Sexism in academia

Sexism in academia is the experience of sexism in an academic setting, usually higher education. There is controversy over the extent to which women being statistically underrepresented in any specific academic field is the result of gender discrimination or other factors such as personal inclination.[1][2] Although women make up 57% of undergraduate students, they make up 42% of the full-time positions in academia. In fall of 2009, according to the American Association of University Professors, half of all faculty members occupied part-time positions, and men were disproportionately underrepresented in those positions. Women earn the majority of undergraduate degrees, yet 28% of all full professors are women. This study illustrates that women are overrepresented at the undergraduate and part-time faculty levels, but underrepresented as full-time and tenured professors. Since the mid 1970s, the pay gap has remained the same; women in academia have been paid 80% of the average salary for a man, in part due to their underrepresentation among full-time and tenured faculty. In 2011, at all types of academic institutions, Female full professors had a salary disadvantage of 12%, and female associate and assistant professors had a disadvantage of 7%.[3]

Women in Academic Publishing

In many academic disciplines, women receive less credit for their research than men.[4][5][6][7] This trend is especially pronounced in engineering fields. A study published in 2015 by Gita Ghiasi, Vincent Lariviere, and Cassidy Sugimoto demonstrates that women represent 20% of all scientific production in the field of engineering. The study examined 679,338 engineering articles published between 2008 and 2013, and it analyzed the collaborative networks among 974,837 authors. Ghiasi et al. created networking diagrams, depicting the frequency of collaboration among authors, and the success of each collaboration was measured by the number of times the study was cited. The collaboration networks illustrate that mixed-gender teams have a higher average rate of productivity and citations, yet 50% of male engineers have collaborated only with other men and 38% of female engineers have collaborated only with men. The researchers use impact factors—the average annual number of citation that a journal receives—to measure the prestige of academic journals. Their study shows that when women publish their research in journals with high impact factors, they receive fewer citations from the engineering community.[4] The authors explain their findings as a possible consequence of the “Matilda Effect”, a phenomenon that systematically undervalues the scientific contributions of women.

In addition to engineering, a gender bias in publishing is exemplified in Economics. In 2015, Heather Sarsons released a working paper comparing credit allocated to men and women in collaborative research.[5] Sarsons analyzed the publication records of economists at top universities over the past 40 years, and found that female economists publish work as frequently as their male cohorts, yet their tenure prospects are less than half that of men. Women receive comparable credit to men when they solo author their work or coauthor with other female economist, evinced by a 8-9% increase in their tenure prospects, implying that tenure prospects decrease with collaborative work due to lack of credit given to women not the quality of their work. Men receive the same amount of credit for solo authoring and coauthoring their work, shown by a 8-9% increase in their tenure prospects; however, when women coauthor with men, there is zero increase in their tenure prospects.

Statistics

Controversy

Charges of discrimination against women

Kim Gandy, then-president of the National Organization for Women, said:[9]

Summers' suggestion that women are inferior to men in their ability to excel at math and science is more than an example of personal sexism, it is a clue to why women have not been more fully accepted and integrated into the tenured faculty at Harvard since he has been president.

Rebuttal to discrimination charges

Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, of the Department of Human Development, Cornell University, wrote:[10]

Women's current underrepresentation in math-intensive fields is not caused by discrimination in these domains, but rather to sex differences in resources, abilities, and choices (whether free or constrained).

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bird, Sharon (March 2011). "Unsettling Universities' Incongruous, Gendered Bureaucratic Structures: A Case-study Approach". Gender, Work & Organization. 18 (2): 202–230. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2009.00510.x.
  2. ↑ Pinker, Steven (2002). The blank slate : the denial of human nature in modern intellectual life. New York: Viking. pp. ch 18. ISBN 978-0-670-03151-1.
  3. ↑ 1. Curtis, John. “Persistent Inequity: Gender and Academic Employment.” American Association of University Professors. 2011.
  4. 1 2 1. Ghiasi, Gita, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. "On The Compliance Of Women Engineers With A Gendered Scientific System." Plos ONE, vol. 10, no. 12, 2015, pp. 1-19. Academic Search Complete, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145931.
  5. 1 2 1. Sarsons, Heather. “Gender Differences in Recognition of Group Work”. Harvard University. 2015.
  6. ↑ Jenkins, Fiona. "Epistemic Credibility And Women In Philosophy." Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 29, no. 80, 2014, pp. 161-170. Academic Search Complete. doi:10.1080/08164649.2014.928190.
  7. ↑ Rigg, Lesley S., Shannon McCarragher, and Andrew Krmenec. "Authorship, Collaboration, And Gender: Fifteen Years Of Publication Productivity In Selected Geography Journals." Professional Geographer, vol. 64, no. 4, 2012, pp. 491-502. Academic Search Complete. doi:10.1080/00330124.2011.611434.
  8. ↑ Yoffe, Emily (2011-02-08). "Sexism in Academia". Slate. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
  9. ↑ "NOW Calls for Resignation of Harvard University's President". Now.org. 2005-01-20. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
  10. ↑ "Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science" (PDF). Pnas.org. 2011-02-07. Retrieved 2013-12-04.

Further reading

External links

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