Newsletter

April 2012

Gender Equity On Science Faculties Might Have To Wait A Century, Study Finds

Robin Wilson

It
could take nearly 100 years before half of all professors in science and
engineering are female, according to an article out on Friday in the journal
Science.

The
assertion is shocking because people in academe have been working for decades to
increase the number of women in those fields. The article says it will take so
long for universities to attain equal numbers of women and men even though the
proportion of women being hired in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics—the so-called STEM fields—is on the rise and even though, once women
are hired, their rate of advancement is the same as for men.

One
reason for the lag is that the proportion of women among those being hired is
still low. "In the last four years we’re seeing 27 percent of new hires in
science and engineering are women," said Cheryl Geisler, dean of the faculty of
communication, art, and technology at Simon Fraser University, in Canada, and a
co-author of the article. "It was 25 percent earlier in the decade, so it’s just
been creeping up."

At
that rate, it may be 2050 before 50 percent of new hires in science and
engineering are female, said Deborah A. Kaminski, a professor of mechanical
engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Ms. Geisler’s co-author. And
even after one-half of all faculty members hired are women, "it will likely take
at least another 40 years before the actual population of science, engineering,
and mathematics professors is 50 percent women," says a news release on the
article, titled "Survival Analysis of Faculty Retention in Science and
Engineering by Gender."

A
separate article in American Scientist, meanwhile, says the proportion of
female professors entering math-intensive fields like chemistry, computer
science, engineering, and physics is low not because of gender bias in hiring or
because women are less proficient at math than men are, but because many women
who want to become mothers are simply uninterested in pursuing academic careers
in those fields.

Huge Leakage Rate

The
Science article is based on a study in which Ms. Kaminski and Ms. Geisler
tracked the progress of 2,966 assistant professors hired since 1990 in science
and engineering at 14 major research universities. They found that male and
female faculty members are retained at the same rate. But over all, their study
found, professors stay at a university for a median of just 11 years.

"This means that if you hire 100 assistant professors tomorrow, in 11 years only
50 of them will still be at your school," said Ms. Kaminski. "This leakage rate
is huge and should be a big red flag to everyone in higher education." The
departure of professors comes at a large cost to higher education, the article
says, because universities spend so much money on start-up packages for
professors in science and engineering. It can cost as much as $1.5-million to
replace one.

The
study does not focus on why professors leave after a median of 11 years, but Ms.
Geisler said they may either fail to earn tenure or move to other universities
for a variety of reasons, including higher salaries. The study did find that, of
those professors in the study who were hired from 1990 to 2002, two-thirds
earned tenure at the same institution.

The
other article, in the March-April issue of American Scientist, is called
"When Scientists Choose Motherhood," and was written by Wendy M. Williams, a
professor of human development at Cornell University, and Stephen J. Ceci, a
professor of developmental psychology there. The two have created the Cornell
Institute for Women in Science.

Their article was based on their own research and on findings from other
studies. "The effect of children on women’s academic careers is so remarkable
that it eclipses other factors in contributing to women’s underrepresentation in
academic science," says the article. It acknowledges that universities have
already taken some steps to make it easier for academic women to have children
and to hang on to their university jobs. But it says institutions should explore
other options, including instituting part-time tenure-track positions, providing
postdoc assistance to cover lab work when female professors are on family leave,
and "adjusting the length of time allocated for work on grants to accommodate
child rearing."

The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 16, 2012.