Analysis by Gender of the Doctoral and Postdoctoral Institutions of

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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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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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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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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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