Chemistry for Everyone
Analysis by Gender of the Doctoral and Postdoctoral Institutions of Faculty Members at the Top-Fifty Ranked Chemistry Departments Valerie J. Kuck* and Cecilia H. Marzabadi Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Center for Women’s Studies, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ 07079; *
[email protected] Susan A. Nolan and Janine P. Buckner Department of Psychology and Center for Women’s Studies, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ 07079
The slow progress that women are making in attaining tenure-track positions (assistant, associate, or full professor) in chemistry departments at Ph.D.-granting universities has been reported by several researchers (1–5). In 2003–2004, women held only 12% of all tenure-track faculty positions and only 21% of assistant professor positions at the top-fifty chemistry departments, as identified by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as having spent the most money on chemical research in 2001 (6). The rate of hiring female faculty members has not kept pace with the rising percentage of women earning doctoral degrees, which began in the 1970s. The underrepresentation of women in academe is not limited to Ph.D.-granting universities; however, it is greatest at those institutions. The American Chemical Society (ACS) reported that the percentages of full-time, female, doctorate faculty members at Ph.D.-granting universities, mastersgranting institutions, baccalaureate institutions, and two-year colleges, were 13, 20, 26, and 32%, respectively (7). The small percentage of female faculty members at Ph.D.-granting institutions can be explained only partially by women’s lower preference for academic research careers. Fox found that male doctoral recipients in chemistry expressed a preference for a career at an academic research institution 1.7 times more often than did the women (8). However, in a survey of 1988– 1992 doctoral graduates from 11 highly ranked chemistry departments, no statistical difference in the percentages of men and women who pursued tenure-track positions at Ph.D.-granting institutions was found (9, 10). It seems that other forces must account for the low numbers of tenuretrack, female faculty members, particularly at Research I universities (institutions that award 50 or more doctoral degrees each year, give high priority to research, and receive annually $40 million or more in federal support). Mentoring techniques or philosophies may be a source of some of the disparity in numbers. Differences have been found in the ways female and male faculty members interact with their students (11). Female faculty have been shown to place more emphasis than do male faculty on helping students across a broader range of areas; this includes setting higher standards for female students in seminar presentations, participation in laboratory meetings, acquisition of a range of skills, and faculty interactions. These teaching styles of female and male faculty members can have a profound influence on students. We posited that perhaps the uneven distribution of female faculty members available to mentor students may be linked to students’ eventual success in attaining future employment at top-tier institutions. In order 356
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to begin to investigate this link to the underrepresentation of women at Ph.D.-granting institutions, we sought to examine where faculty members at top-tier schools received their own doctoral and postdoctoral training and mentoring. Our goal in conducting this study was to determine whether the top National Research Council (NRC)-rated institutions were also the top “suppliers” of faculty members, and also whether gender was a factor in this supplier list. Focus of This Study The universities at which faculty members at the topfifty chemistry departments, as ranked in 1993 by the NRC, received their doctoral training were identified. These will be referred to as their “doctoral university,” and this group of departments will be referred to hereafter as the NRC-50. We obtained data on doctoral schools from the Web version of the 2001 ACS Directory of Graduate Research (DGR; ref 12). Our research identified 1595 tenure-track faculty members at the NRC-50 chemistry departments. Only individuals listed in the DGR as members of the chemistry department or chemistry and biochemistry department were included in this study. The University of California at San Francisco was excluded from our study because it is not listed in the DGR (due to its specialized curriculum). At the NRC-50 schools, 793 individuals (762 men and 31 women) received their doctoral degrees prior to 1979, whereas 802 (676 men and 126 women) did so after 1979. This reflects an increase in female faculty members from 4% to 16%. The former group will be referred to as the “older faculty” and the latter as the “younger faculty”. We focused subsequent analyses on the younger faculty group because these were the individuals who sought academic positions during the time when the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to women in chemistry began to increase significantly (13; see Figure 1 for depiction of this trend). A small group of schools contributed a disproportionate number of younger faculty. In generating a list of the institutions that had trained the greatest number of NRC-50 faculty members, three universities, Rutgers, Arizona, and Carnegie-Mellon, were included because they each have more than three doctoral graduates on the NRC-50 faculties, despite the fact that these schools are not ranked in that group. A comparison of the rankings of universities, as defined by the NRC, and a “supplier ranking”, which we defined as the number of graduates from that institution who were hired by top NRC-50 schools, is presented in Table 1. Inspection of the first five universities reveals that supplier rankings ex-
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Chemistry for Everyone Table 1. Doctoral University of Younger Faculty Membersa at NRC-Ranked Top 50 Chemistry Departments Supplier Ranking
Doctoral University
Total
Men
Women
NRC Ranking
1
U.C., Berkeley
99
78
21
1
2
California Inst. Tech.
63
52
11
2
3
Harvard U.
56
50
6
4
Stanford U.
48
43
5
3.5
5
Mass. Inst. of Tech.
37
32
5
5
6
U. of Wisconsin–Madison
29
23
6
10
7
Columbia U.
28
23
5
7
8
Cornell U.
27
20
7
6
9
U. of Chicago
21
18
3
10
9
3.5
Yale U.
21
18
3
12
11
Purdue U.
14
12
2
24
11
U. of Texas at Austin
14
14
0
13
13
U. of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign
13
11
2
8
14
U.C., Los Angeles
12
7
5
10
14
U.C., San Diego
12
9
3
18.5
16
Northwestern U.
11
10
1
14
17
U. of No. Carolina, Chapel Hill
10
8
2
17
17
U. of Pennsylvania
10
10
0
25
19
Iowa State U.
9
8
1
26
19
U. of Utah
9
8
1
31.5
21
U. of Michigan
8
4
4
35
21
U. of Colorado
8
6
2
42
21
U. of Minnesota
8
6
2
21
21
Princeton U.
8
6
2
20
25
U. of Rochester
7
7
0
31.5
26
Pennsylvania State U.
6
3
3
18.5
26
Michigan State U.
6
4
2
39
28
Indiana U.
5
3
2
16
28
Texas A&M U.
5
4
1
15
28
U.C., Irvine
5
4
1
36
28
Carnegie Mellon U.b
5
4
1
74
28
Rice U.
5
5
0
28.5
33
Rutgers U., New Brunswickb
4
2
2
59.5
33
Colorado State U.
4
3
1
37
33
U.C., San Francisco
4
3
1
23
33
U. of Washington
4
3
1
28.5
33
Ohio State U.
4
4
0
22
33
U. of Arizonab
4
4
0
NA
38
Emory U.
3
3
0
38
38
Johns Hopkins
3
3
0
27
38
U. of So. Calf.
3
3
0
40
42
Brandeis
2
1
1
45
42
U.C., Santa Barbara
2
1
1
33
42
Duke U.
2
2
0
44
42
SUNY, Stony Brook
2
2
0
46
42
U. of Cal., Davis
2
2
0
47.5
47
U. of Pittsburgh
1
1
0
34 41
47
U. of Oregon
1
1
0
47
U. of Virginia
1
1
0
43
47
U. of So. Car.
1
1
0
47.5
47
U. of Georgia
1
1
0
49
47
U. of Houston
1
1
0
50
53
U. of Florida
0
0
0
30
668
552
116
---
Total a
Younger faculty members refer to tenure-track individuals who received their doctoral degree between 1979 and 2000.
b
Non-NRC-50 university.
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Chemistry for Everyone
Female Doctoral Degrees (%)
40 35 30 25 20 15
top-ten doctoral schools all universities
10 5 0
1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999
Year Figure 1. Growth in the percentage of women obtaining doctoral degrees.
Table 2. Doctoral University of Younger Faculty at NRC-50 Institutions Doctoral University Groupinga
Men Women Total
Women in Domestically Grouping Trained (%) Faculty (%)
1–5
255
48
303
15.8
42.6
6–10
102
24
126
19.0
17.7
11–15
53
12
65
18.5
9.1
16–50
132
29
161
18.0
22.6
Other U.S. Universities
48
9
57
15.8
8.0
Foreign Universities
86
4
90
4.4
676
126
802
Total a
---
---
100
Grouped by supplier rankings in Table 1.
Table 3. Hiring Ratios for Top-Ten Suppliers University
Ratio of Women to Men Hiring Factora
Doctoratesb
Hiringc
Cornell U.
1.24
0.283
0.350
U.C., Berkeley
1.04
0.260
0.269
U. of Wisc.–Madison
1.00
0.261
0.261
California Inst. Tech.
0.77
0.274
0.212
Harvard U.
0.70
0.172
0.120
Columbia U.
0.68
0.320
0.217
U. of Chicago
0.67
0.250
0.167
Mass. Inst. Tech.
0.51
0.309
0.156
Yale U.
0.45
0.374
0.167
Stanford U.
0.41
0.284
0.116
a The hiring factor was calculated by dividing the hiring value by the doctorate value. b The doctorate value was obtained by dividing the number of female doctoral graduates over the period 1979–2000 from an institution by the number of male doctoral recipients. c The hiring value was determined by dividing the number of female faculty members at a NRC-50 school who received their doctoral degree from a given university by the number of male faculty members graduating from that university.
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actly mirror NRC rankings. For the next group of five universities, there is also fair agreement between supplier and NRC rankings. However, with the remaining universities, there is little or no relation between a department’s NRC ranking and its supplier ranking (that is, the number of doctoral graduates on the faculties). Clearly, the doctoral graduates from Berkeley fared the best in holding tenure-track positions at the NRC-50 universities, and this was true for both genders. Significantly more female faculty members were trained at Berkeley and Caltech (California Inst. of Tech.) than at the remaining schools. Strikingly, no female doctoral graduate from 19 of the universities holds a faculty position at a NRC-50 school. Eighty-nine percent [(802 − 90)兾802; Table 2] of the younger faculty members were domestically trained. The breakdown of the universities where the domestically trained faculty members were educated are shown in Table 2. Examination of the data reveal several interesting patterns. Doctoral graduates from the top-five NRC-ranked universities, which were also the top-five suppliers, held 43% (303兾712) of the faculty positions at the NRC-50 schools. This is an extraordinarily high percentage of faculty members being hired from such a small number of universities. The top-ten suppliers trained 60% [(303 + 126)兾712] of the younger faculty members, whereas the next forty universities trained only 32% [(65 + 161)兾712] of the faculty members. This dramatic decrease in doctoral graduates from universities ranked below the top-ten vividly shows the strong tendency of the NRC50 institutions to hire faculty from the top-ten suppliers. Considering the gender patterns in these data, further relations emerge between suppliers and NRC rankings. The percentages of female faculty graduating from the schools ranked as top-five suppliers is somewhat lower than that for the other NRC-50 schools. Moreover, the hiring by NRC50 schools of doctoral graduates from the top-ten suppliers does not correspond to the gender composition of the doctoral pool at this small group of schools. Another way to elucidate gender patterns is to examine institutional “hiring factors” for women and men. To this end, we divided the ratio of female-to-male faculty members who graduated from a specific university (designated as “Hiring”) by the ratio of female-to-male doctoral recipients from that same institution (designated as “Doctorates”). The ratio of Hiring-to-Doctorates results in an institutional hiring factor that reflects the number of graduates who not only received Ph.D.’s from a school, but also went on to obtain a tenuretrack position at a Ph.D.-granting institution. These factors are presented in Table 3. At the universities having hiring factors approximating 1, the female doctorates did as well as did the male doctorates in obtaining tenure-track positions at the NRC-50 schools; at universities with hiring factors around 0.5, the female doctorates did more poorly than did the male graduates in being hired by a NRC-50 school. Women with doctoral degrees from Cornell secured faculty positions at a greater rate than did men, whereas the hiring patterns for Berkeley and Wisconsin reflected the gender distribution in their respective pools. The lower hiring factors seen for the remaining top schools indicate that the women from those universities were hired at a lower rate than were the men. In particular, the female doctorates from MIT (Mass. Inst. of Tech.), Yale, and Stanford fared much worse
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Chemistry for Everyone
than did those from the schools having hiring factors about equal to 1. Hiring factors for the remaining NRC-50 schools are not presented because of the low number of graduates that were on faculties at these institutions. Faculty at Top-Ten Doctoral Universities The top-ten suppliers have a strong propensity to hire doctoral graduates from other universities in the same group. This preferential hiring of graduates from the top-ten doctoral schools has occurred for several decades (Table 4). At the top-ten suppliers, women hold 14% [22兾(131 + 22); Table 4] of the younger faculty positions, which is less than the 16% (126兾802; Table 2) of younger female faculty members at the NRC-50 schools and considerably lower than the 24% (5812兾24,374; ref 12) of doctorates granted to females by the NRC-50 schools between 1979–2000. In her study, Fox determined that in chemistry women slightly preferred nonacademic careers over those in academe, and teaching positions over those in academic research (8). Possible reasons for these preferences will be discussed in a subsequent paper (10). The pattern of the more prestigious institutions employing fewer women is not unique to chemistry, but also has been observed by Long and Fox (14, 15) in other scientific and engineering fields. Two chemistry departments, Harvard and Berkeley, have a disproportionate number of their doctoral graduates on topten faculties as compared to the other eight universities. With respect to younger faculty members, Berkeley is the top supplier of top-ten faculty members, 36% (8兾22; Table 4). For female faculty, Berkeley was the one dominant supplier; however, with the male faculty, several universities trained substantially more faculty members than did the remaining institutions. At the top-ten suppliers, 67% [(99 + 3)兾(147 + 5); Table 4] of the older faculty members and 77% [(98 + 20)兾(131 + 22); Table 4] of the younger ones obtained their doctoral training at a top-ten supplier. This preference for hiring Table 4. Doctoral University of Faculty Members at the Top-Ten Suppliers Older Faculty University
Male
Female
Younger Faculty Male
Female
Total
Harvard U.
36
1
17
1
55
U.C., Berkeley
13
1
20
8
42
Mass. Inst. of Tech
13
0
10
2
25
5
1
18
1
25
Columbia U.
8
0
8
2
18
Stanford U.
3
0
12
2
17
U. of Chicago
7
0
4
1
12
Cornell U.
3
0
4
2
9
California Inst. of Tech.
Yale U.
5
0
3
1
9
U. of Wisconsin
6
0
2
0
8
Total Faculty from Top-Ten
99
3
98
20
220
Total Faculty at Top-Ten
147
5
131
22
305
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graduates from a top-ten doctoral school was even more pronounced for women. Of the younger female faculty members at the top-ten suppliers, 91% (20兾22; Table 4) earned their doctoral degree from this same group of schools, whereas only 75% (98兾131; Table 4) of the male younger faculty members did so. It appears that the top-ten suppliers were less likely to hire a woman trained at a non-top-ten school than a man with the same type of training. Rate of Graduate Placement Do some of the data above simply reflect the differing numbers of doctoral graduates from different schools? To address this question, we ascertained from the NSF database (13) the number of doctoral students who graduated from each of the departments between the years 1979 and 2000. These data allow a comparison of the ability of a university’s graduates to obtain tenure-track positions at a NRC-50 university, independent of the varying sizes of graduate school enrollments over that period of time. During those years, the NRC-50 departments awarded doctoral degrees to 5083 men and 1386 women (13). The percentages of doctoral degrees earned by women at the top-ten suppliers and at all universities are fairly similar (see Figure 1). As discussed previously, the NRC-50 schools favor, in particular, doctoral graduates from the topten suppliers. Because women have been obtaining doctorates proportionally from these schools, the low numbers of female faculty members cannot be attributed readily to a scarcity of women trained at the “elite” schools. This is especially true for the top-ten suppliers that have underhired female faculty. Women received 21% (1386兾6469; ref 12) of the doctoral degrees from the top-ten suppliers in 1979–2000. During that time the hiring of women was lower, as only 14% (22兾153; Table 4) of the tenure-track faculty positions were held by women in that elite group of schools. Analysis of the responses to a questionnaire sent by us to the 1988– 1992 doctoral graduates from the top-ten NRC schools plus Purdue University will explore some of the reasons for the career choices of the female graduates from these elite schools (10). Recently, Gottselig and Oeltjen proposed a method to measure the probability that a doctoral graduate from a given chemistry department would attain a faculty position (16). The so-called “impact factor” was determined by dividing the number of top-ten faculty members from a department by the number of doctoral degrees granted by that department for 1992–2001. Concurrently, we explored the gender-specific differences for the impact factors (17). On average, the impact factors for women were 70% (1.4兾2.0; ref 17 ) of those for men, indicating a preference for hiring men rather than women from a given university. To minimize the impact of fluctuations in enrollment, especially with the women, we have expanded the pool in this paper to include doctorates awarded in 1979–2000. The impact factors calculated for tenure-track faculty at the NRC-50 universities, listed in order of overall impact factor, are given in Table 5. The lists of universities ranked with respect to the overall impact factors (Table 5) and the numbers of doctoral graduates on NRC-50 faculties (Table 1) appear fairly similar. On the impact factor list, schools with the
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359
Chemistry for Everyone Table 5. Impact Factors for Top Supplier Schools of Faculty Members at NRC-50 Universities University
Impact Factor Overall
Women
Doctorates Awarded Me n
Women
Men
California Inst. Tech.
11.2
9.1
11.8
121
442
Total 563
Supplier Ranking 2
Harvard U.
10.4
7.6
10.9
79
460
539
3
Stanford U.
8.6
4.1
9.9
123
433
556
4
U.C., Berkeley
7.7
7.9
7.7
265
1019
1284
1
Columbia U.
6.4
4.7
6.9
106
331
437
7
Yale U.
5.2
2. 7
6.1
110
294
404
9
Mass. Inst. Tech.
5.1
2. 9
5.8
170
550
720
5
U. of Chicago
4.8
3. 4
5.1
88
352
440
9
Cornell U.
4.5
5. 3
4.3
132
467
599
8
Carnegie Mellon U.
4.2
2. 6
4.9
39
81
120
28
U. of Wisconsin–Madison
3.1
3.1
3.1
192
735
927
6
U.C., San Diego
3.0
2.7
3.1
113
288
401
14
U. of Pennsylvania
2.4
0.0
3.3
117
306
423
17
U. of Texas at Austin
2.3
0.0
2.9
136
481
617
11
Rice U.
2.2
0.0
3.0
67
164
231
28
U.C., Los Angeles
2.2
3. 2
1.7
155
402
557
14
Northwestern U.
2.1
0. 7
2.7
140
374
514
16
U. of Utah
2.1
1. 4
2.3
74
354
428
19
U. of Rochester
2.1
0. 0
2.9
96
238
334
25
U. of Colorado
2.0
1. 8
2.0
111
296
407
21
Princeton U.
1.9
1.7
2.1
119
292
411
21
U.C., San Francisco
1.8
1.2
2.3
86
133
219
33
U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
1.5
1.0
1.7
206
466
672
17
U.C., Irvine
1.5
1.6
1.4
64
277
341
28
U. of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign
1.4
1.2
1.5
171
751
922
13 19
Iowa State U.
1.4
0. 8
1.5
130
517
647
Purdue U.
1.4
0. 8
1.6
244
769
1013
11
Johns Hopkins
1.4
0. 0
2.0
72
148
220
38
U. of Minnesota
1.3
1. 3
1.3
160
479
639
21
U. of Michigan
1.2
2. 5
0.8
162
490
652
21
Colorado State U.
1.2
1.4
1.2
73
260
333
33
Rutgers U., New Brunswick
1.2
1.9
0.8
103
239
342
33
Emory U.
1.1
0.0
1.6
92
184
276
38
Brandeis U.
1.1
1.4
0.9
74
110
184
42
U. of Arizona
1.0
0.0
1.2
65
326
391
33
Michigan State U.
1.0
1. 6
0.8
123
472
595
26
Indiana U.
1.0
2. 2
0.7
91
406
497
28
Pennsylvania State U.
0.9
2. 0
0.6
149
508
657
26
U. of So. Cal.
0.9
0. 0
1.2
99
249
348
38
U. of Washington
0.8
0. 8
0.8
131
365
496
33
Texas A&M U.
0.7
0.6
0.7
167
543
710
28
U.C., Santa Barbara
0.7
1.4
0.5
73
212
285
42
U. of Oregon
0.7
0.0
0.9
30
115
145
47
Duke U.
0.7
0.0
0.9
88
219
307
42
SUNY, Stony Brook
0.6
0.0
0.8
83
266
349
42
Ohio State U.
0.6
0. 0
0.7
156
544
700
33
U. of Virginia
0.4
0. 0
0.6
63
178
241
47
U. of California, Davis
0.4
0. 0
0.5
150
366
516
42
U. of Houston
0.4
0. 0
0.5
66
205
271
47
U. of Georgia
0.3
0. 0
0.4
47
267
314
47
U. of South Carolina
0.3
0.0
0.4
64
261
325
47
U. of Pittsburgh
0.2
0.0
0.3
90
350
440
47
U. of Florida
0.0
0.0
0.0
133
485
618
53
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Table 6. Initial Postdoctoral Placement of Younger Faculty Members Number
Men
Women
Total
U.S.-Trained Faculty Members (%)
Women in Grouping (%)
14.4
Postdoctoral Fellows
607
119
726
Awarded with National Fellowships
255
58
313
Younger Faculty Members
676
126
802
226
38
264
41.8
66
5
71
11.3
7.0
159
47
206
32.6
22.8
Postdoctoral University Classification 1–5 Supplier 6–10 Supplier 11–50 Supplier Private Industrial Laboratory
21
6
27
4.3
22.2
Government Laboratory
25
7
32
5.1
21.9
8
0
8
1.3
0
17
6
23
3.6
26.1 10.5
Medical Research Institution Independent Research Laboratory Foreign Institution Total
85
10
95
---
607
119
726
100
larger enrollments have lower rankings, in general, than do those with smaller enrollments. In examining the data it becomes apparent that there was a consistent preference by the NRC-50 schools for hiring male doctoral graduates from a given school rather than female graduates. Only at 11 of the 53 schools do women have an impact factor higher than that for men. For the topten suppliers, the impact factors are higher than for the remaining schools, with the exception of U. of Wisconsin–Madison, which was displaced by Carnegie Mellon. Caltech, Harvard, and Berkeley had the highest impact factors for women, indicating that female graduates from these universities fared significantly better than did the female graduates from the fifty remaining universities in obtaining a faculty position at a NRC-50 university. The rapid decrease in the overall impact factors clearly indicates that graduates from the top suppliers have been preferred over graduates from the other universities. Postdoctoral Placements The percentage of faculty members who held postdoctoral fellowships immediately after obtaining their doctorates has increased in recent years. Seventy-four percent (586兾793; ref 12 ) of the older faculty members and 91% (726兾802; Table 6) of the younger faculty members held postdoctoral fellowships prior to their faculty appointments. From Table 6, it can be calculated that 94% (119兾126) of the younger female and 90% (607兾676) of the younger male faculty held a postdoctoral fellowship after leaving graduate school. These data suggest that universities take fewer risks when hiring women than men or are using higher standards for hiring women. Of the individuals who did a postdoctoral appointment, 49% (58兾119) of the female and 42% (255兾607) of the male faculty members had a national competitive fellowship (e.g., NSF, National Institutes of Health, Damon Runyon–Walter Winchell Fellowship) in their initial postdoctoral appointment.
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The postdoctoral fellowships of younger faculty members were classified by the type of institutions at which these positions were held. Postdoctoral fellowships held at a medical school affiliated with a university were counted in the university total. Fellowships at independent research hospitals or medical research institutions were classified as medical research institutions. Fellowships at institutions similar to Scripps or Stanford Research Institute were recorded as independent research laboratories. Those with an initial postdoctoral fellowship at a topfive supplier again were hired preferentially by the NRC-50 schools. Fifty-three percent [(264 + 71)兾(726 − 95)] of the faculty members had their initial postdoctoral fellowship at a top-ten supplier, indicating a slightly more diversely trained pool than that from the doctoral schools. The low hiring rate for individuals with fellowships at a 6–10 supplier is somewhat surprising. NSF data on the total number of fellowships held from 1979 through 2000 show that twice as many individuals (a total of 9607) had fellowships at supplier schools ranked 1–5 in comparison to those at schools ranked 5–10 (4624 individuals; ref 13). The low rate of hiring of individuals who had a postdoctoral appointment at a 6–10 supplier was even more problematic for women than for men. Only 7% (5兾71) of the hires from this postdoctoral group were women. This is in sharp contrast again with the NSF data showing that at the top-five suppliers, 6–10 suppliers, and all universities, women held 13%, 15%, and 17% of the postdoctoral fellowships in chemistry in 1979–2000, respectively (13). Unlike the men, women who had their initial postdoctoral fellowship at a supplier ranked below 10 were hired in greater numbers. A more detailed study of the postdoctoral situation is in progress (18). The rate of growth of women holding postdoctoral fellowships at all universities or at the top-five postdoctoral schools was much slower than that for women receiving doctoral degrees in chemistry (Figure 2; ref 13 ). The percentage of women holding postdoctoral fellowships at all universities was consistently slightly higher than that for women at
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Female Representation (%)
35 30 25 20 15 10
doctoral degrees fellowships at all universities fellowships at top-five universities
5 0
1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999
Year Figure 2. Growth in the percentage of female doctoral degrees received and postdoctoral fellowships over time.
Female Representation (%)
35 30 25 20 15 10
doctorates received postdoctoral all universities faculty members
5 0 1997–83
1984–88
1989–93
1994–98
Doctoral Years Figure 3. Comparison of the growth in percentage of female faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral degree recipients.
Table 7. Hiring of Younger Faculty Members Doctoral Years
Women
Men
Total
Female (%)
1979–1983
26
171
197
13.2
1984–1988
28
169
197
14.2
1989–1993
37
163
200
18.5
1994–1998
34
162
196
17.3
1999–2000
1
11
12
8.3
the top-five postdoctoral schools. Importantly, in 2000 the percentage of women in the postdoctoral fellowship pool at the top-five postdoctoral schools was half that of women in the doctoral degree pool. Recent Hiring The gender breakdown by doctoral year of the faculty members shows that the hiring of female faculty has not kept up with the growth in the doctoral pool (13). This is shown graphically in Figure 3; actual numbers of female hires (12) are given in Table 7. Because of the small number of women hired, data were grouped into five-year windows. 362
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The failure in recent years to increase the hiring of female faculty members has resulted in a growing gap between the percentage of women obtaining doctorates and those having NRC-50 faculty positions. This finding dispels the idea that time and a simple increase in the number of women obtaining doctorates will resolve the low representation of female faculty at the NRC-50 schools. Instead, it appears that without implementation of some effective initiatives, it will take decades for the hiring of female faculty members to reach the current distribution of women in the doctoral degree pool and substantially longer if the percentage of doctorates awarded to women continues to rise. It is interesting to note that the recent hiring of female faculty has tracked the female distribution in the postdoctoral fellowship pool. Summary Between 1979 and 2000, the percentage of women obtaining doctoral degrees increased gradually, reaching approximately 31%. However, this growth has not resulted in a corresponding increase in the hiring of women for tenuretrack positions at the top research universities. On the contrary, over the last decade the gap between the percentages of female doctoral recipients and female faculty members has been increasing. From 1979 to 2000, women earned 24% of the doctorates awarded by the NRC-50 schools. However, during that time period only 16% of the faculty positions at those universities were filled by women. Sixty percent of the domestically trained faculty members at the NRC-50 universities obtained their doctoral degrees from a small group of ten universities. This preference for hiring graduates from this elite group of schools was even more pronounced within this same group. There was good agreement between the ranking of the top-ten suppliers of faculty members and their NRC ranking. However, there was very poor correlation for the remaining universities. Generally, the NRC-50 universities preferentially hired male rather than female doctoral graduates from a given university. Both the hiring and impact factors were lower for women than men. The distribution of women in the postdoctoral fellowship pool is half of that in the doctoral degree pool. Individuals who had a postdoctoral fellowship at a “supplier school” ranked 1–5 were hired preferentially by the NRC50 universities. However, for the women, the primary source of faculty members was the group that had a postdoctoral fellowship at a school ranked below 10. The hiring rate of individuals who had a postdoctoral fellowship at a 6–10 supplier was low, especially for women. The hiring by the NRC50 universities appears to be tracking the slow growth in women holding a postdoctoral fellowship. Conclusion The solution to equalizing the gender distribution of faculties at Ph.D.-granting institutions requires a number of sequential actions. Merely continuing to encourage women to obtain doctoral degrees in greater numbers will not resolve the problem, nor will solely increasing the number of women
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receiving their doctoral training at one of the universities that has a record of training large numbers of faculty members. However, if those two actions occur in conjunction with a substantial rise in the number of women holding a postdoctoral fellowship at an appropriate institution, there is a strong likelihood that the number of female faculty members will increase. Other actions that must be implemented include greater support and encouragement by dissertation advisors for women, especially for those considering faculty positions at the NRC-50 institutions. Postdoctoral advisors will need to be more proactive in helping women obtain faculty positions at Ph.D.-granting schools. Finally, reasons motivating women to seek non-NRC-50 academic positions need to be elucidated; at the same time, reasons for not pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship and for not seeking positions at Ph.D.-granting universities also must be identified clearly. Only after elaborating upon these factors can corrective measures be taken. Literature Cited 1. Everett, Kenneth G.; DeLoach, Will S.; Bressan, Stephanie E.; J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 139–141. 2. Long, Janice R. Chem. Eng. News 2000, 78 (39), 56–57. 3. Byrum, Allison. Chem. Eng. News 2001, 79 (40), 98–99. 4. Long, Janice R. Chem. Eng. News 2002, 80 (38), 110–111. 5. Marasco, Corinne. Chem. Eng. News 2003, 81 (43), 58–59. 6. Academic R&D Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2001 (NSF 03– 316), http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf03316/sectb.htm#rd3 (accessed Dec 2003), Table B-52.
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7. Analysis of the Comprehensive 2000 Survey of the Salaries and Employment Status of Its Domestic Members, American Chemical Society, p 38. See also http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/ journals/tcaw/10/i08/html/08borchardt.html (accessed Dec 2003). 8. Fox, Mary F.; Stephan, Paula. Social Studies of Science 2001, 31, 109–22. 9. Nolan, Susan A.; Buckner, Janine P.; Marzabadi, Cecilia H.; Kuck, Valerie J.; presented at the 226th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York City; September, 2003; paper WCC 21. 10. Nolan, S. A.; Buckner, J. P.; Marzabadi, C. H.; Kuck, V. J., to be submitted for publication. 11. Fox, Mary F. Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering. In Equal Rites, Unequal Outcomes: Women in American Research Universities; Hornig, Lilli S., Ed.; Kluwer Academic–Plenum Publishers: New York, 2003. 12. ACS Directory of Graduate Research Home Page. http:// www.chemistry.org (accessed Dec 2003). 13. National Science Foundation’s WebCASPAR Database Home Page. http://nsf.gov/sbe/srs/srsdata.htm (accessed Dec 2003). 14. From Scarcity to Visibility; Long, J. Scott, Ed.; Academic Press: Washington, DC, 2001; p 153. 15. Long, J. Scott; Fox, Mary F. Annual Review of Sociology, 1995, 21, 45–71. 16. Gottselig, Michael; Oeltjen, Lars. Chem. Eng. News 2003, 81 (15), 4. 17. Kuck, Valerie J.; Buckner, Janine P.; Nolan, Susan A.; Marzabadi, Cecilia H. Chem. Eng. News 2003, 81 (20), 6–7. 18. Kuck, V. J.; Marzabadi, C. H.; Nolan, S. A.; Buckner, J. P., to be submitted for publication.
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