Women Advance as Science and Engineering Faculty, but Family Circumstances Matter

In July 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released “Thirty-Three Years of Women in S&E Faculty Positions,” a research brief based on the NSF Survey of Doctorate Recipients. As the brief reports, women have made significant progress in science and engineering (S&E) faculty positions over the past three decades, but full gender inequity remains elusive, particularly for women with family responsibilities. The brief reports that:

• In 2006, women earned 40 percent of all S&E doctoral degrees (up from 8 percent in 1958), with significant differences by field (for instance, women earn 71 percent of doctorates in psychology but only 20 percent of doctorates in engineering).
• In 2006, women held 33 percent of academic S&E positions (up from 9 percent in 1973) and 30 percent of full-time faculty positions (up from 7 percent in 1973). These women were more likely to be instructors or assistant professors (where women hold 42 percent of positions) than associate or full professors (where women hold 34 percent and 19 percent of positions, respectively).
• In 2003, women held greater shares of tenure and tenure-track positions at master’s-granting and medical schools than at research institutions. Women represented 26.5 percent of full professors at medical schools, 20.4 percent at master’s-granting institutions, 15.8 percent at baccalaureate colleges, and 15.6 percent at research institutions.
• In 2006, women in S&E were only 23 percent of married full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, and only 25 percent of married full-time tenure or tenure-track faculty with children in the home. At the full professor rank, women were only 16 percent of professors who were married or had children at home. Only 67 percent of women S&E faculty were married (compared with 84 percent of men), and only 42 percent had children (compared with 50 percent of men).

The complete research brief includes information disaggregated by field, along with tables detailing the data summarized above for select years from 1973 to 2006. To download the data brief, visit www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08308/.

Students Perceive a Need for Mentoring in Science and Engineering

In March 2008, MentorNet released the results of an online survey funded by the National Science Foundation and designed to answer the following question: “What are students’ perceptions of the value of and need for mentors as they progress through their academic studies in engineering and science?” The MentorNet survey, which was targeted to students and postdoctoral scholars in the MentorNet community, produced several interesting results:

• Importance of Mentoring. In all three major categories of mentoring for which the survey tested—psychosocial, role modeling, and academic/career—female students were more likely than male students to report that mentoring was important to them. Undergraduate students from underrepresented minority groups also put more emphasis than white and Asian/Asian American students on the importance of mentoring in all three categories, although these differences disappeared at the master’s level and above.
• Availability of Mentoring. Female students were significantly more likely than male students to report an absence of mentoring support, particularly in psychosocial areas. Asian/Asian American students were also significantly more likely than their white peers to report an absence of effective mentoring, saying that they lacked support in “feeling respected as individuals, being treated with empathy, [and] being comfortable asking questions without academic repercussions,” among other areas. Underrepresented minority students reported a similar lack of support.
• Importance of Same-Race and Same-Gender Mentoring. Of the 60 percent of respondents who answered questions about the race and gender of mentors, 42 percent felt that it was “not very” or “not at all” important to match mentor and mentee by race and ethnicity, while only 20 percent felt same-gender mentoring was “important” or “very important.” However, women, underrepresented minority students, and Asian/Asian American students were more likely than white students to report that same-race mentoring was important. Similarly, women were more likely than men to emphasize the importance of same-gender mentoring.
• Student Confidence. Female students were significantly more likely than male students to report a lack of confidence in their choice of field of study. The study did not find differences in confidence level by race or ethnicity.

The complete report includes data disaggregated by grade point average and by level of study. To download the report, titled “Students’ Perceptions of the Value and Need for Mentors as They Progress through Academic Studies in Engineering and Science,” visit mentornet.net/studentperceptions/.

Early-Career Equity in Social Sciences “Subsidized” with Sacrifices at Home

In June 2008, the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education at the University of Washington released “Finally Equal Footing for Women in Social Science Careers?,” a summary report based on the Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out National Survey. The report, which analyzes survey responses from doctoral degree recipients in anthropology, communication, geography, history, political science, and sociology, indicates that while women are entering their social sciences careers on equal footing with men, they pay a higher price for success in their personal relationships.

Women are slightly more likely than men to begin their careers on the tenure track, with 42 percent of women and 40 percent of men taking tenure-track positions as their first jobs after the PhD. Women and men are roughly equally likely to ever enter the tenure track (with 58 percent of women and 57 percent of men doing so) and equally likely to reach the tenure track at Research 1 institutions, where 18 percent of both men and women were at one point on the tenure track. However, six to ten years after earning the doctorate, 33 percent of men and 30 percent of women were tenured. Examining whether tenure rates were higher in fields dominated by women, the report’s authors postulate that women may actually have greater chances of achieving tenure in traditionally male-dominated fields.

In comparisons between men’s and women’s personal lives, however, starker differences appear. While 79 percent of male respondents were at one time married, only 71 percent of women ever married. Women were more likely than men to delay having children because of their careers, and six to ten years after earning the PhD, 61 percent of women (compared with 66 percent of men) were parents. Moreover, women were more likely to be members of dual-career couples (with partners whose educational level met or exceeded their own), and they were more likely to move or change jobs to accommodate a partner’s career (with 27 percent of women and 16 percent of men reporting having done so). The report’s authors conclude that “as a group women seem to be ‘subsidizing’ gender equality in careers by paying higher personal costs than men.”

The summary paper and related reports, written by Elizabeth Rudd, Emory Morrison, Joseph Picciano, and Maresi Nerad, are available for download at depts.washington.edu/cirgeweb/c/research/social-science-phds%E2%80%94five-years-out.   

New Study Confirms and Complicates the Salary Gap

In research presented in the 2008 meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Paul D. Umbach, assistant professor of higher education at the University of Iowa, combines human capital theory and market segmentation analysis to explore the salary gap in higher education. His research confirms that a salary gap based on gender exists, although its sources are complicated and its solutions difficult to identify.

Dissatisfied with previous research on the salary gap, which often attributes differences in salary either to individual achievement (such as how much a faculty member has published) or institutional location (such as whether a faculty member works for a Research 1 institution), Umbach set out to combine both approaches. Controlling for both institutional and personal variables, Umbach discovered that women earn an average of $3,100 less than men (a difference of 4.2 percentage points).

Umbach’s detailed analysis suggests that on an individual level, a range of factors beyond gender affect salary differences. Within individual institutions, full professors earn more than assistant professors (by an average of 31 percentage points); faculty members who are parents earn more than faculty members who are childless (3 percent); and each additional course section taught correlates to a drop in salary (3 percentage points).

Across institutions, Umbach discovered that faculty in woman-dominated fields make less money: average salaries decline by 10 percentage points for every one-percentage-point increase in women’s representation. Academic fields with more women also produce fewer articles, receive less grant-funded research, and have heavier teaching loads. These correlations appear at universities with more women as well.

Umbach concludes that “women tend to take a double, and sometimes triple, hit in the academic labor market,” where the gender pay gap is compounded by women’s tendency to work in disciplines and institutions that offer lower compensation “regardless of gender.” He emphasizes the need to address this inequity through discipline-specific reward structures that emphasize teaching as much as research.

To read the full paper, visit www.education.uiowa.edu/crue/publications/documents/Umbach2008.pdf.

AAUW Releases New Report on Gender Equity in Education

In May 2008, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) released Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education, a report on girls’ and boys’ achievement in elementary through undergraduate education. Relying primarily on data compiled from standardized tests, the report refutes the rumored “boys’ crisis” and reinforces the fact that both girls and boys are succeeding in education. At the same time, the report points to troubling gaps in success for African American and Hispanic students and students from lower-income families, both boys and girls.

At the elementary and secondary level, the report examines results from National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests and debunks the idea of the gender gap. In reading, girls demonstrate slightly higher proficiency levels than boys, but both girls and boys have improved their reading scores over the past thirty years. In math, the gender gap favoring boys grows as students age, with boys outperforming girls by greater margins in high school than in elementary school and middle school. In both reading and math, however, any “gender gap” pales in comparison to the significant differences in performance tied to race, ethnicity, and family income.

Examining scores on the SAT and ACT exams, the report found varying results. While boys generally outscore girls on the SAT math and verbal exams and the ACT math exam, girls tend to score higher than boys on the ACT verbal exam. The report suggests that this shift in success compared to NAEP results may be due to student self-selection: more girls than boys take the ACT and SAT, and girls’ average scores may be lower as a result. As with the NAEP, deviations occurred by race and ethnicity, with Hispanic and African American students scoring lower in all areas than their white and Asian American peers. Students from families with higher income scored significantly higher than their lower-income peers.

To identify rates of success in high school and college, the report examined high school completion as well as undergraduate enrollment and bachelor degree attainment. It found that across races and ethnicities, girls are more likely to complete high school and earn a bachelor’s degree than their male peers, with significant gaps occurring between races and ethnicities. The gender gap favoring women is greater among lower-income dependent students than among their higher-income peers. After graduation, however, an income gap favoring men appears.

In sum, the report’s authors conclude that the so-called “boys’ crisis” does not exist—but a crisis for lower-income students, as well as African American and Hispanic students of both genders, is at hand. To download the full report, written by Christianne Corbett, Catherine Hill, and Andresse St. Rose, visit www.aauw.org/research/WhereGirlsAre.cfm.