Lion Pills and Failed Scientists: How Organizational Culture Facilitates Gendered Careers among Life Science Postdocs

• In Event: 2168 - Gender and Work

Abstract

This paper examines how institutional and organizational factors shape careers among life-science postdocs who are about transition into academia or non-academia. Specifically, we explore how institutional pressures to reproduce science and to ensure gender equality take form as cultural narratives, and we show evidence that these narratives impact job search behavior and ambitions of men and women. We analyze semi-structured interviews with five group leaders, 22 postdocs, and eight former postdocs from the same life science institute. We find that institutional targets are partly achieved but also generate substantial gender-specific unintended consequences. The mandate to (re-)produce science translates into supervisors’ stigmatization of non-academic careers (“failed scientists” narrative), causing postdocs interested in non-academic careers secretly to rely on social networks for information, which may contribute to gender segregation of non-academic life science occupations. Similarly, the mandate to retain female talent in academic science translates to pressure on women to adopt more assertive behaviors and to exclude alternatives to academia: the “lion pills” narrative. This narrative results in women’s “one-track mind” for academia and may leave them poorly prepared if the academic job market does not work out.

Authors

• Anne Kathrin Kronberg, Goethe University, Frankfurt

• Heather Hofmeister, Goethe University, Frankfurt

• Matthias Revers, University of Frankfurt