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APPENDIXES 275
APPENDIX 2-2
PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO GENDER
DIFFERENCES AMONG FACULTY
This appendix describes research on women in academic science engineering that
provided a framework for the development of the 2004 and 2005 faculty and departmental
surveys. Drawing primarily on studies conducted by individual institutions and the analyses of
individual researchers, the research results suggested several possible reasons why women
continued to represent a small segment of faculty--reasons that provided suggestions for survey
questions and data needed to assess possible disparities.
Types of Research
A survey of the literature uncovered many books and articles examining gender in
academia, most of which examined gender issues either at the institutional or the individual
level. Institutional factors focused on structures, processes, and policies, or the way institutions,
departments, and faculty collectively functioned. Individual factors focused on characteristics of
faculty members themselves. Many studies focused on one side or the other; fewer attempted to
take both elements into account.
Institutional Studies
Individual universities and colleges have often conducted institutional research on salary,
climate, or gender equity. One of the more well-known, but certainly not the first, gender equity
studies was conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999. In recent
years, more and more schools have conducted stand alone gender equity reports.12 Such reports
typically collect and analyze data from institutional sources, including number of faculty in
various departments or schools, disaggregated by gender. Several studies have collected new
data by conducting on-campus surveys or focus group meetings on topics such as work/life
policies, salary equity, climate, or faculty satisfaction. Interview-based approaches allow for
questions to be raised on a wide variety of issues, including perceived treatment of self and
colleagues, job satisfaction, and characterization of work activities.
Studies by Individual Researchers
Many scholars and researchers have carried out studies either using some of the national
data sets or by collecting new information from surveys of faculty. As of 2004, there was a rich
12
Reports for 80 of the 88 RI institutions were collected and posted to the National Academies’ Committee on
Women in Science and Engineering (CWSE) homepage, located at:
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cwse/1gender_faculty_links.html.
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body of literature comparing various outcomes in the academic workforce by gender, focusing
on a variety of factors:
• Salary (e.g. Ginther, 2001; Barbezat, 2002; Becker and Toutkoushian, 2003; and Perna,
2003c),
• Supplemental earnings (e.g. Perna, 2002),
• Job satisfaction (e.g. Olsen et al., 1995; Hagedorn et al., 1999; August and Waltman,
2004),
• Productivity (e.g. Porter and Umbach, 2001; Sax et al., 2002),
• The probability of being in a tenure-track position (e.g. NRC, 2001; Olson, 2002;
NSF, 2004d
• The probability of having tenure (e.g. Ahern and Scott, 1981; Benedict and Wilder,
1999; NRC, 2001; Perna, 2001a),
• The probability of being an assistant or associate or full professor (e.g. Ransom and
Megdal, 1993; Long, 2001; Olson, 2002; NSF, 2004d),
• The probability of being granted tenure (e.g. Kahn, 1993),
• The probability of being granted a promotion (e.g. Ahern and Scott, 1981; Ginther,
2001),
• Time to promotion (e.g. Ginther, 2001),
• Work activities, that is, time spent on research, teaching, and service (e.g. Ahern and
Scott, 1981),
• Perceptions of (in)equality (e.g. Robst et al., 1998), and
• The likelihood of being retained or of leaving a faculty position (e.g. Rosser, 2004;
Zhou and Volkwein, 2004).
A 2003 literature review conducted by the NSF noted 15 studies on gender differences in
rank and tenure and identified 13 studies focusing on gender differences in earnings in
nationwide samples as well as several more studies employing a single-institution sample.
Barbezat’s (2002) “History of Pay Equity Studies” is another noteworthy review, which
surveyed a number of studies on pay issues. A number of scholars used the SDR to study gender
differences (Farber, 1977; Ahern and Scott, 1981; NRC, 2001; Ginther, 2001; Kulis et al. 2002;
Olson, 2002) while other scholars employed data from the NSOPF (Toutkoushian, 1998a and b;
Nettles et al. 2000; Perna, 2001c; Glover, 2002, and Bradburn et al., 2002).
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Examples of studies relying on original data collection include a study undertaken by
Donna Nelson and Diana Rogers (2004), which looked at the number of male and female faculty
members, by rank, at “top 50” departments in several fields. Several scholars turned to their own
or a selection of institutions and collected data from institutional research offices, focus groups,
or surveys to study this issue (e.g., Nerad and Cerny, 1999a; Montelone et al., 2003; Rosser,
2004; Trower and Bleak, 2004).
Limitations of Cross-sectional Data Sources
Four major limitations to these types of cross-sectional data sources should be noted.
First, although the academic career pathway is a longitudinal process, much of the data available
cannot follow the same individual over a long period of time. Some faculty are surveyed in more
than one Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), but the SDR is not a panel study, even though it
is longitudinal in its tracking of cohorts. For university studies, it is also possible that faculty
would be in more than one survey. Longitudinal data that cover most of an individual faculty
member’s career are rare; the most consistently available data are snapshots of faculty at
different points in their careers, taken at the time of the survey.13
Large gaps exist between the time periods selected for data collection. While some data
collection occurs annually, such as salary surveys conducted by the AAUP or the ACS’s survey
of top 50 Chemistry departments, most of the data available are not collected annually. Many
university gender equity studies appear to be one-time events. The SDR is biennial.14 The
NSOPF has been conducted every five years since 1988, most recently in 2004.15
Second, the data may be biased or certain data points omitted. Doctoral graduates, for
example, who fail to be hired and faculty who leave a university before or after tenure or
promotion are less likely to be surveyed. The faculty who leave may exhibit different
characteristics than the faculty who stay. As a result, analysis is likely to be restricted to the
population of faculty who may be termed “successful” but does not represent all faculty. And it
does not allow us to address other critical factors playing a significant role in determining the
career paths of men and women in academia. Also, as these survey results are self-reported, data
on productivity and job satisfaction may be biased, or faculty may simply misremembering
specific quantitative information from earlier stages of their career.
Third, comparability across studies is a major limiting factor, both in comparing surveys
from the same series undertaken in different years and comparing different surveys. In the case
of the SDR and NSOPF, both of which have been carried out multiple times, the questions, how
the survey is implemented, the sample size, and the response rate may all change. The NSF
notes regarding the SDR:
There have been a number of changes in the definition of the population surveyed
over time. For example, prior to 1991, the survey included some individuals who
13
This is part of the reason why much of the statistical analyses carried out use regression. A few scholars have
used event history or hazard models. See for example Weiss and Lillard (1982), Kahn (1993), and Ginther (2001).
See Allison (1984) for an introductory description of the methodology.
14
Conducted on odd numbered years until 2003, thereafter on even numbered years, beginning in 2006.
15
The NCES also conducted a survey of department chairs during the 1988 NSOPF, but the chairs survey was only
done this one time.
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had received doctoral degrees in fields outside of S&E or had received their
degrees from non-U.S. universities. Since coverage of these individuals had
declined over time, the decision was made to delete them from the 1991 survey.
The survey improvements made in 1993 are sufficiently great that SRS staff
believe that trend analyses between the data from the 1990s surveys and the
surveys in prior years must be performed very cautiously, if at all.16
A more difficult task is comparing several university studies. Myriad approaches have been
taken by universities in evaluating and assessing characteristics of their faculty, but concerns
over comparability somewhat reduce the usefulness of the information gathered.
Fourth, in the interest of preserving confidentiality, surveys often provide aggregated
information rather than the raw (i.e., individual) data. Certainly confidentiality is critical, but it
means that some studies are less transparent in describing how the study was conducted and who
was surveyed, making it more difficult to replicate or disaggregate the data and examine it
differently. Readers are constrained by the findings reported by the scholars who put the data
together.
Selected Factors Contributing to Gender Differences among Faculty
Numerous factors have been used in the past to assess the status of male and female
faculty in their careers. Characteristics that are often explored, aside from gender, are age,
marital and family status, citizenship, field of study, educational experience (including highest
degree and doctoral-granting institution), and employment experience (including number and
types of previous jobs and characteristics of a faculty member’s current position, such as rank or
tenure status). The research on a few of these factors is highlighted here.
Relative Age of Women Faculty
In general, women as a group were younger than male faculty. More recent entrants into
academia than men, women’s representation among academic faculty was conditioned not only
on the number of new Ph.D.s being granted to women, but also on the initial age and sex
composition of faculty members and changes in the number of faculty positions (Hargens and
Long, 2002). Moreover, “while new cohorts of Ph.D.s entering the academic marketplace are
increasingly female, each new cohort is only a small proportion of those currently employed.
Consequently, the move toward parity in the representation of women must occur slowly
(NRC, 2001:132).” Hopkins (2006:16) gave an example in the case of MIT:
In part, the small number of women faculty in [the Schools of] Science and
Engineering can be explained by (1) the fact that the ‘pipeline’ began to fill only
about 40 years ago; and (2) faculty turnover rates are slow, with many faculty
who achieve tenure staying at MIT for 30-40 years. Only about 5% of the MIT
faculty leaves each year due to retirement, failure to achieve tenure, or other
factors. At this rate, and assuming a 50% tenure rate, it would take approximately
16
“Survey Methodology: Survey of Doctorate Recipients,” NSF Website at:
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/ssdr/sdrmeth.htm [March 17, 2004].
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40 years for a department that had no women faculty to have a faculty that has the
same percentage of women as the Ph.D. pool.
As the NSF (1999, 99) notes: “many of the differences in employment characteristics
between men and women are partially due to differences in age. Women in the science and
engineering workforce are younger, on average, than men: 18 percent of women and 12 percent
of men employed as scientists and engineers were younger than age 30 in 1995.” Since women
faculty are younger, they have had, on average, less opportunity to receive tenure or a promotion,
making career age a vitally important factor to control for in assessments of gender disparities in
rank and tenure status (see e.g., NRC, 2001; Olson, 2002).
Family Issues
Marital status and the presence of children were often mentioned as critical to assessing
gender differences.17 Rosser (2003) surveyed women who received an NSF POWRE award
between 1997 and 2000. She found that “overwhelming numbers of survey respondents found
‘balancing work with family’ to be the most significant challenge facing women scientists and
engineers. Interestingly, the responses remained remarkably similar across disciplines: balancing
work with family responsibilities was the major issue for women from all the fields of study
covered by the survey.” Spouses and children presented competing demands for time on the part
of a faculty member and might bring additional actors or considerations into decision making.
These competing demands may have meant that some faculty had less human capital, experience
or productivity; or that applicants for academic positions were more constrained in where they
applied because of family or the spouse’s employment considerations (often referred to as
geographic mobility or the two-body problem).
Did these factors affect men and women similarly? Research suggests that the answer
was no. Women were more likely to be negatively affected by marriage and the presence of
children. NRC (2001) found some evidence that being married with young children helped men
but hurt women in terms of their academic career. The size of this effect had been shown to
increase for men and to decrease for women. Xie and Shauman (2003) and Mason and Goulden
(2002) found that marriage and family also negatively affected women pursuing science and
engineering careers.
Toutkoushian (1998a:515) laid out an hypotheses as to why the effect of marital status on
faculty salary might differ by gender: on the supply side, since women “often bear the majority
of child-rearing responsibilities in American society, married women may be more likely than
married men to interrupt or reduce their time allocation to their career,” or “married women may
accept lower wages in order to find employment at the same institution as their spouses.” On the
demand side, “institutions may make higher salary offers to married men than to married women
on the premise that married men are typically the breadwinners of the family and thus have a
greater need for higher salaries.” Using NSOPF-93 to analyze faculty salaries, Toutkoushian
found that the return on marriage for men was statistically significant and positive, but there was
no corresponding return for women.
Sax et al. (2002:426) focused on the role of family-related variables in research
productivity. Specifically, they asked: “Do marriage, children, aging parents, and other family-
related factors influence faculty research productivity?” and “Is the nature of family-related
17
Interestingly, research is adding care of older family members—for similar reasons as care of children (e.g. Sax et
al. 2002).
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factors dependent on gender or tenure status?” They analyzed data from the 1998-99 HERI
Faculty Survey. They found, first, that male faculty were more productive than women, when
compared at increasing levels of output over two years, i.e. a greater percentage of women than
men produced zero publications, while a greater percentage of men than women produced five or
more publications. However, Sax et al. found that “family variables contributed little or nothing
to the prediction of faculty research productivity. More important were professional variables
such as academic rank, salary, orientation toward research, and desire for recognition (p. 435).”
Sax et al. hypothesized the lack of effect may have resulted because women who had children
were able to do more with their limited time and reduce their time in activities outside of work
and home (i.e., leisure time).
Perna (2003a:2) used the NSOPF-99 “to examine the ways in which parental status,
marital status, and the employment status of the spouse are related to two outcomes, tenure and
promotion, among college and university faculty.” In an earlier study drawing on data from the
NSOPF-93, Perna (2001c cited in 2003a:3) “found that parental and marital status were related
to employment status among junior faculty and that the relationships were different for women
than for men. Men appeared to benefit from having children, as men with at least one child were
less likely to hold a full-time, non-tenure track position than they were to hold a full-time, tenure
track position.” In this study, Perna found “measures of family ties are related to tenure status
and academic rank, but the contribution of family ties to tenure status and academic rank was
different for women than for men.
Contrary to expectations based on economic and social capital perspectives, having
dependents and having a spouse or partner employed at the same institution were both unrelated
to tenure and rank among women faculty at four-year institutions in the fall of 1999. In contrast,
men appeared to have benefitted in terms of their tenure status and academic rank from having
dependents and in terms of their academic rank from being married. Compared with other men,
men without dependents were substantially less likely to hold tenured positions and were more
likely to hold the lowest academic ranks of instructor, lecturer, and ‘other.’ Men also appeared to
benefit in terms of their academic rank from being married. Specifically, men with a spouse or
partner who was employed at the same institution were less likely to hold the lowest ranks of
assistant professor and instructor, lecturer, or other rank than they were to hold the highest ranks
of full and associate professor. Men with a spouse or partner who was not employed in higher
education were more likely than other men to hold the rank of full professor.”
Kulis and Sicotte (2002:2) examined “whether women are disproportionately drawn to
large cities, areas with many local colleges, and the regional centers of doctoral production.”
Reviewing the literature, they suggested, regardless of academic achievement, wives in dual-
career households were more likely to be the “trailing spouse” or “tied migrant” whose career
suffered after a move, or were the one who was constrained from moving to a more
advantageous career destination (p. 6).” To test such hypotheses, they turned to the 1998 SDR.
Their findings were essentially that women were congregated in fewer geographical areas.
Women “scientists overall have more geographically constrained careers in academia, even
controlling for marital status, parental responsibilities, and age (p. 21).” Women in these areas
also had reduced career outcomes compared with men.
Mason and Goulden (2002) conducted research on “family formation and its effects on
the career lives of both women and men academics from the time they receive their doctorates
until twenty years later.” They employed data from the SDR for 1973-1999. They found “in the
sciences and engineering, among those working in academia, men who have early babies are
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strikingly more successful in earning tenure than women who have early babies.” “Surprisingly,
having early babies seems to help men; men who have early babies achieve tenure at slightly
higher rates than people who do not have early babies.” “Women with early babies often do not
get as far as ladder-rank jobs.” Data from the analysis of the SDR suggested many married
women with children indicated they were considering leaving academia.
Institutional Policies and Practices
Previous research on the role of institutions in gender differences among their faculty
consisted of two different approaches. One approach focused on structural differences among
institutions, arguing that such variables as the type of institution, whether it was a public or
private institution, its prestige, whether it was unionized, and even its geographic region could
explain some of the differences between male and female faculty members. A more challenging
approach focused on the way in which universities worked—hire faculty, grant tenure, and
promote faculty—arguing that these policies and procedures could be biased against particular
groups of people (see e.g., Steinpreis et al., 1999; Valian, 1998; 2004; Menges and Exum,1983;
and Gibbons, 1992b).18
An example of an important policy affecting women’s academic careers was stopping-
the-tenure clock. By 2004, many universities had such policies in place, but some studies found
that faculty were hesitant to make use of such a policy. For many women, the fear that taking an
extension might cause their senior colleagues to view them more negatively and hurt their
career—an effect not conclusively documented—was sufficient to dissuade them from taking
this option (Bhattacharjee, 2004b).
Policies about hiring spouses were also seen as relevant in both hiring and retention of
women, as women were more likely than men to be married to other academics. Equally
important were policies on child care and parental leave. According to researchers, creating
spousal hiring programs and establishing parental leave policies and child care were practices
that “would make academic institutions more attractive to prospective candidates of either
gender” (Sullivan et al, 2004).
This review of previous literature and research reflects the opinions at the time of this
study’s surveys of faculty and departments. They should help assess the climate at research
intensive institutions at that time and may be helpful in assessing how effective the efforts of
these institutions have been since then to improve the representation of women S&S faculty.
18
A review by the Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, entitled, “Reviewing Applicants: Research on Bias and Assumptions” identified several studies suggesting
female candidates may have a tougher time. Available at: http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/initiatives/hiring/Bias.pdf
[Accessed on October 7, 2008].
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