. "3 Gender Differences in Academic Hiring." Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010.
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Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty
candidate’s preferences (possibly also including the preferences of a spouse or family members).
Data on Hiring
Data on the hiring process, as described above, are scant. Unfortunately, nationally representative information is not available. First, there is no national evidence on applicant behavior. It is not known if male and female S&E doctorates apply to positions in a similar manner. Second, evidence of how search committees select one candidate over another is lacking, perhaps because the selection process can be difficult to quantify. Third, there is little evidence describing the number of individuals who go through the hiring process. While departments collect information on the number of applicants who apply for a position and are interviewed, and while gender is often noted for these individuals, data are rarely made public for rather good reasons, including the right to privacy of job applicants.1 Further, comparable data on hiring activities at different universities are not generally available to allow an examination of how university and departmental search policies and practices affect hiring outcomes. National statistics such as the National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty or the Survey of Doctorate Recipients focus on individuals in their current positions. The SDR asks doctorates about their postgraduate plans and whether they are interested in a postdoctoral or academic position, but does not follow respondents any further. As a result, this chapter will draw primarily from this study’s departmental survey described in Chapter 1 and in Appendix 1-4.2
The survey asked chairs of the six targeted departments in each of the Research I institutions to report whether they had conducted any searches during the 2002-2003 or 2003-2004 academic years. Of the 492 surveyed, 417 responding departments reported a total of 1,218 searches, ranging between 1 and 15 searches per department. Responding departments were asked to identify whether the search was for a tenured or tenure-track position. In a few instances respondents wrote in “both” (17 out of 1,218), and to a lesser degree “target of opportunity” (5 out of 1,218). A few (40 out of 1,218) left this question unanswered. Respon-
1
However, some institutions do release their analyses of hiring. An excellent example is the 2003 gender equity report undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania, which presents important data for consideration and evaluation while maintaining anonymity. See http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v50/n16/gender_equity.html. See also the report, University of California: Some Campuses and AcademicDepartments Need to Take Additional Steps to Resolve Gender Disparities among Professors, Report by the California State Auditor, 2001, available at http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2000-131.pdf. See also the report by the Commission on the Status of Women at Columbia University, Advancement of Women Through the Academic Ranks of the Columbia University Graduate School of Artsand Sciences: Where Are the Leaks in the Pipeline?, available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/senate/annual_reports/01-02/Pipeline2a_as_dist.doc.pdf.
2
The committee acknowledges that the p-values for all the data presented are unadjusted and that many of the data presented are interconnected.
