Mary Ann Mason in WalletHub, June 8, 2016

The economy is OK and moving in the right direction – toward parental leave and family accommodations.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 29, 2016

But are frozen eggs the answer? No. We can and must allow talented women to pursue their education and career dreams without the illusory promise that they can wait indefinitely before starting a family.

Mary Ann Mason cited in Inside Higher Ed, Oct. 30, 2015

Mary Ann Mason of the University of California at Berkeley has written extensively about the trials faced by postdoctoral (and professorial) mothers. She notes that women pay a baby penalty. Men don’t. In fact, they often get a baby boost.

Mary Ann Mason interviewed by Inside Higher Ed, February 18, 2015

Mary Ann Mason … said via e-mail that she saw the data as evidence of the continued problem of women not being provided the right environment to enter the professoriate. … “They had decided the academy was not family friendly – while in graduate school, or as postdocs, and they would not pursue a career in research science – but they might be able to use the Ph.D. for something else,” she said.

Mary Ann Mason quoted in The Daily Californian, October 12, 2014

“Nationally, it’s a disaster,” she said. “Very few institutions have a policy in place for protecting pregnant students.”

Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 8, 2014

Policies may be adopted to meet the needs of each higher-education constituency, but it must be remembered that providing accommodation for pregnant students is not just a “good thing” to do, or just for California. It is federal law. It is time for all states to recognize this.

Mary Ann Mason cited in The Boston Globe, June 13, 2014

Judicial interpretations in the last two decades have made it more difficult to win a tenure discrimination complaint, Mary Ann Mason wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2010. Mason, a professor at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law who studies gender in academia, said a plaintiff has to prove not only that the reason given for tenure denial is untrue, but that the real reason is sex discrimination.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014

Having children is a career advantage for men; for women, it is a career killer. And women who do advance through the faculty ranks do so at a high personal price. They are far less likely to be married with children. We see more women than we used to in visible positions, like presidents of Ivy League colleges, but we also see many more women than men who are married with children working in the adjunct-faculty ranks, the “second tier,” and one of the fastest-growing sectors of academe.

Mary Ann Mason quoted in The Washington Post, February 2, 2014
Even today, many female academics pay what Berkeley law professor Mary Ann Mason calls a “baby penalty.” Mothers are 35 percent less likely than fathers to be hired for a tenure-track job in economics or other fields of science at any university, according to her research. “If you’re six months or nine months behind [the tenure clock], your male colleagues and the granting agencies don’t have a lot of sympathy,” Mason said.

Mary Ann Mason quoted in Inside Higher Education, November 5, 2013

“Colleges and universities do not provide much support for pregnant graduate students,” she says. “Of the 62 members of the Association of American Universities (the top research institutions in the country), only 23 percent guarantee a minimum of six weeks’ paid leave for working postdocs, and only 13 percent promised the same to employed graduate students compared to 58 percent for women faculty. Many universities have no maternity policy at all for graduate students and postdocs who are teaching or working in laboratories.”