The committee interpreted its charge to include three goals: (1) to update earlier analyses with newer information, (2) to provide a more thorough under­standing of the scope of potential gender differences in S&E faculty, and (3) to recommend methods for further informing or clarifying assumptions about gender and academic careers. Establishing causes for any observed […]

The concern that inequities still exist, as well as the need for empirical evidence to conduct a search for disparities, prompted this study. In 2002, Sena­tor Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space of the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation convened three hearings on the subject of […]

Interest in studying the disparities between the careers of male and female faculty is widespread. Government agencies, legislators, and organizations, including many professional societies, have a vested interest in promoting science and engineering education and careers and encouraging a diverse set of students and graduates to enter and remain in S&E. Administrators in the academic […]

The 1999 report, A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT,[2] created a new level of awareness of the special challenges faced by female faculty in the sciences. Although not the first examination of the treatment of female faculty, this report marked an important historical moment, igniting interest in the difficulties […]

The findings related to tenure and promotion indicate the importance of addressing the retention of women faculty in the early stages of their academy careers; not as many were considered for tenure as would be expected, based on the number of women assistant professors. Retention was particularly problematic given the increased duration of time in […]

(Chapter 4) The survey findings with regard to climate and resources demonstrate two critical points. First, discipline matters, as indicated by the difference in the amount of grant funding held by men and women faculty in biology, but not in other disciplines. Second, institutions have been doing well in addressing most of the aspects of […]

The findings on academic hiring suggest that many women fared well in the hiring process at Research I institutions, which contradicts some commonly held perceptions of research-intensive universities. If women applied for positions at Research I institutions, they had a better chance of being interviewed and receiv­ing offers than male job candidates had. Many departments […]

The surveys of academic departments and faculty have yielded interesting and sometimes surprising findings. For the most part, men and women faculty in sci­ence, engineering, and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities within the university, and gender does not appear to have been a factor in a number of important career transitions and outcomes. The findings […]

This report does not exist in isolation. The committee has benefited greatly from three other National Academies’ reports on women in academic science and engineering. In 2001 the Committee on Women in Science and Engineer­ing (CWSE) published From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers, a statistical analysis of […]

Recognizing at the outset the need for new data, the committee conducted two national surveys in 2004 and 2005 of faculty and academic departments in six science and engineering disciplines: biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics. The first survey of almost 500 departments focused on hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, while the […]