. "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
TABLE 3-10 Number of Policy Steps Taken by Departments
Number of Departments
Number of Steps Reported Taken
96 (23)
0
178 (43)
1
98 (24)
2
34 (8)
3
10 (2)
4
0 (0)
5
1 (0)
6
NOTES: Numbers in parentheses are the percentage of all responding departments; 417 departments responded. Of these, 98 (24 percent) took two policy steps to increase the gender diversity of the candidate pool.
SOURCE: Survey of departments carried out by the Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty.
Applications
Finding 3-1: Women accounted for about 17 percent of applications for bothtenure-track and tenured positions in the departments surveyed. There was wide variation by field and by department in the number and percentage of female applicants for faculty positions. In general, the higher the percentage of women in the Ph.D. pool, the higher the percentage of women applying for each position in that field, although the fields with lower percentages of women in the Ph.D. pool had a higher propensity for those women to apply. The percentage of applicant pools that included at least one woman was substantially higher than would be expected by chance. However, there were no female applicants (only men applied) for 32 (6 percent) of the available tenure-track positions and 16 (16.5 percent) of the tenured positions.
Finding 3-2: There are statistically significant differences in the percentageof women in the tenure-track and the tenured applicant pools across the sixdisciplines surveyed. Biology, chemistry, and mathematics had significantly higher percentages of female applicants than did all other disciplines. The percentage of female applicants in civil engineering, physics, and electrical engineering was significantly lower. The percentage of females among applicants to tenured positions was similar to the percentage of females among applicants to tenure-track positions.
