Sexism in Academics

Study: University faculty members prefer hiring women over men 2:1 in STEM.  I think it's a safe bet we can generalize to non-STEM fields as well.  (How many faculty members do you know that do not want to hire women?)

The study.

Discussion at Inside Higher Ed.

Here is the discussion at the philosophy website Daily Nous (where the question is raised whether sexism is a myth...because only sexism against women can possibly be sexism; it's hilarious that in none of the linked to items above does the author raise the question about whether the study indicates that there is sexism against men, only whether there is not sexism against women.  If the study would have been 2-1 in reverse, we'd be hearing about it endlessly.  What we'll hear instead is how it was flawed or how it's not good evidence that the results apply to real world situations.  Because we all know sexism against women is rampant.)

Summary:

"The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers."

"National randomized experiments and validation studies… conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children). Applicants’ profiles were systematically varied to disguise identically rated scholarship; profiles were counterbalanced by gender across faculty to enable between-faculty comparisons of hiring preferences for identically qualified women versus men."