidance to a less experienced colleague; according to this model, mentors’ support may be career-related and instrumental or emotionally-supportive and psychosocial in nature (14). Career-related functions involve helping mentees develop professional skills for career advancement, such as how to garner recognition or set long-term career goals. Career-enhancing mentoring activities also include coaching, assigning challenging work, enhancing visibility, or providing professional exposure and protection to the mentee. Psychosocial functions concern features of the relationship that provide emotional support or facilitate a mentee’s sense of competence, such as role modeling or advice-giving. Mentors’ provision of psychosocial support may also include acceptance and confirmation, counseling, and friendship. The literature on mentoring indicates that male mentors tend to provide more task-oriented support, whereas women tend to provide both task-oriented and personal/emotional support (15). Research also suggests that the quality of the mentoring relationship is more important than other features such as demographic matching of mentor and mentee (e.g., same race or gender); rather it is perceived similarities to one’s mentor in attitudes, values, and beliefs that are associated with highest levels of satisfaction for mentees (16). The importance of having a mentor has been associated with greater job satisfaction and career commitment, higher salaries, higher levels of perceived organizational support, more promotions, and higher levels of personal identity, self-esteem, and creativity (17). The difficulty that women often experience in finding mentors in their organizations has been identified as a significant barrier to women’s career advancement (17–19). A recent study of those receiving doctoral degrees from 11 top graduate programs in chemistry, for example, found that women reported fewer positive experiences with mentors than did men across their undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate educational experiences (20). Catalyst studies documented more than a decade ago that women scientists in industry face organizational barriers to advancement that result from lack of women in more advanced positions who can serve as mentors, lack of female role models, and 148 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


unwillingness of men to mentor women (21). Moreover, even when mentoring appears to be occurring for women, there is evidence that the kind of mentoring being offered is supportive but not necessarily instrumental (what is often referred to in the corporate world as “sponsorship”)—that is, women may be receiving emotional support and help, but mentors may not be helping them to network, providing them with opportunities to develop skills, sponsoring them for awards and honors, or moving them into choice assignments (22). As it is the latter activities that actually lead to success, women may end up confused and blaming themselves when they feel they are receiving support but remain unable to progress. Finally, racial/ethnic and sexual minority women, as well as women with disabilities, often have the most difficulty in accessing mentors and obtaining the kind of mentoring that moves them forward (23–25).

In the Ether: Negative Workplace Climate Sonnert and Holton (26) classically proposed that gender disparities in science careers can be understood best by the structural mechanisms that serve as barriers toward women’s advancement, as opposed to inherent gender differences that were assumed by many. These barriers include gender discrimination, (e.g., being passed over for jobs and tenure or left out of social networks and scientific collaborations), gender socialization (e.g., poor and inaccurate self-assessments of abilities leading to lowered ambitions), and gender differences in professional and scientific behaviors (e.g., men are more self-promoting). This is consistent with an important finding in the literature, well-documented over time, that a negative workplace “climate”—generally conceptualized as overt and covert sexism, direct and environmental harassment, and “isms” embedded in organizational policies and practices (e.g., sexism, racism, heterosexism, ableism)—is an important barrier to women’s career development and professional outcomes in STEM fields (24, 25). Much has been written on the “chilly” climate (27) experienced by women in education and the workforce. In such environments, women often are sent subtle messages that they are not on equal footing with their male colleagues, while being told overtly that discrimination against women is nonexistent. Manifestations of a chilly climate include approaching women professionals with stereotyped expectations (e.g., accommodating, less intelligent, nurturing); holding contradictory judgments of comparable behavior for women and men (e.g., she is emotional, he is angry); focusing on women’s personalities and appearances as opposed to accomplishments and competencies; and devaluing women’s accomplishments even if they are the same or better than those of their male colleagues (e.g., her accomplishments are a result of external factors such as luck, his are a result of internal factors such as ability). Additionally, negative workplace climate may be reflected in exclusion of women from informal and formal social networks, and minimizing the importance of discussions about improving the workplace climate for women in science and engineering (27). The vocational psychology literature also acknowledges that seemingly neutral or “null” environments can inadvertently fail to support women, because they 149 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


ignore the societal advantage and disadvantage in career development that men and women, respectively, experience (28). More overtly negative workplace experiences such as sexual harassment, sexist conversations and jokes, racism, heterosexism, and ableism also exist, and are indicators of a hostile, rather than simply chilly, climate. A specific organizational climate may (and often does) include both hostile and chilly features. Perceptions of workplace climate generally have been associated with attitudes and behavior toward work and one’s company (29). Perceptions of climate related to gender equity and discrimination specifically have been associated with numerous outcomes. Gender discrimination is negatively associated with job satisfaction, affective commitment, and tenure for women; perceived discrimination has been found to be positively associated not only with undesirable job-related variables but also with reductions in physical and emotional health (30). A large study of the experiences of women engineers found that women who reported experiencing a negative workplace climate (e.g., belittling and condescending treatment, systematic undermining by supervisors and coworkers) were significantly less satisfied in their jobs and more likely to want to leave their organizations than those who did not; additionally, negative workplace climate was cited frequently among the women in the study who had elected to leave the field of engineering (31). Even very recent research reveals that women continue to be less associated than men with traits that scientists are expected to possess (32). Perhaps unsurprisingly, women, more than men, report gender inequity and organizational injustice, particularly around pay, respect, organizational practices regarding awards and advancement, and discrimination (33).

Sexual and Gender Harassment Whereas stereotyping, diminishing of accomplishments, and fewer supportive relationships may comprise a “chilly” workplace climate, sexual harassment is more specifically associated with a hostile organizational climate for women. Sexual harassment can be defined as the “sexualization of a work relationship, usually directed at women by men, and includes sexist comments (gender harassment), unwanted sexual attention, sexual coercion, and sexual assault” (2). Male-dominated fields, such as science and engineering occupations, are more likely to breed sexual harassment (2); in addition to a numerical majority of men in science and engineering, a hierarchy in which men are highly and visibly overrepresented at the top supports the proliferation of a sexist climate, where harassment is used to maintain the gendered power structure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women who believe that their organization is tolerant of sexual harassment generally report experiencing more harassment (34). Organizational variables found to relate to lower reported experiences of unwanted sexual behaviors include organization concern for employee welfare, gender-specific aspects of organizational climate (e.g., positive attitude toward treatment of women), and a friendly attitude by management toward the home-work interface (35). 150 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


Sexual harassment has been associated with numerous negative occupational and psychological outcomes. Satisfaction with coworkers, supervisors, and work have been found to lessen, decreases in productivity have been observed, and reduction in commitment to and engagement in work have been documented. Furthermore, employees who experienced harassment reported more mental health difficulties, absenteeism, and increased desire for job turnover (36, 37). Gender harassment is a related experience documented in hostile male-dominated work environments that is characterized by hostility toward individuals who violate gender ideals; rather than inappropriate expressions of sexual advancement, these are verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey generally insulting, hostile, and degrading attitudes about women. Gender harassment of professional women in traditionally male-dominated fields has been associated with a wide variety of negative outcomes, including reductions in job satisfaction, job performance, organizational commitment, satisfaction with professional relationships, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with health (38). Over time, the accumulation of sexual harassment experiences, subtle and/or overt, can have a devastating impact on women employees (39).

Workplace Climate and Diverse Women For women of color and sexual minority women, organizational policies and practices that comprise the workplace climate additionally may be experienced as racist and homophobic or heterosexist, and these may compound the negative effects of sexism or impose unique effects on job outcomes. For example, Catalyst research within the business sector found that African American women encountered negative racist stereotypes, doubts of their ability, and little support from their organizations (40). Additionally, African American women reported less inclusion in informal networks, and experienced difficult relationships with White women colleagues. Similarly, Latina women reported that their top barriers to advancement were the absence of mentors/sponsors, informal networks, and Latina role models; 38% additionally reported confronting stereotypes in their careers that made it difficult to advance. Asian American women perceived that lacking important professional relationships had hindered their career advancement (21, 40). Furthermore, differences between cultural and workplace values may impede success; for example, self-promotion is cited as an advancement tool, but may conflict with a cultural value of self-effacement held by some Asian American women. Finally, for sexual and gender minority (e.g., bisexual, lesbian, transgender) individuals, identity disclosure at work has been associated with more negative workplace climate experiences, including unfair treatment and stress (41). Similarly, racial and sexual minority women in science and engineering are believed to experience poorer job outcomes because their double or triple minority status results in more barriers and limited opportunities (24, 25). 151 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


Project ENHANCE: Studying Women in the Chemical Industry Little direct information exists on the experiences of STEM-trained women working in industrial settings. However, the existing vocational literature suggests that perceived organizational support, particularly through the contribution of mentoring, may play an important role in their job-related behaviors and outcomes. A goal of Project ENHANCE was to examine perceived organizational support in a sample of women scientists and engineers currently working in the chemical industry. We examined variables that have been studied in prior research, including supervisor support, coworker support, perceived rewards and recognition, and employee benefits. In addition, several measures of mentoring, an important variable in the literature on workplace support, also were included. The study sought to explore the amount and types of support perceived by this sample of women. Additionally, the study aimed to discover workplace experiences that predict POS for this sample of women and to assess their relative contributions to POS. The career development literature further suggests that perceived gender discrimination, an aspect of workplace climate, had a significant impact on women’s overall attitudes toward their employment (4). Thus, Project ENHANCE also explored how workplace climate relates to employment outcomes for these women generally (e.g., success, advancement experiences), as well as for diverse subgroups of women specifically (e.g., racial/ethnic and sexual minority women). Additionally, although previous studies have examined workplace climate as a predictor of other variables such as job satisfaction, we sought to examine which variables would lead to the prediction of perceptions of workplace climate. Finally, we were interested in assessing coping strategies used by women who have experienced a negative workplace climate, including those reporting experiences of sexual harassment.

Methods of the Study Summarized As described in the first article in this series (3), the Project ENHANCE multiyear study was carried out at the University of Maryland by a diverse team of faculty and (then) advanced doctoral student researchers, as well as consultants from industry and academe. The project consisted of four main components and a follow-up study: Quantitative, anonymous, web-based surveys of 1,725 women chemists and 264 male and female managers; voluntary qualitative interviews with 26 women and 6 managers (selected from among volunteers as representative of the respondents to our surveys); and a follow-up interview study of mentoring conducted with nine male managers (42). Respondents were from 25 Fortune 1000 U.S.-based chemical companies, and were recruited in collaboration with company management, our industry consultant, our advisory board of top leaders in industrial chemistry, and professional societies such as the Women Chemists Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS). This, the second article in the three-article series, uses data from the women’s portion of the study, and focuses on the experiences of diverse women regarding organizational support 152 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


and climate, mentoring, stressors and coping responses, and availability and use of company benefits. Descriptions of all of the measures used in the study are presented in the first article in this series (3). As described in the first article in this series (3), we conducted hundreds of quantitative analyses common in psychology and appropriate to the variables, sample sizes, and research questions of interest to us, including: a) assessing the psychometric properties of our instruments (e.g., internal consistency reliability, factor structure); b) obtaining correlations among variables to explore significant relationships: c) conducting analyses of variance (ANOVA), t-tests, and chi-square tests to compare similarities and differences among groups and sub-groups across variables; d) running regression analyses to establish the significant prediction of variables by other variables; e) completing all follow-up statistical tests demanded for interpretability in the various approaches; and f) making statistical adjustments due to unequal sample sizes, missing data, and the like. Due to large samples and numbers of analyses, we used a very stringent standard for determining significance in our quantitative findings (p

Career Success of Women in the Chemical Industry, Part 2

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