“Ideal Worker” or Choosing the Ideal?: An Exploration of Gendered Early Career Decision-Making for STEM Postdocs

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Gender and Economics

Abstract

While research on gendered experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) fields has thrived, these experiences are often investigated as isolated moments during
academic and career trajectories. To deepen the breadth of research on gendered STEM and that
of research that examines transitions from education to work, this study explores the experiences
of postdoctoral researchers in STEM and how they narrate their early career decision-making.
This study draws upon in-depth interviews with fifteen STEM postdocs, who, in occupying the
liminal space between graduate study and academic profession, exist in a taken-for-granted
position not only in research but in their daily career lives as well. The postdocs reveal how
gender and workplace hierarchy work separately and, at times, together to influence their
academic career decision-making. Conversely, I find that when gender was and was not salient in
the postdocs’ decision-making process highlights a deviation from prevailing understandings of
gender in the workplace. This group of postdocs – twelve women, two men, and one non-binary
person – offers insight into what occurs in this fleeting stage of the academic career pipeline,
and, through their experiences, we may better understand the decision to leave or stay.
Implications for future research on postdoctoral researchers are discussed.

Author

• Lyric Hathaway, Northwestern University