Our survey data allowed us to examine the actual behavior of departments for the 545 tenure-track and 97 tenured openings for which we have gender data for applicants, interviewees, offers, and ultimate hires. Across all the positions— tenure-track or tenured—an average of four men and one woman were interviewed for any particular position. A cynical reader might wonder if this is the case because search committees are attempting to show they are fulfilling a diversity mandate by interviewing a woman. However, an examination of the data on the percentage of women interviewed reveals that the percentage does not decline as the number of interviews undertaken increases, as it would if each job search interviewed only one woman for appearances’ sake. This finding, however, masks two other important findings.
First, our survey data allowed us to examine the actual behavior of departments for the 545 tenure-track and 97 tenured openings for which we have gender data for applicants, interviewees, offers, and ultimate hires. The second and fourth columns of Table 3-3 draw on information from Table 3-2; that is, the mean percentage of female applicants for tenure-track jobs and the mean percentage of female applicants for tenured jobs. The third and fifth columns present the mean percentage of female interviewees for tenure-track positions and for tenured positions.
As the table shows, in every instance, the mean percentage of female interviews exceeds the mean percentage of applications from women. With the exception of civil engineering, for which the median percentage of female interviewees for tenured positions is zero, results are similar if we compare median percentages (rather than mean percentages), but we do not show those here. (The reason for a zero percent median percentage of women in interview pools in the case of civil engineering is the small sample size of 12 cases.)
Even though the percentage of females in interview pools exceeds the percentage one might expect from the representation of women in applicant pools, no woman was interviewed for 155 (28 percent) tenure-track positions and 41 (42 percent) tenured jobs. Of course, part of this number is comprised of cases for which there were no female applicants. Still, in 124 tenure-track job openings (23 percent), at least 1 woman applied, yet no women were interviewed. In 23 (24 percent) tenured jobs, at least 1 woman applied, but no women were interviewed. These figures are substantially higher than for men. No men were interviewed for 18 tenure-track positions or 3 percent (in nine of those cases, there were no male applicants) and for 4 tenured positions or 4 percent (in 2 of those cases, there were no male applicants).
Table 3-4 shows that for tenure-track jobs, mathematics by far had the lowest proportion of positions for which no women interviewed, followed by biology and chemistry. (These proportions are computed using all cases, including those with no female applicants.) For tenured positions, biology had the lowest proportion of positions for which no women interviewed, followed by physics.
At first glance, the proportion of positions for which no women were interviewed for tenure-track positions might seem high. In all cases, however, the percentage of positions for which no women interviewed was below what might have been expected if gender played no role in the process of selection of interview candidates and if we assume qualifications are not gender-dependent. For
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TABLE 3-3 Mean Percentage of Females Among Applicants and Among Interviewees in Each Discipline
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NOTES: Means were computed as the average (across all positions with complete information about gender of applicants and interviewees) of the percentage of females among applicants (or interviewees) for the position.
The numbers of positions listed in this table are smaller than the numbers listed in Table 3-1, and the mean percentage of female applicants to tenure-track positions are different from those displayed in Table 3-2. This is because here we only considered positions for which complete gender information about all applicants and interviewees was available.
SOURCE: Survey of departments carried out by the Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty.
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TABLE 3-4 Percentage of Positions for Which No Women Were Interviewed by Type of Position
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NOTES: Actual number of cases is given in parentheses. The expected number of positions with no women interviewed given the size and gender composition of the applicant pools (see Table 3-3) is computed as described in the text.
The percentage of positions for which no women were interviewed is based on tenured and tenure — track positions for which complete information about gender of all interviewees was available. The data used to construct these values are the same as those used to calculate the statistics showing those interviewed divided by the total number of positions of each type and in each discipline for which complete gender information for all interviewees was available.
°These values are the probabilities of an all-male interview pool assuming that five interviewees were selected, the population of applicants was very large, and the frequency of men and women in the applicant pool equaled the percentages from Table 3-3.
SOURCE: Survey of departments carried out by the Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty.
example, assuming five candidates were interviewed for each position, using a simple binary calculation and the proportion of females in the applicant pool from Table 3-3, for tenure-track positions we would expect about 50 percent of the interview pools to include no women in physics, 56 percent in electrical engineering, and 42 percent in civil engineering—the three areas with the lowest representation of women among applicants. In biology, we would expect about 24 percent of the tenure-track interview pools to include no women, again assuming five individuals are on average interviewed for each tenure-track position. In chemistry, the expected percentage of interview pools with no women is 37 percent and in mathematics it is 33 percent. In all cases the percentage of male — only interview pools for tenure-track positions in the six disciplines is smaller than the corresponding probability of an all-male pool. There are significant discipline differences. Electrical engineering and mathematics have the largest difference (21 percent and 20 percent, respectively) between their probability of an all-male pool and their actual interview pools of applicants.
This finding suggests that once tenure-track women apply to a position,
departments are on average inviting more women to interview than would be expected if gender were not a factor, or women who apply to tenure-track or tenured positions in research-intensive institutions are, on average, well qualified. It is important to note that these higher rates of success do not imply favoritism, but may be explained by the possibility that only the strongest female candidates applied for Research I positions. This self-selection by female candidates would be consistent with the lower rates of application by women to these positions.
For tenured positions, the expected percentage of interview pools with no women are 18, 24, 35, 62, 44, and 35 percent for biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics, respectively. The situation for tenured positions is much less clear. Electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics have smaller all-male interview pools than their probability pools. This is particularly true for electrical engineering, which had male-only interview pools 42 percent of the time compared to a probability of 62 percent. However, civil engineering, chemistry, and biology had larger all-male interview pools than expected, with chemistry being the most notable. Fifty percent of the interview pools for tenured positions in chemistry were all-male, while the probability value was 24 percent. This finding highlights the importance of disaggregating survey data by discipline.