This chapter examines this critical entry point into an academic career—and its components—with a primary focus on differences in hiring outcomes for tenure-track assistant professor and tenured associate or full professor positions, and how these differences might be explained. The following research questions are addressed:
• Is gender associated with the probability of individuals applying for S&E positions in research-intensive institutions?
• Given that an individual applies for a position, does a woman have the same probability of being interviewed as a man?
• Given that an individual is interviewed for a position, does a woman have the same probability of being offered a position as a man?
As the chapter explores the impact of institutional and departmental characteristics, rather than the individual characteristics of potential applicants and job candidates, another way to frame the research questions is, what are the characteristics of research-intensive (Research I or RI) institutions associated with proportionately more applications from women, interviews of women, and offers to women?
The chapter is divided into five sections. We outline the hiring process with a focus on three key parts of the hiring process—applications, interviews, and offers. The final two sections describe faculty perceptions of hiring and institutional policies based on data from our faculty survey. A review of the relevant literature and research and what it suggests we should expect to find in our survey data can be found in Appendix 2-1.