Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Despite decades of progress, men still greatly outnumber women among biology faculty in the United States. Here, we show that high-achieving faculty members who are male train 10–40% fewer women in their laboratories relative to the number of women trained by other investigators. These skewed employment patterns may result from self-selection among female scientists or they may result from conscious or unconscious bias on the part of some faculty members. The dearth of women who are trained in these laboratories likely limits the number of female candidates who are most competitive for faculty job searches.
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Given the importance of scholarly productivity in evaluation and the cumulative advantage of early publications, these findings may account-at least in part-for the inequitable hiring rates for postdoctoral research positions reported in prior research.
“Given the importance of scholarly productivity in the evaluation of candidates for academic positions and the cumulative advantage that early publications provide over time (Merton, 1968, 1988; Kademani et al., 2005), these findings may account—at least in part—for the inequitable hiring rates for postdoctoral research positions reported in prior research (Sheltzer and Smith, 2014).”
From Time-to-Credit Gender Inequities of First-Year PhD Students in the Biological Sciences (2017) · cites this paper as Sheltzer and Smith, 2014
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Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredOnly 29-36% of tenure-line assistant professorships in the biological sciences are held by women.
“only 29–36% of tenure-line assistant professorships in the discipline are held by women (Nelson and Brammer, 2007; Sheltzer and Smith, 2014).”
From Time-to-Credit Gender Inequities of First-Year PhD Students in the Biological Sciences (2017) · cites this paper as Sheltzer and Smith, 2014
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“These patterns in the first year of doctoral study indicate that, in contrast to suggestions in previous studies (e.g., Correll, 2001; Sheltzer and Smith, 2014), there is no evidence that lower self-efficacy prompts women to self-select out of professional opportunities in the first years of their…”
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- Authors
- Sheltzer, J. M., & Smith, J. C.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Twitter, Inc., Cambridge, MA 02139
- Corresponding author
- Sheltzer, Jason M.
- ORCID
- Sheltzer, Jason M.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2014-06-30
- Volume
- 111
- Issue
- 28
- Pages
- 10107-10112
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4104900
- OpenAlex
- W2156434198
- Cited by
- 427
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 65 · 2022: 52 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 9
- FWCI
- 83.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Institutional Repository (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32GM007287)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Career Development and Diversity
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Diversity and Career in Medicine
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Diversity and Inequality
- Keywords
- gender bias in academia, underrepresentation of women, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, leaky pipeline, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, career awards, university laboratories, life sciences
- MeSH terms
- Academies and Institutes, Biological Science Disciplines, Education, Graduate, Faculty, Female, Humans, Male, National Academy of Sciences, U.S., United States, Women, Working
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