National Hiring Experiments Reveal 2:1 Faculty Preference for Women on Stem Tenure Track
Open accessAbstract
Significance: The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers.
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Another study found that women had a higher chance than men of being chosen.
“In contrast, another study that distributed a set of hypothetical short lifestyle descriptions of faculty job candidates without details of technical qualifications found that women had a higher chance than men of being chosen [15].”
From Gender in Engineering Departments: Are There Gender Differences in Interruptions of Academic Job Talks? (2017) · cites this paper as [15]
The Results and Discussion report that faculty chose women over identically qualified men about 2:1 in the hypothetical hiring experiment. But the description of the study materials (Significance; page unavailable) says faculty received summaries of candidates’ scholarly records and credentials, not just lifestyle descriptions without qualification details. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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- Authors
- Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J.
- Affiliations
- Cornell University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2015-04-13
- Volume
- 112
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 5360-5365
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4418903
- OpenAlex
- W2038960993
- Cited by
- 435
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 60 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 46 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 119.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (R01NS069792-01)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Career Development and Diversity
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Diversity and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Keywords
- gender bias in hiring, academic job market, women in STEM, gender discrimination, parental leave, family responsibilities, economics faculty, engineering faculty, biology faculty, psychology faculty
- MeSH terms
- Academies and Institutes, Female, Humans, Job Application, Life Style, Male, Science, Sex Factors, United States, Women's Rights
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