Career Success of Women in the Chemical Industry, Part 3: Getting

Chapter 7

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

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

This is the third 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 the project methodology and broad, overall findings related to success, satisfaction, advancement, company support, and the home-work interface. The second article in the series focuses on workplace challenges for diverse women, and presents findings related to organizational support and climate, mentoring, stressors and coping responses, and perceptions and © 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.

use of company benefits. This, 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 A decade ago, the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics (1) reported that women in 2006 composed roughly 50% of all managers, and outnumbered men across nonSTEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) sectors such as human resources, community and social services, education administration, and finance and accounting. In science, however, it was only recently that the prestigious National Academy of Sciences appointed its first woman president (2)—a major milestone for women in STEM fields. Moreover, women in managerial positions in STEM industry, and in the chemical industry in particular, remain severely underrepresented. In 2012, for example, only 16.6% of the 5,488 directors, and 14.3% of the 5,005 executive officers at Fortune 500 chemical companies were women (3). And while there has been an “influx of women in top positions” in chemical companies over the past 10 years (as noted by a recent article in Chemical & Engineering News), “these gains…do not mask the reality that women still have not achieved anything resembling equality” (3). In the 2016 Chemical & Engineering News’ annual survey, updates indicate that women in the chemical industry are continuing to make small gains for the fourth year in a row, but remain seriously underrepresented at leadership levels. Women currently occupy 16.7% of board of director seats at 42 U.S. firms with large chemical businesses, and 14.2% of 402 executive officer positions. Of the executive positions women hold, 33% are in Human Resources, 28% have Business Responsibility, 18% are Legal, 14% are Financial, and 7% are in Administration. Moreover, data indicate that the chemical industry is “behind the rest of the corporate world,” with 19.9% of board positions at S&P 500 firms held by women (4). Only 25% of leadership positions at the National Labs are held by women, and among the 10 U.S. Department of Energy National Labs, only one has a female director (4). Internationally, some data indicate that women in the U.S. lag far behind their European colleagues; data from 13 top European chemical firms indicate that 28.6% of their board seats are filled by women (4). Much work has been done to document the challenges and issues for women in STEM fields. However, most of the attention in the research literature has focused on women in the academic sector (both as students and faculty), while the experiences of women working in industry (the largest employer of STEM-trained women) have remained largely undocumented. Our work in Project ENHANCE, conducted at the University of Maryland and supported by the National Science Foundation, was aimed at filling this gap by investigating the experiences of STEM-trained women working in the chemical industry. The first article (Part 1) (5) in our three-article series presents an overview of the questions that drove 174 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


our investigation, outlines the methodology we used to conduct our multi-year study, and presents results related to success, satisfaction, advancement, company support, and the home-work interface for women. The second article (Part 2) (6) in our series reports on workplace challenges for diverse women, with particular focus on organizational support and climate, mentoring, stressors and coping responses, and company benefits used by women. This, the third article, focuses on the management portion of our main study, as well as a follow-up study of managers and mentoring conducted by the first and last authors (7). Here we document the perceptions of managers and compare their perceptions to those of women, we explore company initiatives aimed at supporting women employees, and we conclude with a brief discussion of challenges for women in leadership positions in the industrial sector.

Management in the Chemical Industry: Why So Few Women? Existing research has demonstrated that, while more women than ever before (30%) make up the U.S. STEM workforce, women are still underrepresented in this sector as compared with their representation (47%) in the overall labor force (8). Moreover, once in STEM careers, women’s lack of advancement is well documented and is commonly referred to as the “pipeline” problem (9). Many explanations have been proffered to explain this disparity, including essentialist stereotypes about women’s innate inferiority to men in STEM disciplines broadly, and in leadership positions within those fields, specifically (10, 11). As demonstrated by social psychologists, when confronted with harsh or unfair realities, rather than looking toward systemic problems, individuals are more likely to use stereotypic information about a group to which an individual belongs to explain existing inequalities. For example, Cundif and Vescio (10) found that, when confronted with factual information about the lack of women in leadership positions within STEM fields, study participants endorsed stereotypes about women’s lack of abilities and characteristics to be leaders in order to explain gender disparities. Stereotypes regarding science as a masculine domain are well-documented and persistent (12–14), and they are reflected in many of the advancement patterns exhibited in the workplace. A recent study of 60 Fortune 500 companies (many of them with large chemical businesses) completed for the Wall Street Journal (15) indicated large numbers of women in middle management roles who were not advancing upward, and although 69% of these women indicated a desire to advance to the next level in their organization (as compared to 74% of men), only 18% (compared to 36% of men) indicated interest in moving into the executive suite. Women tended to opt into support, versus more demanding line, roles by the time they reached the Director level; factors identified as contributing to this pattern included structural barriers (lack of belief that the company CEO was committed to increased gender diversity), women’s lifestyle choices (being the primary breadwinners or primary caregivers in their families), institutional mindsets (holding women to male standards and expectations or highlighting their motherhood status), and individual mindsets (women holding themselves 175 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


back from accelerated growth due to internalization of stereotypical behaviors). That stereotypes are internalized by targeted groups and impede their success also is well-documented. Research in “stereotype threat” indicates that performance is undermined when members of stigmatized groups are aware or reminded of their stigma (16), and stereotype threat has been linked to compromises in performance across a wide range of areas often mistaken for ability deficits such as mathematics performance of women (17), women and finance (18), and women’s leadership aspirations (19). Just as the stereotypical scientist is seen as male, so is the prototype of a leader. There is much evidence that leadership and management are regarded as masculine domains, that women are viewed as less able to lead than are men, that they face considerable challenges in attaining and succeeding in leadership roles, that men more than women tend to hold negative attitudes about women’s leadership, and (perhaps not surprisingly) that the divergence between expectations regarding leadership and views of women’s abilities are strongest in male-dominated environments (11). Moreover, even when they attain leadership positions, women face considerable challenges in being taken seriously in their leadership roles. In their recent series of essays synthesizing the research on sexism in the workplace, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton researcher and professor Adam Grant reviewed the evidence that “speaking while female” is often a no-win proposition for women (and, ultimately, for their companies) (20). Women are deemed less credible, less knowledgeable, less able to problem-solve, less able to contribute innovative ideas, and are interrupted at higher frequencies when trying to make contributions (21–23). Furthermore, research has demonstrated that a woman who speaks often is more likely to be evaluated negatively, whereas a man who speaks often is perceived positively (24). This kind of sexism hurts companies, as it prevents the kind of innovative, creative, high quality contributions and problem-solving that a diverse workforce that includes women’s full participation can provide (23, 25, 26). In addition, studies of “office housekeeping” tasks (taking minutes, planning social events, helping junior colleagues, etc.—often called “shadow jobs” in the vocational psychology literature—reveal further inequities between women and men in the workplace (26, 27). While these types of helping activities may be associated with a host of desirable workplace outcomes (quality, efficiency, profits) (28), men are more likely to engage in public helping tasks for which they are recognized and rewarded, whereas women are more likely to engage in private helping that is time consuming, often unnoticed, and unrewarded (e.g., mentoring colleagues or helping with a presentation) (26). Studies also show that when women engage in helping activities, their involvement provides no added benefit to their performance reviews because of gendered expectations that women will automatically help with such tasks, whereas when men help, positive perceptions of them jump 14% (27). Moreover, when men say no to helping, perceptions about them do not change, but when women decline to help, they are harshly penalized (27). Research indicates that all of these challenges for women in leadership roles, particularly for women in STEM fields, are exacerbated for women of color, women with disabilities, sexual minority women, and others who hold additional 176 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


stigmatized statuses. Women of color, for example, face institutionalized and individual racism in addition to gender-related barriers (29–31), and women with disabilities encounter actual physical barriers to achievement in addition to interpersonal and organizational ones (32). Sexual minority women enact their leadership at the complex nexus of gender and sexuality, where assumptions regarding sexual orientation often are conflated with assumptions regarding gender (e.g., the belief that lesbians really want to be men), which renders the gender stereotyping that women leaders face even more complicated to interpret and respond to when it occurs (33). Given all of the challenges, it is perhaps surprising that women are successful leaders. Research indicates that they tend to manifest, more than men, the kinds of leadership styles most effective in contemporary workplaces, especially in regard to teamwork, flexibility, personal accountability, and avoidance of unethical practices (11). Moreover, there is evidence that having women in top positions not only results in greater support of organizational diversity, but also affects the company “bottom line”—that is, financial performance has been found to be better in companies with women in the top ranks (11). Studies of evaluation of male and female leaders have found that women are rated as more effective than men by others, but, in self-assessments, men rate themselves as more effective than women rate themselves (25). Gendered patterns such as these beg investigation, and our study was aimed at elucidating the similarities and differences in perspectives among managers and their female employees in industrial settings.

Project ENHANCE: Studying Women in the Chemical Industry To sum, little is known about the career experiences of STEM-trained women working in industrial chemistry and those who manage them. Because the overwhelming majority of managers are men, male managers possess collateral knowledge about what it takes to advance, as they have done it themselves and are the gatekeepers for the advancement of others, including women. Additionally, because women are underrepresented in management in industrial chemistry, they constitute an underresearched population whose perspectives on advancement could be quite useful. Project ENHANCE sought to explore the perceptions of managers regarding the basic questions of our study related to success and advancement, climate and support, mentoring, the home-work interface, and company attempts to support female employees. In this, the third article in our three-part series, we address questions regarding management specifically: How are managers conceptualizing the experiences of their female STEM-trained employees working in the chemical industry? Are there differences between what women are saying is happening for them in the workplace and what managers think is happening for them? And are there differences between male and female managers in terms of their experiences and perceptions of women in the workplace? What kinds of initiatives exist in chemical companies at present that support women, and are they judged to be effective? Finally, what kinds of 177 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

specific challenges might exist for women in leadership positions in industrial chemistry?


Methods of the Study Summarized As described in the first article (5) and summarized in the second article (6) of this series, the Project ENHANCE multi-year study was carried out at the University of Maryland by a diverse team of faculty and (then) advanced doctoral students, 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 of 26 women and 6 managers (selected as representative of respondents to the women’s and management surveys); and a follow-up interview study on mentoring with nine managers (7). Participants in our project were from 25 Fortune 1000 U.S.-based chemical companies, recruited in collaboration with company management, the academic and industry consultants to our project, our advisory board of top leaders in industrial chemistry, and professional organizations such as the Women Chemists Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS). This, the third article in the series, uses data from the management portion of the study (both quantitative and qualitative data) and the follow-up interview study of managers, and focuses on perceptions of managers, comparisons between managers’ and women’s perceptions, responses to company initiatives to support women employees, and provides a brief discussion of women in leadership roles in industrial settings. Descriptions of all of the measures used in the overall study are found in the first article in this series (5). The measures used in this, the third, study include information about the management sample itself, all measures completed by managers as part of the management portion of the study (which were parallel versions of measures completed by the women), interview data from the main study and the follow-up study on mentoring, and data regarding company initiatives aimed at supporting women. The management portion of the main study mirrored the women’s portion, the only difference being that managers were asked to reflect primarily on their experiences with and perceptions of women working in their companies, rather than about their own personal experiences on the job; however, the follow-up interview study on mentoring focused on both managers’ own experiences as well as their perceptions of women employees (7). As described in the first article (5) and summarized in the second article (6) in this series, 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 178 Nelson and Cheng; Diversity in the Scientific Community Volume 1: Quantifying Diversity and Formulating Success ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


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 3: Getting

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