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The Patriarchy at Work
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.
From "Does Science Promote Women? Evidence from Academia 1973-2001".
Addendum: Tyler linked to an earlier version of this paper but if I forgot then probably so did you so here it is again.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on April 18, 2007 at 07:06 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Dear Professors Ginther and Kahn,
Sorry to send this email to you anonymously.
The 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients data is quite inaccurate (after the internet era). Every year, many Ph.D. students are persuaded over email to not share their real information in these surveys.
This is because several universities make it mandatory for us to fill in the surveys before they formally award us the Ph.D. We resent that. Very strongly. Doctoral students who have successfully defended their dissertations have missed their formal graduation dates just because they didn't filled in their surveys. We don't think that is fair. Some international students on visas have lost their jobs because they could not formally graduate on time and they have been forced to return to China or wherever they are originally from - all because that stupid survey wasn't filled out.
Consequently, many doctoral students, including those who value their privacy, submit dummy information, not true information. There is an underground lobby of sorts that encourages you to fill out fake data. Just think about this - if you are told "no survey = no phd" or if you friend’s family is deported to China or if your arm was twisted to complete a survey and you strongly resent the arm twisting, what kind of information are you likely to provide in the survey?
Posted by: Women at Universities at Apr 19, 2007 2:34:13 AM
Oh, just to clarify, we recently sent the above email to the two authors using JAP in combination with two other anonymizing systems.
We also urge other doctoral students reading this to continue filling in false data on the surveys. Please urge your friends to do likewise and pass on the horror stories to them. It is not fair that students miss their graduation just because they forgot to submit the surveys. I personally know of one student on OPT (Optional Practical Training) who joined a university in the South, but could not formally graduate because he overlooked the survey. He lost his position and had to leave for Brazil. And a close friend of mine who joined as Assistant Professor was demoted to an Instructor - again because of that darned survey. There are many other sad stories, of families being forced to return to China, of suicides, of missed job opportunities, as you may have heard already.
Well, since we can't boycott that darned survey, we can do the next best thing: fill in fake information. Please urge your graduating friends to do likewise!
Posted by: Women at Universities at Apr 19, 2007 2:51:07 AM
Amen to that!
In my case, the blood-sucking began the moment I was told by a junior-levl anal-retentive graduate school administrator that the dissertation-quality papers I had printed my dissertation on was not good enough. If I didn't want to miss the graduation date, I needed to submit three copies by 3:00 in the afternoon, which gave me exactly two hours. Then she scolded me for not submitting the Survey. I hated being asked about my nationality, race, citizenship and other personal matters on the Survey. Not only that, it was insisted that I use my "real ethnic name" on the Survey, which no one could ever pronounce, rather than the Americanized version of my Korean name, which is used in all my publications and day-to-day affairs. I came to the US when I was three years old and I could barely pronounce my ethnic name myself.
When surveys are being forced down your throat, you know what kind of data they can expect.
Posted by: John K at Apr 19, 2007 8:54:30 AM
This reminds me of something I just read-- that one British army unit seemed to contain a large percentage of Bengali single mothers till the bureaucrats cracked down. The doctoral survey data may be bad, but it did generate some statistically significant results. Is there a reason why the misreporting would do more than just add white noise?
Has anyone studied the effects of affirmative action on promotion? I sense heavy pressure to promote women.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen at Apr 20, 2007 9:43:56 AM
When most of us misreport something, we have systematic biases included in our misreporting. When an American university turns me down for employment and later sends an Affirmative Action card to me, I fill in "African American" to make their Sociology Department look bad. In reality, I am British of East Indian descent. I learned last month that a friend of mine from New York does exactly the same.
Posted by: Romesh Chakraborti at Apr 21, 2007 8:59:05 PM
Eric, my response to your "The doctoral survey data may be bad, but it did generate some statistically significant results. Is there a reason why the misreporting would do more than just add white noise?" is the following analogy -
I have been a faculty at universities in New Mexico and Texas. Most of my students in Texas were American Hispanics or Mexicans but I never had this problem in Texas but frequently experienced this problem in New Mexico.
When my local, American students from New Mexico were accepted into graduate programs, they frequently received I-20 type documents or documents leading to I-20's, information regarding foreign applicants to the United States or stern letters stating that as an international student they hadn't shown the minimum required funds and will not be able to pursue studies in the United States without such funds. Clearly there are many in our country who don't realize that New Mexico is part of the United States, which introduces a "systemic bias" like the above poster said.
Doctoral graduates in the last ten years or so know that the doctoral survey data is inaccurate because many of us got emails urging us to misreport information if we could not opt out of the survey altogether.
Posted by: Texas at Apr 22, 2007 12:42:47 PM
大家好，我是臺灣人，從臺灣一個人搬家來到美國，環境很陌生，感覺很孤單。以前在臺灣幾家知名的徵信社工作過，我是一個優秀的徵信工作者，希望早點找到適合自己的工作。希望通過貴站，認識更多的朋友。
Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 2, 2008 2:48:45 AM
