TIME IN RANK

Although women are as successful as men when they are considered for tenure, differences in gender distributions at different faculty ranks may relate to differences in how long men and women spend within ranks. In general, the literature suggests women take longer to get tenure or a promotion. According to one study, across all fields (S&E and non-S&E) except for engineering and mathematics/statistics, women wait longer to attain tenure. Significant differences

TABLE 5-6 Tracking Cohorts Entering the Tenure Track Through 7 Years: Pennsylvania State University Cohort Year All Entrants Female Male Entrants Tenured Rate (%) Entrants Tenured Rate (%) Entrants Tenured Rate (%) 1990 121 70 58 40 19 48 81 51 63 1991 93 55 59 30 15 50 63 40 63 1992 151 89 59 55 28 51 96 61 64 1993 103 55 53 31 12 39 72 43 60 1994 134 63 47 50 17 34 84 46 55 1995 127 70 55 53 30 57 74 40 54 1996 91 45 49 29 12 41 62 33 53 1997 160 87 54 52 25 48 108 62 57 1998 183 107 58 75 38 51 108 69 64 Totals 1163 641 55 415 196 47 748 445 59 SOURCE: Dooris, Guidos, and Miley, 2006: Table 1.

TABLE 5-7 Results of Faculty Reviews at 2, 4, and 6 Years Following Hire: Pennsylvania State University, 2004-2005 Total Men Women Year 2nd 4th 6th 2nd 4th 6th 2nd 4th 6th No. of cases reviewed 113 140 107 63 86 60 50 54 47 No. with continuation recommended 109 121 95 61 75 54 48 46 41 No. forwarded for early tenure 5 13 n/a 3 9 n/a 1 4 n/a Percent with positive recommendation 96 86 89 97 87 90 96 85 87 SOURCE: Dooris, Guidos, and Miley, 2006: Table 3.

in which men were favored were found in the biological sciences and psychology and the social sciences. In engineering, however, women were significantly more likely to receive tenure first (Astin and Cress, 2003). A separate study of physician faculty of U. S. medical schools found that women were “much less likely than men to have been promoted to associate professor or full professor rank after a median of 11 years of faculty service” (Tesch et al., 1995). Finally, Kahn (1993) found that for academic economists, the time between receipt of Ph. D. and ten­ure for men was 7 years, while for women it was 10 years. Data for individual universities also show this trend at such schools as the University of California, Berkeley, MIT, and Duke University (NAS, NAE, and IOM, 2007).

Data from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty show that, among faculty who earned their doctorates in U. S. institutions and were employed full time in 1997 in academic institutions in biology, physical science, engineer­ing, and mathematics, women averaged 9 years as assistant professors, compared to an average of 7.6 years spent by men, though this difference was not statis­tically significant at the 0.05 level (see Table 5-8, and Appendixes 5-4, 5-5). Female full professors were promoted to that rank an average of 13 years after first being hired, compared to an average of 10.1 years for men, which is statisti­cally significant at the 0.05 level. Thus, the gap between men and women in years between first hire and most recent promotion grows between the associate and full professor ranks.

Consistent with the data on average time in rank, the NSOPF data showed a greater percentage of female associate professors (16.8 percent) spent 11 to 15 years as assistant professors, compared to 8.4 percent of male associate professors (Appendix 5-3), although this was not statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Twenty percent of male associate professors were promoted to that rank after 5 or fewer years as an assistant professor, compared to 13.1 percent of female associate

TABLE 5-8 Mean Number of Years Between Rank Achieved and First Faculty or Instructional Staff Job, by Gender, for Full-Time Faculty at Research I Institutions, Fall 2003

Years Between Current Rank Achieved and Employment Start at
Postsecondary Institutions
Associate Professor	Full Professor
Mean (Std. error)	Mean (Std. error)

Total Faculty	7.8 (0.3)	10.4 (0.2)
Men	7.6 (0.3)	10.1 (0.2)
Women	9.0 (0.9)	13.0 (0.6)

NOTE: Numbers are for full-time faculty with instructional duties for credit, teaching biology, physi­cal sciences, engineering, mathematics, or computer science. SOURCE: NCES, NSOPF: 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty March 30, 2006.

professors; although again, this was not statistically significant at the 0.05 level. The distribution of years spent in the associate professor rank shows 36.3 percent of men were promoted to full professor after 10 years or less, compared to 26.4 percent of women (see Appendix 5-5).[96]

The committee’s faculty survey differs in some respects from the NSOPF:04 data in that it includes only faculty at RI institutions and does not exclude faculty who earned their doctorates outside the United States. The sample size of 634 used to construct Table 5-9 reflects a loss of about 50 percent from the original sample of about 1,250 respondents, because information on time in rank could only be calculated for those faculty members who received at least one promotion at their current institution. Because neither sampling weights nor nonresponse weights were used, care should be taken in generalizing the results to the population of all faculty.

Despite the differences in samples, the committee’s survey found results similar to the NSOPF:04 study for time in rank. Table 5-9 presents data on the mean number of months that faculty who were promoted to associate professor in each of the six disciplines surveyed spent in the rank of assistant professor. Similar calculations were made for male and female full professors. Across the six comparisons for faculty who were currently associate professors, women aver­aged a significantly longer time in rank in all fields except civil engineering and electrical engineering, where women’s time in rank was not different from men’s. For current full professors, women spent significantly longer time in the rank of assistant professor in all disciplines, and in three disciplines, it was statistically significant.

It is interesting to note that the average number of months spent as an assistant professor has been rising over time, as indicated by the longer durations for both male and female associate professors, as compared to their counterparts who were promoted at an earlier time period and are now full professors.

The measure used in Table 5-9 does not include years spent as a postdoc, employed outside of academia, or unemployed. We also calculated the time that elapsed between the date of obtaining a Ph. D. and the date of promotion to associ­ate professor with tenure, shown in Table 5-10. This second measure accounts for the time spent in one or more postdoctoral positions prior to the first tenure-track job. It shows the greater number of months to promotion to associate professor with tenure (an average of 95.0 [see Table 5-10] months compared to 68.6 months [see Table 5-9] spent as an assistant professor), with trends over time and con­trasts by gender varying from those reported in Table 5-9. The number of months between receipt of Ph. D. and promotion to associate professor with tenure shows greater increases over time than the measure of time spent as an assistant profes­sor, reflecting the increased prevalence and duration of postdoctoral appointments.

TABLE 5-9 Mean Number of Months Spent as an Assistant Professor Discipline Current Associate Professors Current Full Professors Men Women Men Women Biology 68 (4) (21) 74 (3) (36) 63 (3)(25) 68 (4) (28) Chemistry 62 (4) (27) 72 (2) (33) 56 (3)(43) 67 (3) (22) Civil engineering 69 (4) (29) 69 (2) (30) 61 (4)(16) 65 (4) (19) Electrical engineering 64 (6)(13) 67 (3) (23) 55 (4)(17) 58 (3)(21) Mathematics 40 (6) (18) 60 (3) (30) 46 (4) (36) 47 (4) (22) Physics 55 (3) (27) 60 (3) (33) 55(2)(41) 61 (4) (24)

NOTES: The first set of parentheses indicates standard error of the mean, and the second set of paren­theses denotes number of observations used in the calculation.

There were only 634 faculty with current rank as associate or full professor who were hired at their current institution as tenure-track assistant professors, who work full time, and who have a Ph. D. Only those faculty who were promoted to associate with tenure from assistant were used in the calculations. We omitted departments that did not provide information on gender of faculty. The low average com­puted for men in mathematics who are currently associate professors is influenced by a reported time of an assistant professor of only 4 months. If we eliminate that record from the data, the new average as associate is 50 months, more similar to the average time computed for women associate professors. We also omitted one outlier who reported being unemployed for 27 years following graduation, three individuals with negative time to promotion (promotion happened before hire), and three individuals who spent over 320 months (over 26 years) as assistant professors.

SOURCE: Faculty survey conducted by the Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty.

Although men in the full professor cohort generally experienced fewer months between receiving their Ph. D. and being promoted to associate professor with tenure than women, the results were very mixed for the sample of current associ­ate professors.

Turning next to the promotion to full professor, Table 5-11 presents weighted means of time spent as an associate professor for the 311 full professors for whom data were available. In contrast to the NSOPF data, women who were currently full professors spent significantly more time as associate professors in chemistry, mathematics, and electrical engineering, where the differences between men and women were not significantly different at the 5 percent level. Overall, the data were not clear for both full and associate professors.