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A Chemistry World article summarizes a study by Cornell University psychologists Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci finding that faculty members asked to evaluate hypothetical male and female applicants for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology gave preference to female applicants. Quoting the study:
The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers.
The article concludes:
To be hired, women must first apply and the authors question whether ‘omniprescent and discouraging’ messages about sexism in academic appointments makes them reluctant to do so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:00AM
why don't they actually do a census (i.e. a full count of the population) of tenured faculty in universities? Instead of doing these psych experiments where "hiring managers" are given hypothetical resumes from imaginary candidates whose names mysteriously don't show up on LinkedIn, Google, or FB.
Is the data so difficult to obtain?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:54AM
My name "mysteriously" doesn't show up on LinkedIn, Google (Well, my name is quite common, so this isn't quite true, but anyone searching will not find me as an individual.), or Facebook, and I'm glad it doesn't. I prefer to keep my information as private as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:46AM
What are you talking about? You have the same Linked-In profile and Facebook status as I do! Why do not Anonymous Cowards get hired more often? Is it because we are Cowards, which automatically suggests we have testicles? Or that we are anonymous, which after all is a masculine gendered adjective. Wait, or is it neuter? OMG, that is worse! Forget I brought it up, and let's get back to talking about conservatives who can't get published unless they start their own publishing company. I mean, that is never gonna get old!!!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:36AM
Because they already know the numbers in the real world, they are trying to show WHY those numbers look like that.
If you are going to hire six professors, and get 25 applications from men and one from a woman, the best you can do is one woman out of six.
The study shows that if they got 25 men and 25 women to choose from, they would hire four women out of the six (2:1 ratio). But since they don't get as many female applicants as they would want to hire, they simply can't.