Mary Frank Fox

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Mary Frank Fox is a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a pioneer and leader in the field of women and men in scientific and academic occupations and organizations, with work that has significant implications for science and technology policies. Her work has shaped understandings of complex issues in path-breaking ways including:

1. ways that team composition, modes of collaboration, work practices, and work climate explain publication productivity among scientists;
2. social and organizational features of departments, research groups, and advisor-advisee relationships that influence the proportions of doctoral degrees awarded to women in science and engineering;
3. relationships between family characteristics and publication productivity among women and men in academic science that go beyond being married or not married and the presence/absence of children and that address the effects of type of marriage (first or subsequent, and occupation of spouse) and type of family composition (age/stage of children);
4. patterns and predictors of work-family conflict in academic science that both vary, and converge, by gender in unexpected ways, with implications for building institutions that support strong scientific work forces;
5. types of programs--organized initiatives intended to open pathways--for undergraduate women in science that do (and do not) support attainment of women as majors in science and engineering.

Education and professional history[]

Fox received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Michigan.

Mary Frank Fox has advised numerous boards on science and technology policy, including the NSF Human Resources Expert Committee; the NSF board for the use of Human Resource data; the NSF Advance Study Panel; the National Academy of Sciences' studies on gender differences in careers of doctoral scientists and engineers, and on early careers of life scientists; and the Social Science Advisory of the National Center for Women and Information Technology for which she was co-chair. She was a founding associate editor of Gender & Society; and a twice elected member of Council of the American Sociological Association's Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology, and was given an award as "Section Star."

Research[]

Fox's research has introduced and established ways in which the participation and performance of women and men reflect and are affected by social and organizational features of science and academia. She has addressed these complex processes in a range of research encompassing education and educational programs, collaborative practices, salary rewards, publication productivity, social attributions and expectations, and academic careers—appearing in over 50 different journals, books, and collections. Her well-known and highly cited articles include "Publication Productivity Among Scientists" (1983), "Research, Teaching, and Publication Productivity: Mutuality versus Competition" (1992), "Scientific Careers: Universalism and Particularism," with J. S. Long (1995), "Women, Science, and Academia: Graduate Education and Careers" (2001), and "Gender, Family Characteristics, and Publication Productivity" (2005).

Contributions to sociology of science[]

Fox devoted many years of her work to the sociology of science being one of the founders of the subfield of gender, science, and academia. Using Merton's (1961/1973) concept of "strategic research sites," she has argued that science and academia are "strategic research sites" for studies of gender and inequality. Both gender relations and science are hierarchically structured. Gender hierarchy is constituted by processes where men and women are "differentially ranked and evaluated" (Fox, 2004) and science "reflects and reinforces gender stratification" (Fox, 1999, 2001, 2007). In her studies of scientific indicators, she demonstrated stratification of academia by field, gender, rank, and publication productivity. In her studies of scientific education, careers, and workplaces, she identified social and organizational characteristics of work that relate to participation, publication productivity, and performance in science and academia.

Publications[]

Books[]

• Mary Frank Fox; Sharlene Hesse Biber (1984). Women at Work. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87484-525-9.
• Mary Frank Fox, ed. (1985). Scholarly Writing and Publishing: Issues, Problems, and Solutions. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-0039-9.
• ——; Deborah Johnson; Sue Rosser, eds. (2006). Women, Gender, and Technology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07336-6.

Recent, selected articles and chapters[]

Mary Frank Fox's articles are based on research projects using multiple methods of primary data collection: survey research, face-to-face interviews, site visits/case studies, and bibliometric measures. Her articles appear in over 50 different scholarly and scientific journals, books, and collections.

• Mary Frank Fox, Kjersten Bunker Whittington, and Marcela Linkova. "Gender, (In)Equity, and the Scientific Workforce." In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by U. Felt, R Fourche, C. Miller, and L. Smith-Doerr. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, forthcoming 2016.
• Carolina Canibano, Mary Frank Fox, and F. Javier Otamendi. "Gender and Patterns of Temporary Mobility Among Researchers." Science and Public Policy, forthcoming.
• Mary Frank Fox and Kathryn Kline. "Women Faculty in Computing: A Key Case of Women in Science." In Reconsidering the Pipeline? Pathways, Potholes, and Persistence of Women in STEM Fields, edited by Enobong Hannah Branch. Lexington Books, 2016.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Gender and Clarity of Evaluation Among Academic Scientists in Research Universities." Science, Technology, & Human Values 40 (July 2015): 487-515.
• Mary Frank Fox and Wenbin Xiao. "Perceived Chances for Promotion Among Women Associate Professors in Computing: Individual, Departmental, and Entrepreneurial Factors." The Journal of Technology Transfer 38 (April 2013): 135-152.
• Gerhard Sonnert and Mary Frank Fox. "Women, Men, and Academic Performance in Science and Engineering: The Gender Difference in Undergraduate Grade Point Averages." The Journal of Higher Education 83 (January/February 2012): 73-101
• Mary Frank Fox, Carolyn Fonseca, and Jinghui Bao. "Work and Family Conflict in Academic Science: Patterns and Predictors Among Women and Men in Research Universities." Social Studies of Science 41 (October 2011): 715-735.
• Mary Frank Fox, Gerhard Sonnert, and Irina Nikiforova. "Programs for Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering: Issues, Problems, and Solutions." Gender & Society 25 (October 2011): 589-615.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Women and Men Faculty in Academic Science and Engineering: Social-Organizational Indicators and Implications." American Behavioral Scientist53 (March 2010): 997-1012.
• Mary Frank Fox, Gerhard Sonnert, and Irina Nikiforova. "Successful Programs for Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering: Adapting vs. Adopting the Institutional Environment." Research in Higher Education 50 (June 2009): 303-353.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Institutional Transformation and the Advancement of Women Faculty: The Case of Academic Science and Engineering." In Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol. 23. Edited by J. C. Smart. Springer Publishers, 2008.
• Gerhard Sonnert, Mary Frank Fox, and Kristen Adkins. "Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering: Effects of Faculty, Fields and Institutions Over Time." Social Science Quarterly 88 (December 2007): 1333-1356.
• Mary Frank Fox and Sushanta Mohapatra. "Social-Organizational Characteristics of Work and Publication Productivity Among Academic Scientists in Doctoral Granting Departments." The Journal of Higher Education 78 (Sept/Oct 2007): 542-571.
• Mary Frank Fox. “Women, Men, and Engineering.” In Women, Gender, and Technology. Edited by M. F. Fox, D. Johnson, and S. Rosser. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Women and Academic Science: Gender, Status, and Careers." Dissolving Disparity, Catalyzing Change: Are Women Achieving Equity in Chemistry? Edited by C. Marzabadi, V. Kuck, S. Nolan, and J. Buckner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Gender, Family Characteristics, and Publication Productivity Among Scientists." Social Studies of Science 35 (February 2005): 131-150.
• Mary Frank Fox. "R. K. Merton: Life Time of Influence." Scientometrics 40 (May 2004).
• Mary Frank Fox. “Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering.” In Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities. Edited by L. Hornig. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Women, Science, and Academia: Graduate Education and Careers." Gender & Society 15(October 2001):654-666.
• Mary Frank Fox and Paula E. Stephan. "Careers of Young Scientists: Preferences, Prospects, and Realities by Gender and Field." Social Studies of Science 31(February 2001):109-122.
• Mary Frank Fox. "Gender, Hierarchy, and Science." In Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. Edited by J. S. Chafetz. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999.

References[]

External links[]

• Profile at ResearchGate