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Existing academic structures and norms perpetuate the mistreatment and marginalization of scholars resulting in a climate that is misaligned with the values of academics from marginalized groups. Therefore, we study how climates at multiple levels of the academy (i.e., research group, department, and professional field) shape marginalized scholars’ careers and career attitudes. Participants (N = 3,204) were doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and assistant professors from four science fields (biology, physics, economics, and psychology) who completed an online survey about psychological safety and intragroup conflict within their research group, climate of diversity within their department, climate of scholarly inclusion within their professional field, and their career outcomes. We conducted three general structural equation models with marginalized identity status predicting three career outcomes: turnover intentions, burnout disengagement, and burnout exhaustion. We also tested the mediation effect of climate at the levels of the research group, department, and profession on these career outcomes. Participants with a greater number of marginalized identities experienced a more negative climate at all three levels compared to those with no and fewer marginalized identities. The climate experienced at these three levels also significantly mediated all three career outcomes for marginalized scholars. Climate of scholarly inclusion at the level of the profession was especially strongly related to intent to leave and burnout. These results add to the breadth of research on multiply marginalized scholars’ negative experiences of academic climates and point to areas that may be particularly important for interventions.
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Disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized and minoritized early-career academic scientists
Early research on the impact of COVID-19 on academic scientists suggests that disruptions to research, teaching, and daily work life are not experienced equally. However, this work has overwhelmingly focused on experiences of women and parents, with limited attention to the disproportionate impact on academic work by race, disability status, sexual identity, first-generation status, and academic career stage. Using a stratified random survey sample of early-career academics in four science disciplines ( N = 3,277), we investigated socio-demographic and career stage differences in the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic along seven work outcomes: changes in four work areas (research progress, workload, concern about career advancement, support from mentors) and work disruptions due to three COVID-19 related life challenges (physical health, mental health, and caretaking). Our analyses examined patterns across career stages as well as separately for doctoral students and for postdocs/assistant professors. Overall, our results indicate that scientists from marginalized (i.e., devalued) and minoritized (i.e., underrepresented) groups across early career stages reported more negative work outcomes as a result of COVID-19. However, there were notable patterns of differences depending on the socio-demographic identities examined. Those with a physical or mental disability were negatively impacted on all seven work outcomes. Women, primary caregivers, underrepresented racial minorities, sexual minorities, and first-generation scholars reported more negative experiences across several outcomes such as increased disruptions due to physical health symptoms and additional caretaking compared to more privileged counterparts. Doctoral students reported more work disruptions from life challenges than other early-career scholars, especially those related to health problems, while assistant professors reported more negative changes in areas such as decreased research progress and increased workload. These findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed work outcomes for minoritized and marginalized early-career scholars. Institutional interventions are required to address these inequalities in an effort to retain diverse cohorts in academic science.
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- PAR ID:
- 10431238
- Editor(s):
- Grundy, Quinn
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLOS ONE
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 1932-6203
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e0274278
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274278
