As a foundation for understanding the survey findings, it is important to remember that although women represent an increasing share of science, mathematics, and engineering faculty, they continue to be underrepresented in many of those disciplines. While the percentage of women among faculty in scientific and engineering overall increased significantly from 1995 through
2003, the degree of representation varied substantially by discipline, and there remained disciplines where the percentage of women was significantly lower than the percentage of men. Table 6-1 shows the percentage of female faculty in selected scientific and engineering disciplines during this time period at the assistant, associate, and full professor levels.
In 2003, women comprised 20 percent of the full-time employed science and engineering (S&E) workforce and had slowly gained ground compared to men in the full-time academic workforce; by 2003, they represented about 25 percent of academics. Women’s representation in the academic workforce, of course, varied by discipline: in the health sciences, women were the majority of fulltime, employed doctorates, while in engineering they were less than 10 percent. The greatest concentration of women among full-time academics was at medical schools; the lowest was at Research II institutions.