Parenting Through Academia as a SICB Member.

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) has made tremendous improvements to their annual meeting in an effort to promote inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility to all scientists. However, within academia as an institution overall, many scientists face personal challenges that directly compete with the rigorous culture considered a requirement for success as an academic. Among these challenges is balancing parenthood with academic responsibilities, such as conference attendance and productivity. Herein, we present a report of the survey administered to the members of SICB and from discussion held during the Parenting through Academia workshop at the 2020 annual meeting. We hope that this information brings to the Society an opportunity for open collegial discussion, mentorship, and community building, and sheds light on new strategies that could be undertaken to support not only parents, but SICB membership as a whole.

Managing racial diversity: The context of state legal and political cultures.

We draw on institutional theory to examine the connection between state-level regulation of equal employment and political cultures and race/ethnic minority presence in managerial positions in private U.S. workplaces. Analyses examining managerial diversity at upper- and lower-levels show that expanded state EEO posting requirements are associated with a greater presence of nonwhite managers at both levels, while weak state EEO compliance penalties are related to fewer nonwhite lower-level managers. State-level EEO recordkeeping requirements that exceed federal law are unassociated with nonwhite managerial presence at either lower- or upper-levels. Early adoption of fair employment practices agencies (FEPA) is positively associated with only lower-level managerial diversity, whereas progressive state government ideology is negatively related to top managerial diversity. Our findings highlight the complexity of state government regulation, oversight, and culture in shaping managerial racial/ethnic diversity. We discuss the implications of our results for future research and policy aimed at diversifying private workplaces.

Does it pay to have a network contact? Social network ties, workplace racial context, and pay outcomes.

This article investigates how social network use to find work affects pay. Analyses using the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality consider the extent to which a network contact's influence level affects a job applicant's pay, whether this effect differs for white, black, and Latino contacts, and how workplace racial context moderates this relationship. Three main findings emerge. First, having an influential contact--one with hiring authority--compared to having no contact yields higher pay. Second, white and minority contact influence on pay differs: among minority contacts, being an outsider (i.e., someone not employed by the firm to which the applicant applies) is associated with higher pay, but being an employee of the firm--an insider--is not. Third, regardless of workplace racial context, black and Latino contacts' influence is most beneficial when their race/ethnicity is not known to the hiring agent. We offer a new interpretation of the mixed findings with regard to the relationship between social network use and pay.

Hierarchical rank and women's organizational mobility: glass ceilings in corporate law firms.

This article revives the debate over whether women's upward mobility prospects decline as they climb organizational hierarchies. Although this proposition is a core element of the "glass ceiling" metaphor, it has failed to gain strong support in previous research. The article establishes a firm theoretical foundation for expecting an increasing female disadvantage, with an eye toward defining the scope conditions and extending the model to upper-level external hires. The approach is illustrated in an empirical setting that meets the proposed scope conditions: corporate law firms in the United States. Results confirm that in this setting, the female mobility disadvantage is greater at higher organizational levels in the case of internal promotions, but not in the case of external hires.