FACULTY REPRESENTATION

Despite these encouraging numbers, the number and percentage of women faculty had yet to match these gains. While noticeably increasing throughout S&E disciplines, women continued to be underrepresented among academic faculty relative to the number of women receiving S&E degrees (Nelson and Rogers, 2005). As Table 2-1 shows, in 2003, women comprised between 6 and 29 percent of senior faculty (full and associate professors) in S&E. The largest percentage of full and associate professors was found in the life sciences, while the lowest was in engineering.

Women were more likely to be assistant professors, and as shown in Table 2-2, comprised between 18 and 45 percent of assistant professors in S&E.[30] Again, the largest percentage of female faculty was in the life sciences, and the lowest was in engineering.

These aggregate proportions masked two noteworthy phenomena. First, some departments had greater success in recruiting, retaining, and advancing female faculty than others. Examinations of specific department rosters continued to turn up examples of departments with no female faculty (e. g., Ivie et al., 2003; Nelson and Rogers, 2005).[31] Second, some types of higher education institutions had done better at recruiting, retaining, and advancing female faculty than others. Female science faculty were more likely to be employed by community colleges or institutions that did not offer a doctoral degree, rather than at the large research universities (Nettles et al., 2000; Schneider, 2000). For example, in mathematics in 2005, the percentage of female, full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty at doctorate-granting institutions was 11 percent; at master’s-granting institutions it was 24 percent; and at bachelor’s-granting institutions it was 25 percent (Kirkman et al., 2006).

According to Cataldi et al. (2005:3), “full-time faculty and instructional staff at public doctoral and private not-for-profit doctoral institutions were less likely to be female (32-33 percent) than those at public master’s, private not-for — profit baccalaureate, and other institutions (41 percent each), private not-for-profit master’s institutions (43 percent), and public associate’s institutions.” This was a long-standing trend, as noted in NRC’s (2001a:155) analysis of NSF data for 1979, 1989, and 1995, which found that women were “least represented among the fac­ulty at Research I and Research II institutions.” Summarizing the landscape in an article titled “Where the Elite Teach, It’s Still a Man’s World,” Robin Wilson (2004) wrote, “At the country’s big research universities, the vast majority of professors are men.”

Related to this is the fact that female faculty tended to be clustered in posi­tions that were part-time, untenured, or at lower ranks. The number of positions off the tenure track—both part — and full-time—had grown dramatically over the past few decades (Anderson, 2002; Bradley, 2004). Comparing full-time to part-time positions, women were less likely to be found in full-time positions. In mathemat­ics, for example, during the fall term of 2005, 37 percent of the part-time faculty at doctorate-granting institutions were women, while only 11 percent of the full­time, tenured and tenure-track faculty were women, and only 24 percent of the full-time, non-tenure-track faculty were women (Kirkman et al., 2006).[32]

Women comprised a particularly small percentage of tenured scientists and engineers in universities and 4-year colleges in 2001 (NSF, 2006). In engineering, for example, the percentage of tenured faculty who were women was 6.2 percent (out of a total of 15,480 faculty). In mathematics and statistics, the percentage was 11.9 percent (of 10,610 faculty), and in the physical sciences, it was 11.1 percent (of 18,930 faculty). In computer and information sciences, the percentage was 17.7 percent (of 2,670 faculty). The biological and agricultural sciences had the highest percentage of tenured faculty who were women, with 21.7 percent (of 30,940 faculty).[33]

Finally, NSF noted in its biennial publication, Women, Minorities, and Per­sons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2000 (2000:59), that “within 4-year colleges and universities, female scientists and engineers hold fewer high — ranked positions than do their male counterparts. Women were less likely than men to be full professors and more likely than men to be assistant professors.” These findings were confirmed in the 2007 follow-up to that report (NSF, 2007). In a survey of the top 50 departments in several fields, Nelson (2005) found the percentages of women dropped off through the professorial ranks from assistant to associate to full professor in all fields except one.[34] For example, in chemistry, women comprised 21.5 percent of assistant professors, 20.5 percent of associate professors, and 7.6 percent of full professors. In physics, 11.2 percent of assistant professors, 9.8 percent of associate professors, and 4.6 percent of full profes­sors were women. In civil engineering, 22.3 percent of assistant professors, 11.5 percent of associate professors, and 3.5 percent of full professors were women (Nelson and Rogers, 2005).[35]

Data for faculty at a wider range of institutions were consistent with Nelson’s findings (NAS, NAE, and IOM, 2007). For tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty in general in 2005, women comprised 6.3 percent of full professors, 13.2 percent of associate professors, and 19.5 percent of assistant professors (Gibbons, 2007).[36] In physics, women comprised 6 percent of full professors, 14 percent of associate professors, and 17 percent of assistant professors (Dresselhaus, 2007).

The explanation that female faculty on average tended to be younger and so were more likely to be at lower ranks did not completely explain their lower ranks according to the National Research Council (2001a: 172), which found “that at any given career age men are more likely to be in a higher rank [emphasis in original].” For example, in 1995, in the 10th year since receiving a Ph. D., 8 percent of women and 12 percent of men were full professors; in the 15th year, 33 percent of women and 45 percent of men were full professors; and in the 20th year, 64 percent of women and 73 percent of men were full professors (pp. 172­173). Something other than career age appeared to be causing part of the observed gender differences in rank attainment.