The Committee next examined some resources that may generally affect professional development. Here, the committee sought to assess whether male and female faculty were similarly engaged in their departments and institutions. There is a body of literature suggesting that women are isolated and marginalized. The former refers to not being part of the community in […]

The survey focused next on the number of research assistants (RAs) and postdocs supervised by the faculty, and the amount of available clerical support. For faculty, supervising RAs and postdocs is both an advantage and disadvan­tage. Such supervision may take a lot of faculty time and effort, yet support staff contributes a great deal to […]

The survey asked respondents whether they had access to all the equipment they needed to perform their research. Three answers were coded: 2 = “Yes, I have everything I need,” 1 = “I have most of what I need,” and 0 = “I do not have access to major pieces of equipment that I need […]

Much of the discussion on lab space stems from the 1999 MIT report, Report of the School of Science, which found an “unequal distribution” of resources, including lab space, allocated to women.[65] This focused attention on the issue, and a number of other gender equity assessments at other universities have taken it up.[66] Stanford’s report, […]

Faculty may negotiate a reduced teaching load for an initial period after they are hired. New faculty often desire a reduced teaching load to allow them time to get settled in a new environment and to get their labs and their research set up and underway. The committee’s survey asked all tenure-track and tenured faculty […]

The faculty questionnaire asked tenure-track or tenured faculty hired after 1996 whether they received travel funds when they were first hired at their current institution. Of those who responded, 56 percent of men and 59 percent of women indicated that they did (see Appendix 4-11). Again, there was no substantial gender difference at this level […]

The faculty questionnaire asked tenure-track or tenured faculty hired after 1996 whether they received summer salary funds when they were first hired at their current institution. Of those who responded, 71 percent of men and 68 per­cent of women indicated they did. When disaggregated by discipline, interesting differences appeared, with female faculty having a higher […]

Start-up packages are given to new faculty hires. A number of elements can be found in start-up packages, which makes it important to define clearly what is being quantified. Systematic surveys of start-up funds began in earnest around 2000. Examples include surveys conducted by the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999 and surveys conducted […]

This section focuses on a single, general question: do male and female fac­ulty receive similar institutional resources? To explore this question, we examine a number of different resources. In order, they are start-up packages received on joining a department, summer salary, travel funds, reduced teaching loads, lab space, equipment, and support staff, including access to […]

In addition to asking about the percentage of time spent on service, our faculty survey asked respondents how many committees they have served on. The view is that, in order to make committees more diverse, women are more frequently asked to serve on them, with the result that they serve on more committees than men […]