Widening the Lens on Gender and Tenure: Looking Beyond the Academic Labor Market (original) (raw)
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Research in Higher Education, 2018
With a focus on possible gender differences, this study used 2003-2013 data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine individual, institutional, and early employment factors that contribute to career paths of recent doctorates who enter postsecondary academic appointments. Findings showed some noteworthy differences by gender including lower salary and longer time to degree for women, but overall results indicated no strong, comprehensive evidence of a gendered path to tenure during the first decade after degree completion. Scholarly publications and activities such as research and a postdoctoral appointment in early years following degree completion were the most important contributors for both men and women. Implications for policy and planning are discussed.
The Economics of Gender Differences in Employment Outcomes in Academia *
2008
This paper summarizes research that examines the relationship between hiring, promotion, and salary for tenure track science and social science faculty using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR). Gender differences in hiring and promotion can be explained by observable characteristics. However, gender differences in salaries persist at the full professor rank. In particular, women in science and social science are less likely to have tenure track jobs within five years of the doctorate when compared with men. However, when controls for marital status and children are included in the analysis, the research finds that unmarried women are significantly more likely to have tenure track jobs than unmarried men. Marriage provides a significant advantage for men relative to women. Presence of children, especially young children, significantly disadvantages women while having no impact on men in obtaining tenure track jobs. The research also finds no significant gender differe...
The Navigation of the Gender and Tenure Paradigm
2010
Institutional cultures reflect and encourage socially designated gender roles. For many in academia this complicates the notion that the tenure process serves as a gateway for retention within institutions of higher education. Gender-specific organizational discourses and cultural practices are examined as are faculty members' necessitated quests for balance in their lives as teachers, researchers, authors, advisors, committee members, and in many cases, parents and caretakers. Unfortunately, the negotiation of this balancing act can vary given gender performance social norms and as such, it is not uncommon for female faculty to feel that the professional scale they must balance is heavily weighted with stumbling blocks of sex-based discrimination. The responsibilities of members of higher education institutions to educate faculty, particularly future female faculty, on the difficulties and navigation strategies of this balancing act are explored and described.
PLOS ONE
Underrepresentation of women in senior positions is a persistent problem in universities worldwide, and a wide range of strategies to combat this situation is currently being contemplated. One such strategy is the introduction of a tenure track system, in which decisions to promote scientific staff to higher ranks are guided by a set of explicit and transparent criteria, as opposed to earlier situations in which decisions were based on presumably more subjective impressions by superiors. We examined the effect of the introduction of a tenure track system at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) on male and female promotion rates. We found that chances on being promoted to higher levels were already fairly equal between men and women before the tenure track system was introduced, and improved-more for women than for men-after the introduction of the tenure track system. These results may partly be explained by affirmative actions, but also by the fact that legacy effects of historical discrimination have led to a more competitive female population of scientists. In spite of these outcomes, extrapolations of current promotion rates up to 2025 demonstrate that the equal or even higher female promotion rates do not lead to substantial improvement of the gender balance at higher levels (i.e., associate professor and higher). Since promotion rates are small compared to the total amount of staff, the current distribution of men and women will, especially at higher levels, exhibit a considerable degree of inertia-unless additional affirmative action is taken.
Faculty Hiring and Tenure by Sex and Race: New Evidence from a National Survey
In academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the U.S. professoriate remains disproportionately White and male, despite decades of effort to make hiring and tenure processes more just. To examine the likelihood of a doctorate recipient first obtaining a tenure-track position and then receiving tenure and to investigate the effects of sex and race, we analyzed data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients collected between 1993-2010 (n = 31,370), employing two separate discrete time event history models via logistic regression. In obtaining a tenure-track position, Black and Hispanic doctorate recipients were hired faster than were White doctorates, and Asian doctorate recipients were hired later than White doctorates. Single men and women with a child under six were least likely to be hired. In receiving tenure, Black assistant professors and women assistant professors with a child under six were each at a significant disadvantage.
Women's Careers in Academic Social Science: Progress, Pitfalls, and Plateaus
2014
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. Here, we evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor exist in the social sciences controlling for background and productivity characteristics. Using the 1981-2008 Survey of Doctorate Recipients, we find first that women with children are less likely than similar men to enter track jobs but not single childless women, suggesting that women’s entry into tenure-track academia is dominated by choice rather than by any discrimination at hiring. We find that ceteris paribus gender differences in tenure award existed in the cohort of 1980s PhDs but disappeared for the cohort of 1999 PhDs. The exception is the field of economics, where at least the probit analysis suggests a gender difference of approximately 20% that has not disappeared and is even larger for those single and childless. Finally, we find th...
Can the Language of Tenure Criteria Influence Women's Academic Advancement?
Journal of Women's Health, 2007
Background: Women are not advancing to leadership positions in academic medicine at rates predicted by their representation in medical school over the past 20 years. The prejudice persists, often as an unconscious mental model, that leaders should be men. We examined whether the presence of the word "leader" in written tenure criteria may have a differential impact on promotion of men and women in elite medical schools. Methods: We used a retrospective, descriptive design to study 24 academic medical centers top-ranked in both NIH funding and Carnegie classification. The main outcome measure was the slope of regression fit to 7-year annual data on percent faculty who are tenured women (1998-2004) relative to the median slope of all 24 institutions. Results: Medical schools with the word "leader" in tenure criteria were more likely to have slopes below the median slope than schools without the word "leader" (OR ؍ 6.0; CI ؍ 1.02, 35.37; p ؍ 0.04). Conclusions: Being a leader is associated with stereotypic male-gendered traits. Achieving tenure is a key gatekeeping point in advancement toward leadership in academic medicine. Our findings suggest that including the word "leader" in tenure criteria may promote activation and application of biases that disadvantage women's career advancement.
Research in Higher Education, 2019
Inclusion and diversity are highly visible priorities at many colleges and universities. Efforts to diversify the professoriate have necessitated a better understanding of career outcomes for current female faculty and faculty of color. We measure risk of leaving without tenure and years to promotion from associate to full professor at four large land grant universities. We model career outcomes as competing risks, and compute cumulative incidence functions to discern differences in tenure and promotion outcomes by gender and race. We find incidence rates vary significantly by academic discipline, and in many instances, show larger effects than gender and racial or ethnic differences. Our examination also indicates that in particular academic fields, females are more prone to leave without tenure, and less likely to be promoted to full professor. We also find that racial or ethnic minorities are less likely to be promoted to full professor in certain areas. The analysis suggests that for universities to address systemic issues of underrepresentation in academe, they must account for department level contexts, and align institutional practices to support the goal of inclusion and diversity.