House Holds Hearing on Promoting Gender Equity in Science
On Thursday, May 8, the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education held a hearing on a draft bill that aims to overcome gender bias in academic science and engineering. The
Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008 would require the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a program of national workshops to minimize gender bias in the evaluation of research grants and in hiring, tenure, promotion, and award decisions. The workshops for grant review panels, academic department chairs, and national laboratory personnel with oversight for research staff would occur in each major science and engineering discipline every three years. The legislation would also extend the period of federal grant support for researchers with caregiving responsibilities and require each science agency to collect demographic and grant data on their awardees.
In testimony before the subcommittee, Lynda T. Carlson, Ph.D., of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Science Resources Statistics stated that NSF cannot support the legislation because its requirements “exceed current data collection capabilities.” Not only does the Privacy Act prohibit agencies from requiring investigators to provide demographic data, but the variety of grant review processes and scoring systems the government uses would make it “virtually impossible” to collect data that are comparable across agencies. Dr. Carlson also stated that without additional funding, NSF, which would be responsible for storing and publishing these data, would have to reduce its other data collection activities. The draft legislation does not authorize new funds to support the workshops or its evaluation requirements.
Linda G. Blevins, Ph.D., of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science responded more positively to the bill. DOE has supported gender equity workshops for top chemistry and physics department chairs that emphasize using demographic and social science data to examine the cause of departmental gender gaps. Participant surveys showed that after the workshop chairs' perceptions of the factors slowing women’s progress had changed, they were more likely to report that they could impact the hiring of women. Dr. Blevins said the workshops have also spurred action: attendees from Brookhaven National Laboratory returned to the lab with concrete ideas for improving gender equity. As a result, DOE formed a committee to examine internal practices and make recommendations on topics such as alternative work schedules, leave policies, and family services.
University of Kansas labor economist Donna K. Ginther, Ph.D., was also supportive of the workshops’ goals. She argued, however, that the basis of the measure of their effectiveness should not be solely post-workshop attitude change, which is often fleeting. Instead, she recommended developing treatment and control groups to permit researchers to determine whether workshop participation impacts external outcome variables, such as the scores review panelists assign to grants. Dr. Ginther also suggested that the workshops include mentoring activities for postdocs and junior faculty and that they target investigators who supervise postdocs, as they are the “most critical group that could affect change for women in academic science.” Finally, she recommended that the federal government provide financial support for data collection and analysis on gender differences as well as grant support to caregivers through direct and indirect costs.
The House plans to mark up the draft legislation, which is a revision of a bill that Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) introduced last fall, in June.
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Coalitions Request FY2009 Funding for NIH
The House and Senate are making progress toward finalizing a budget resolution for fiscal year 2009 (FY2009). On Wednesday, the House named its conferees, who are House Budget Chairman and Ranking Member John Spratt (D-SC) and Paul Ryan (R-WI), respectively, as well as Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chet Edwards (D-TX) and Gresham Barrett (R-SC). The Senate followed suit on Thursday by naming its conferees. The Democratic conferees will be Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The Republican leaders chose Senate Budget Ranking Member Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM).
The panel has scheduled a tentative meeting on Tuesday of next week and expects to approve a resolution by Tuesday night, which would clear the way for Senate consideration on Thursday. If the House and Senate can approve the budget resolution, it will be the first time Congress has approved a budget in an election year since the Clinton administration.
In the event that Congress does set an overall level of discretionary spending for next year by reaching an FY2009 budget resolution, the House and Senate appropriations committees will suballocate funding targets to the 13 subcommittees in each chamber. These 302(b) allocations will set spending limits for each subcommittee and strongly influence the funding levels of individual programs.
Accordingly, last week, the Campaign for Medical Research, of which FASEB is a member, sent a
letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman and Ranking Member David Obey (D-WI) and Jerry Lewis (R-CA), respectively, asking them to include sufficient funds in their FY2009 302(b) allotment for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (L-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee to provide for an increase for the National Institutes of Health equivalent to the $899 million Congress adopted and the President vetoed in the fiscal year 2008 (FY2008) L-HHS appropriations bill.
Similarly, last week, the Coalition for Health Funding, of which FASEB is also a member, posted a sign-on letter online to House and Senate Appropriations Chairmen Dave Obey and Robert Byrd (D-WV), respectively, advocating for the highest possible 302(b) funding allocation for the House and Senate L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittees. The letter urges Chairmen Byrd and Obey to provide $15 billion in discretionary funding over FY2008 funding levels for the L-HHS Subcommittees. The letter estimates that this increase would: 1) restore cuts to core program funding over the last four years; 2) more appropriately account for four years of inflation and population growth to maintain service levels and purchasing power; and 3) return L-HHS programs to the fiscal year 2005 level, which is a high water mark for many. It also points out that the President’s FY2009 budget request continues or deepens cuts for most of the programs in the L-HHS appropriations bill.
Hundreds of organizations, including FASEB, have signed the letter, and the closing date for signatures is May 19th. To read or sign on to the letter, please click
here.
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INSIDE (The Beltway) SCOOP – Gretchen Opper, Legislative Affairs Officer
"The farm bill is like giving birth to a porcupine. It is really painful. I think we will get it done."
- Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Notwithstanding our focus in the last few issues of this publication on the protracted progress of the fiscal year 2008 (FY2008) war supplemental, we have had some major victories on the Hill during the past month, which include the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and the Farm Bill without the provisions
we opposed, as well as the elimination of the Small Business Innovation Research increase proposal and the increasing likelihood that Congress will reach a budget resolution this year. These successes reflect both the effectiveness of FASEB advocacy and the strength of the coalitions of which FASEB and its societies are members.
Moreover, we owe much of our progress to the responsiveness of our over 80,000 members, who tirelessly call and send letters to members of Congress in response to our alerts. We estimate that over 5,000 scientists responded to the alert we issued last month, alone, by calling their members of Congress to request the inclusion of science funds in the supplemental. The somewhat extraordinary provision of nearly 15 percent, or $1.5 billion, of the $10 billion in domestic funding in the Senate FY2008 war supplemental for science reflects the effectiveness of our grassroots campaign and heartens us as we forge ahead in our effort to preserve those science funds in the bill as it makes its way to the President.
In terms of the supplemental, our initial reaction last week was dismay when we heard from a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Office that the House supplemental did not include any funding for science. To quote Pelosi’s staffer, “no domestic discretionary funding was added that wasn’t requested by the Administration. The only add-ons were two mandatory spending items, GI Bill and Unemployment Insurance.” Speaker Pelosi had managed to keep the supplemental in the House from surpassing the President’s $180 billion request.
Shortly thereafter, however, we began to hear rumblings from staffers on the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee that there were ample funds for science agencies in the Senate version. The initial estimates were $400 million each for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Coalitions began to theorize that during the preliminary House and Senate leadership meetings on strategy for the supplemental, Speaker Pelosi had punted the addition of domestic funds to the Senate to avoid entanglement in another FY2008 appropriations-like process, which terminated in the standoff between Congress and the White House and the omnibus package that disappointed many.
Behind the scenes, a senior staffer at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in response to our questioning whether the President will sign a supplemental bill with science funds in it, simply repeated that the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) is one of the President’s initiatives and that he supports it, which we have taken as a wink and a nod that the President will not veto a supplemental simply because it includes money for science agencies. In fact, we have heard from President of France Nicolas Sarkozy’s office that President Bush recently assured President Sarkozy in a phone call that there will be funding in the supplemental for ITER, the international fusion project in France. This funding would have to come from the Department of Energy.
We have also heard from the Office of Science Technology and Policy that the President will support ACI funding in the supplemental as long as the amount of the overall bill doesn’t exceed his request and as long as there are offsets for the spending. Other variables, such as a large overall domestic package, pose more real risks in terms of prompting a Presidential veto of the bill.
In fact, the failure of the House to pass the supplemental’s war spending provision yesterday was a somewhat moot exercise, inasmuch as the White House had issued a
Statement of Administration Policy threatening to veto the House version of the supplemental earlier in the day. The Administration opposed the House version of the funding package because it would have imposed limitations on military commanders in the field, provided domestic funding that the Administration had not requested, and raised taxes.
There are two likely outcomes of the supplemental process: either the House and Senate will strip most of the domestic funding out of the current Senate version of the bill before sending it to the President for his signature; or the President will likely veto a bill that resembles the current Senate version when it arrives on his desk, which will provide an end game after the veto, during which science supporters can ask their champions in Congress to include science funding in another, more streamlined version of the bill.
The process of passing a supplemental that the President will sign will continue for some time, and one House Appropriations staffer has projected it will take until the Fourth of July to finalize the bill. As always, we will keep you posted on any new developments.
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Congressional Schedule
The House and Senate are in session.
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