Chris Blattman

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Women in academia

We find that institutions with female presidents and female provosts, and those with a greater share of female trustees did increase their share of female faculty at more rapid rates. Moreover, the magnitudes of the effects of these leaders appeared to be largest at the smaller undergraduate institutions, where central administrators may play a greater direct role in hiring decisions than they do at the larger research universities.

That is Ronald Ehrenberg in VoxEU. Also,

…the gender of the chair of faculty search committees, in the science and engineering fields at major research universities in the US, influences the likelihood that female PhDs will apply for positions at these universities.

Apparently knowledge of the gender of the chair of the search committee signals something to potential female applicants about the seriousness of the department in wanting to expand female faculty employment and in providing leadership opportunities for female faculty.

6 Responses

    1. Are points awarded so easily on this blog?

      Consider:
      1. The data in the root paper stretch over three decades, good times and bad, and don’t include the current market; and

      2. Even if we were looking at current data, a bad job market would generate this correlation only if bad job markets were somehow associated with a change in the trend of hiring of females at institutions with existing females (e.g. if a bad job market changed preferences over faculty mix). It might also be that TX in AFR’s worry is true if (i) women were faculty at worse institutions, (ii) worse institutions hire more in bad times, and (iii) female PhD candidates generally get hired by worse institutions. I don’t think that’s the case, and if it is, a bad job market is the least of women’s worries…

      +2 Blattman? ;)

  1. Did the author control for the “the academic job market is terrible and most people are applying for almost any job for which they qualify these days” factor? This is interesting, but I have the definite sense that sheer panic and desperation have been driving decisions about accepting jobs for the last couple of rounds.

  2. Is there a way for your blog to make clear which entries are accepting comments and which are not?

    it’s frustrating to write a long comment, , enter your name, etc, then be told:

    Comments are no longer accepted.
    Thanks!

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