Collaborative Research: Diversifying the STEM Labor Force: Are Women and the Foreign-Born Complementary or Additive?

预计未来十年，对STEM工作者的需求将以或高于全国增长率的速度增长（美国商务部，2012年）。近几十年来，美国政府将大量注意力集中在增加女性和代表性不足的少数族裔在STEM领域的存在上。在过去的几十年里，科技劳动力已经在重要方面实现了多样化。妇女在科学技术教育和就业领域的代表性显著增加，尽管她们在工程和计算机科学等领域的代表性仍然小得多。这项研究探讨了STEM劳动力的特定组成部分——比如女性在特定领域的代表性，或者特定出生地或种族的同事所占比例——是否与STEM劳动力的留存率或性别工资差距有关。例如，在女性占STEM员工比例较大的领域，性别工资差距会缩小吗？这种关系是如何受到外国出生工人群体规模的影响的？这些工人是在美国还是在国外接受教育和培训是否重要？在寻求解释职业性别构成和职业工资率所涉及的动态时，可以唤起几种社会科学观点。这些观点不一定是相互排斥的，但每个观点都关注雇主可能表现出性别或种族偏好的不同方式。我们的项目将利用排队理论和贬值理论来探讨STEM劳动力构成的变化如何促进（或阻碍）女性在STEM领域的保留和收入。这种方法将使我们能够超越简单的性别二分法（男性/女性），以评估性别内部的变化（本地出生/外国出生）。数据来自美国国家科学基金会（NSF）科学家和工程师统计数据系统（SESTAT）的六波汇总，涵盖了从1995年到2008年的年份。SESTAT由三个正在进行的调查组成，旨在创建具有全国代表性的理工科大学学位持有者样本（Kannankutty & Wilkinson, 1999）。受限制的SESTAT数据包括有关劳动力参与、职业类别、受教育程度和人口特征的详细信息。拟议的项目将包括三套分析，包括描述性分析，按性别和出生地以及自获得学位以来的时间确定STEM就业趋势；多元逻辑回归模型，包括STEM专业的就业预测因素，按性别划分，以及外国出生的群体代表如何调节这些关联；以及男女记录工资对可观察特征的OLS回归。

The need for STEM workers is expected to grow at or above the national growth rate over the next decade (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2012). In recent decades the U.S. government has focused a good deal of attention on increasing the presence of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The science and technology labor force has already diversified in important ways over the past few decades. Women's representation in science and technology education and employment has increased significantly, though their representation remains considerably smaller in fields such as engineering and computer science. This research explores whether the particular components of the STEM labor force - such as the representation of women in particular fields, or the share of coworkers of a particularly nativity or race - are associated with retention in the STEM work force or the gender wage gap. In fields where women account for a larger representation of STEM workers, for example, is the gender wage gap narrower? How is that relationship influenced by the group size of foreign-born workers, and does it matter whether these workers received their education and training in the United States or abroad?There are several social scientific views that can be evoked in seeking to account for the dynamics involved in occupational sex composition and occupational wage rates. These perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but each focuses on distinct ways in which employers may exhibit preferences by gender or ethnicity. Our project will utilize Queuing theory and Devaluation theory to explore how the changing composition of the STEM labor force promotes (or retards) the retention and earnings of women in STEM. Such an approach will enable us to move beyond a simple gender dichotomy (men/women) to assess variation within gender (native-born/foreign-born). Data come from pooling six waves of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT), covering years from 1995 through 2008. SESTAT is comprised of three ongoing surveys designed to create a nationally representative sample of science and engineering college degree holders (Kannankutty & Wilkinson, 1999). The restricted SESTAT data include detailed information regarding labor force participation, occupation categories, educational attainment, and demographic characteristics. The proposed project will include three sets of analyses, including descriptive analyses establishing trends in STEM employment by gender and nativity, as well a time since degree; multivariate logistic regression models incorporating predictors of employment in a STEM profession, by sex, and how group representation of the foreign-born moderates these associations; and OLS regression of women's and men's logged wages on observable characteristics.