Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 5, 2013

Our most important finding is that family formation negatively affects women’s—but not men’s—academic careers. For men, having children can be a slight career advantage and, for women, it is often a career killer. 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 than are their male colleagues.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The New York Times, July 8, 2013

For men, having children is a career advantage, and for women it is a career killer. And women who do advance through the faculty ranks do so at a high price. They are far less likely to be married with children. Among tenured faculty 70 percent of men are married with children compared with 44 percent of the women. Academia is difficult for mothers because of the rigid lockstep career track that puts the greatest pressure on aspirants in their 30s and 40s.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 2013 (registration required)

The flap in the business community about San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu’s proposal to require more workplace flexibility provoked San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Vice President Jim Lazarus to tell The Chronicle the idea was “beyond unbelievable.” Perhaps relevant lessons can be learned from the pioneering and very successful family-friendly policies instituted across all 10 University of California campuses. They weren’t “unbelievable.” They strengthened the university, making it the beacon that other universities now are imitating.

Mary Ann Mason writes for Slate Magazine, June 17, 2013

The most important finding is that family formation negatively affects women’s, but not men’s, academic careers. For men, having children is a career advantage; for women, it is a career killer. And women who do advance through the faculty ranks do so at a high price. They are far less likely to be married with children.

Mary Ann Mason quoted in Inside Higher Education, June 6, 2013

For women in academe, said Mason, “At every stage, there’s a ‘baby penalty.’ In the earlier stages, graduate students have children and drop out or grad students get turned away from the academic profession, in terms of the [lack of family-friendliness] they see around them.”

Mary Ann Mason’s book cited in University of Utah News Center, May 16, 2013

That is just one finding in a new book – “Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower” – by Mary Ann Mason…. The book builds on a decade of research and sheds new light on a well-known but as yet unsolved problem: women are far less likely than men to have careers in higher education.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2012

Did you know that Title IX specifically includes important protections for pregnant women and mothers? You probably didn’t, and neither do most pregnant graduate students and postdocs, or their teachers, principal investigators, department chairs, and deans. Most people think of Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in any education program receiving federal money, as focusing on athletics and sexual harassment.

Mary Ann Mason cited in LA Times, August 21, 2012

More telling, another survey shows that young women are clearly mindful from the outset of the potentially painful choices that may lie ahead. Mary Ann Mason, a law professor at UC Berkeley, surveyed 8,000 doctoral students in the UC system in 2008. She found that more than half of all female candidates felt that having children would hinder their careers, and that fear of being held back postponed many academic women’s child-rearing, sometimes permanently.

Mary Ann Mason writes for San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2012

The good news is that over the past 10 years, all the professions have scrutinized their workplaces and most are making efforts to balance work and life for fathers as well as mothers. Indeed, if fathers do not feel they have an important stake in change, it will not occur.

Mary Ann Mason writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3, 2012

Doctoral students in many disciplines realize the odds are against them. But students are often afraid to approach their advisers about other nonfaculty career choices, for fear of disapproval. And the professors themselves may not know how to advise students about any other careers than the research life, although given the dismal job-market statistics in recent years, that ignorance about nonacademic options becomes less and less acceptable.