Book Review: Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes by Yu Xie and Kimberlee A. Shauman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003

Science is an institutional medium of power, marked by immense inequality in status and rewards. It is a strategic research site for the study of gender in hierarchical contexts, reflecting and reinforcing features of gender stratification in society. Despite this breadth and depth of connection between the hierarchies of science and of gendered relations, studies of gender differences and inequalities in science have tended to focus on a particular stage or phase of participation, either a given level of education (pre-college, undergraduate, graduate) or careers, but rarely both. Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman’s study Women in Science, in contrast, is distinguished by scope and scale: With detailed analyses of data in 17 large, national datasets, the volume addresses individual-level, gender differences in participation, performance, and rewards in science from middle school through career years. Taking a demographic, life course approach, Xie and Shauman analyze women’s and men’s transitions into and exits from science over time, as contingent upon prior experiences and some social forces. They accomplish this with longitudinal data and “synthetic cohorts,” created by putting together information from different sources corresponding to periods of the life course. This life course approach challenges the “scientific pipeline” model that conjures straight, narrow, unidirectional links between educational stages and occupational outcomes presumed to be positive; and instead, emphasizes fluid and dynamic processes. Xie and Shauman examine processes and outcomes of women compared to men in areas including academic achievement in science and mathematics before college; expectations of enrolling as a major in science/ engineering fields; career outcomes following completion of bachelor’s and master’s degree; demographic and labor force characteristics of scientists/engineers; geographic mobility among doctoral recipients in science/engineering; and research productivity among academic scientists. Findings point to the complexity of patterns of gender, participation, and performance in science. First, in grades 7–12, mathematics achievement of girls is not significantly different from that of boys, especially among the most recent cohorts; but a gender gap, favoring boys, appears among the highest achievers. However, the significant gender difference in boys’ compared to girls’ expectation to major in science/engineering as undergraduates is not explained by the lower proportion of women in the right tail of highest achievers in mathematics. Second, the majority of males who are recipients of bachelor’s degrees in science/engineering have taken the path of “complete persistence” in science and math education from high school through bachelor’s degrees; on the other hand, most females who receive bachelor’s degrees in science/engineering entered the trajectory during their college years. Third, an impediment of family for women in science occurs relatively early. At time of receipt of their bachelor’s degree in science/engineering, women who are married, and especially those with children, are less likely to continue in science/engineering education and careers than are their male counterparts. Fourth, among doctoral recipients, women with children show less geographic mobility than both women without children and all men; marital status, alone (apart from parental status), does not account for gender differences in geographic mobility. In addition, among academic scientists, women’s lower publication productivity in science is attributed to gender differences in personal REVIEWS