Confronting Merton's Norm of Universalism

Kumar, Neelam (2001): ‘Gender and Stratification – An empirical study in the Indian setting’ in Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 8:51

Available at : http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/8/1/51

This paper is based on a research study, the attempt of which was to understand if gender played a role or was a variable used in the stratification system within Indian scientific institutions.

The author looks at the assignment of ranks to scientists/lecturers in scientific institutions and tries to determine if advancement in rank is guided by universalistic norms. (Merton’s norm of Universalism requires that when a scientist makes a contribution to scientific knowledge, the community's assessment of the validity of that claim should not be influenced by personal or social attributes of the scientist and should be subject to pre-established impersonal criteria. Universalism also requires that a scientist be fairly rewarded for contributions to the body of scientific knowledge.) For comparing academic rank, the major determinants of advancement in academia like achievements/recognitions (measured by awards won and membership in various professional bodies) and research productivity (measured by research publications, research grants received and reviews done for journals*) were taken into account.

The sample for the survey consisted of physical scientists of both sexes in four different Indian cities and eight scientific institutions. The study covered two work contexts: national laboratories and universities. The resulting sample included 117 scientists-56 women and 61 men-matched on the basis of age.

Results

The table below shows a comparison between men and women scientists in terms of academic rank held by them. It reveals the proportion of each sex in the sample in a given academic rank.

It is seen that as the rank gets higher, the number of women holding that rank declines. Only 3.6% of the women held the rank of professor, whereas 60.7% were assistant professors. In the case of male scientists, 18% were professors and 44.3% were assistant professors. In the rank of associate professor the difference is smaller. About 35.7% female scientists and 37.7% male scientists were in the rank of associate professor. Further comparison of men and women scientists (within each particular rank) in terms of age and number of years spent within the organisation revealed larger differences but these differences were evident only at the topmost level of the hierarchy. The mean age of women scientists at the professor (or equivalent) level was 54.5 years while for men it was 46.4 years. An analysis of the career trajectories of a few women scientists also revealed that many women stayed for an unusually longer time in the same rank than their male counterparts.

Gender differences on variables like research productivity and rewards/honours were analysed with t-test. The table below summarises the findings.

It is seen that the two groups differ significantly (at the level of .01 or .05) in terms of academic rank. But there was no evidence of significant gender differences in research performance. The result appears to contradict numerous studies showing that women are less productive. Findings not presented in this table revealed that there were no significant differences between men and women in terms of the time they reported committing to teaching and research (p > .05 in each case). The two groups also did not differ in terms of recognition measures (awards and membership in various professional bodies). However, it was also revealed that there was a significant difference in terms of reviews done by men and women scientists. The authors attribute this to bias and discriminatory practices in the selection of reviewers.

Conclusion

Ideally and in accordance with the norms of universalism, advancement in rank should be governed by research productivity. This study has clearly revealed a lower percentage of women in higher academic positions within Indian scientific institutions. Thus, it might be reasonable to assume that women’s performance levels were lower than that of men’s. The results of this study reveal that while there are significant differences in the academic ranks of women and men scientists, in research performance they do not differ in a statistically significant manner. The finding thus makes it clear that rank disparities between men and women scientists are not attributable to differences in research performance and leaves us with the hypothesis of sex discrimination, indicating the prevalence of particularism.

* As the various types of performance measures are of unequal scientific importance, a weight was assigned to each measure to reflect the importance of the measure in relation to other measures. A composite measure of performance was created by adding the scores for each measure. In the resulting order of importance, books rank first in published written output (and received a weight of 24), articles published in refereed international journals appear next (receiving a weight of 8) and so on. Similarly, single or co-authored articles and books were differentiated.

Understanding Merton's Universalism (Gender)

Merton's passion and interest towards the study of the Sociology of Science, especially through the interactions of social and cultural structures with Science. In this regard, he formulated the Norms of Science, namely: Universalism, Communism, Organized Scepticism and Disinterestedness.
This post deals with the norm of Universalism ('claims to truth' ought to be evaluated fairly and not determined by characteristics such as race, nationality, gender, religion, etc.) especially in the context of Gender.

Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams of Cornell University, in a paper titled 'Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science' try to explore the prevalence and causes for gender bias in the academia. The primary causes for under-representation, reports suggested were discriminations in the fields of granting funds, hiring and the journal reviews.

With respect to Journal Reviewing, the authors examine manuscript acceptance rates between males and females while keeping the quality of work as a constant. Analysing works ranging from Budden's study of blind reviews faring better gender-wise in Behavioural Psychology to longitudinal studies spanning two and a half decades, the authors dismiss the argument of gender bias in Journal Reviwing, primarily citing weak justifications and proof of discrimination with respcet to manuscript acceptance rates.In the case of Grant Funding, Ceci and Williams (2010) primarily compare the works of Wennerås and Wold with the Cochrane Methodology Review Group that concluded that apart from the former's study conducted a decade ago, none of the other studies indicate a strong case of discrimination.Hiring, witnessed rather interesting results- one study that looked at positions in R1 universities concluded that women has a better chance of getting interviewed and receiving offers than their male counterparts.

In conclusion, Ceci and Williams are rather sceptical about these conventional claims of discrimination against women. So how do they answer the puzzle of under-representation? The authors attribute it to fertility (life style choices), career preferences (teching over research, for example) and 'work-home' balance issues. While they acknowledge gender differences, they define the differences as 'secondary' and conclude that the real problem lies in the resources attributable to the abovementioned choices and it is those that have to be the focus of the remedy.

Thus, placing it in the context of Merton's Universalism, we see that Ceci and Williams bear a tinge of optimism and infact indicate a move towards Universalism. However, some points to note about the article are that the argument is centered around American contexts and hence cannot be extrapolated to other contexts; the authors primarily look at data for explicit indicators of discrimination, which is rarely the case.

Reference- Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams. Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science. PNAS vol. 108 no. 8 3157-3162 (2010)

-Uttara