Women Preferred 2:1 in Academic Science Jobs

[n2doc]

The lack of women in science and engineering has long been a sore spot in academia. Even though girls are just as good as boys (if not better) in science and math, men greatly outnumber women in academic science jobs. Why?

This is not an easy question to answer, partially because many people who legitimately try to answer it are branded as "sexists." At least one person actually lost his job trying to answer this question. Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, proposed the possibility of a difference in the standard deviation of IQs for men and women. His idea, based on more than just mere speculation, was that geniuses and idiots were both more likely to be men, which would explain why it is men who tend to be professors or criminals. For that suggestion, he was essentially fired.

There are other more conventional hypotheses. The politically correct one is gender bias and discrimination. This hypothesis was supported in a damning 2012 PNAS study, which showed that science professors preferred male applicants over female ones for a job as laboratory manager. Even worse, the men were believed to be more competent and were offered more money, despite the fact that the applications were identical in every aspect, except for gender, of course.

...

Now, Professors Williams and Ceci are back with yet another study, this time in PNAS, that will certainly add more gasoline to the fire of public debate.

The authors had 363 faculty members read and rate narratives of prospective job candidates for an assistant professorship. In order to avoid tipping their hand in regard to the purpose of their experiment, they varied details of the candidates' lifestyles, e.g., whether or not they were married or had children. Their results showed that both male and female professors of biology, engineering, psychology and economics preferred women over men who shared the same lifestyle by a margin of roughly two-to-one. Furthermore, the same 2:1 preference existed for all lifestyles. The only exception were male economists, who showed no statistically significant gender preference. (See figure.)


more
http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2015/04/13/women_preferred_21_in_academic_science_jobs_109176.html

[Stargazer09]

1. Thank you!

I read that article, as well as the one linked within it about motherhood being a significant factor in women leaving tenure-track science careers.

Very interesting.