The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2010 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/E-Mail-the-Third-Shift/66312/

Many academics have a love-hate relationship with e-mail. We know it has made communicating … far easier. But we are also aware that e-mail is devouring a great deal of our time.… Shouldn’t it be routine university policy to promote clear guidelines about the use of e-mail between faculty members and students? That would benefit not only parents, of course, but, particularly for mothers, limiting the third shift may make the difference between academic survival and burnout.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 17, 2010 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/Women-Tenurethe-Law/64646/

Since the 90s, a plaintiff has had to prove not only that the tenure judgment against her was untrue, but also that the real reason for the denial was sex discrimination. If discrimination can’t be proved, even if the department is found to be intentionally lying about substandard work, other reasons for the denial, such as a faculty member’s lack of collegiality, can be upheld.

The Daily Californian, January 22, 2010 by Mary Ann Mason
http://www.dailycal.org/article/107911/a_look_at_the_phd_problem

Not surprisingly, perceived unfriendliness to one’s family concerns within a research-intensive university—and especially the difficulty in childrearing with a successful scientific career—was shown to be a major factor for female doctoral students to “leak out” of the scientific pipeline.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2010 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/Still-Earning-Less/63482/

Education does lead to higher incomes for women, but female breadwinners will continue to take home less than their male counterparts until educational segregation is eliminated and workplaces adopt flexible policies.

-Science Progress, November 10, 2009 by Andrew Plemmons Pratt
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/11/women-and-sciences/

“The leak is almost entirely, or least due primarily to family formation,” said Mason.

-The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2009 by Audrey Williams June
http://chronicle.com/article/CollegesFederal-Agencies/49101/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

“This is really a wake up call that we’re losing our women scientists,” said Mary Ann Mason, a Chronicle contributor who is an author of the report and a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security. “But there are some things that we can do about that right now,” she said.

-The Scientist, November 11, 2009 by Edyta Zielinska
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56144/

Universities have responded to the call for better support of scientists who want to start families with policies such as stopping the tenure clock and offering paid parental leave. However, “there is a huge variation” in how these policies are administered, said Mary Ann Mason…. Often “researchers don’t know what [these policies] are” and how they work. Also, few of these programs are offered to early career scientists, who need them the most, she said.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-So-Few-Doctoral-Student/48872/

Why do so few people use the graduate-school years to start a family? After all, it’s a period when students have more flexible schedules and the possibility of a community with which to share the experience of parenting. These years offer many benefits for young parents.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 16, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/How-the-Snow-Woman-Effect/48377/

Often subtle discrimination is rooted in gender stereotypes—especially when it comes to the “leadership issue.” Female candidates are purportedly passed up for promotions based on a conscious or unconscious belief that women do not have what it takes to lead men.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 31, 2009 by Marc Goulden, Angelica Stacy, and Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/article/Assessment-Denied-the/48233/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

It is moving in the right direction by including nursing, public health, communications, and emerging, cutting-edge fields such as biotechnology, nanoscience, and race, ethnicity, and postcolonial studies. But the exclusion of other fields that produce large numbers of research doctorates seems insular and retrograde. We urge the NRC and others to consider those issues and to design future assessments that are truly comprehensive and reflective of the diversity of academe.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 22, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/04/2009042201c.htm

Certainly the timing of tenure is terrible for women. Today, the average age at which women can expect to receive a Ph.D. is 34. That puts the five to seven years of racing the tenure clock squarely at the end of the normal reproductive cycle. Those are the “make or break” years for female academicsֽ in terms of both career and childbearingֽ not to mention the demands of raising young children. Difficult choices must be made.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/03/2009032501c.htm

Role models, particularly ones with children, can make the difference in whether a female graduate student takes the next big step along the tenure track. While undergraduates are influenced simply by seeing a female faculty member, graduate students need to see that she is able to have children as well as a career.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 24, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/02/2009022401c.htm

If we want fathers to become equal participants in child raising, we must encourage them to do so. Family-friendly policies must include fathers as well as mothers. Cultural change occurs with participation; only then will the strongly held gender stereotypes against men as committed caregivers dissipate.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 20, 2009 by Mary Ann Mason
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/20/EDVQ160QUV.DTL

As the only female dean at UC Berkeley for several years, I sat in on countless meetings where men held the floor. One day a female colleague made a presentation to a meeting of the deans and received a cursory, bordering on rude, response. Afterward, she asked me how she could have been more effective. “Speak lowly and slowly, but smile frequently,” I replied.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009, by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009012701c.htm

Unless the old academic culture—which discourages family formation at all levels but is particularly unfriendly to graduate-student parenthood—radically changes, we are in danger of losing many of our best and brightest minds to other professions. There has been some movement to accommodate new faculty parents, but by then it is already too late to capture many disaffected graduate students who have already found careers elsewhere.

The New York Times, January 20, 2009 by Natalie Angier
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/science/20angier.html?pagewanted=print

The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 2009 by Audrey Williams June
http://chronicle.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/9652n.htm

“In this profession, everything is very front-ended, and that’s a pressure-cooker situation,” says Mary Ann Mason, referring to the dizzying schedules of Ph.D. students and pretenure faculty members…. “This generation of graduate students is completely different. They no longer see how that will work for them,” she says.

Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 17, 2008 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/12/2008121701c.htm

They worry that they will not be able to handle both their chosen profession and their family responsibilities. They know that child care is impossibly expensive and notoriously unreliable. They understand that employers offer some family leave when children are born, or when family members are sick, but it may be unpaid.

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Nov. 13, 2008 by Gregory A. Patterson
http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11946.shtml

Mason … co-director of the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, says higher education could be at the beginning of a sea change sweeping women away from tenuretrack jobs. Women are opting for academe’s second-tier posts, filling in the part-time, adjunct and lecturer ranks, becoming what Mason calls the ‘gypsy scholars’ of the university world.

“The decision to have a child on the tenure track was not a decision at all,” Murray says. “For me the bigger question was, how was I going to make the tenure track work around my decision to have a family.”

Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 17, 2008 by Mary Ann Mason
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/10/2008101701c.htm

“Women who do pursue careers in academic science pay a high price for playing the game. Nationally, “married with children” is the academic-success formula for men, but the opposite is true for women, for whom there is a serious “baby gap.” Among scientists who achieved tenure, 72 percent of the men are married with children as opposed to only 50 percent of women. Is that gender equity?”