Story highlights
Wendy Williams, Stephen J. Ceci: Received wisdom is that sexism keeps women from getting ahead in sciences
Their new research shows that female scientists have a significantly higher chance of being interviewed and hired than men
They interpret findings: Anti-female bias in academic hiring has ended and now is a good time for young women to seek science jobs
Editor’s Note: Wendy M. Williams is a psychologist and professor of human development at Cornell University, where she founded and co-directs the Cornell Institute for Women in Science. Stephen J. Ceci is the Helen L. Carr professor of developmental psychology at Cornell. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.
The prevailing wisdom is that sexist hiring in academic science roadblocks women’s careers before they even start. The American Association of University Professors and blue-ribbon commissions attest to this. An influential report by the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 concluded that “on the average, people are less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical qualifications,” and noted that scientists and engineers “are not exempt.”
Many female graduate students worry that hiring bias is inevitable. A walk through the science departments of any college or university could convince us that the scarcity of female faculty (20% or less) in fields like engineering, computer science, physics, economics and mathematics must reflect sexism in hiring.
But the facts tell a different story. National hiring audits, some dating back to the 1980s, reveal that female scientists have had a significantly higher chance of being interviewed and hired than men. Although women were less likely to apply for jobs, if they did apply, their chances of getting the job were usually better. The typical explanation for this seeming contradiction has been that the women who survived the intense sexism and winnowing process of graduate training were unusually talented, and thus deserved to be hired at a higher rate than men.
But is there evidence for this assertion?
When we searched the literature, we could not find one empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members as evaluators and focusing on fields in which women are most underrepresented. So we did the study ourselves (published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), testing 873 faculty members at 371 institutions in 50 states. To tease out sex bias, we created fictional candidate profiles identical in every respect except for sex, and asked faculty to rank these candidates for a tenure-track job.
This picture of teenager Zoe at the National Flight Academy was submitted by her grandmother Janie Lambert who described her as "anything but the norm."
![Grandmother Janie Lambert, from Maryland, is proud of the fact that Zoe does not let anything -- including her Juvenile Diabetes -- hold her back from her dreams: "Always interested in science and technology [but] knowing she would never be allowed to be an astronaut with diabetes, she became interested in Aeronautic and Mechanical Engineering," says Lambert. <br /><br />"At school she spends most of the day in technical and mechanical courses preparing her for starting college next fall. She is actively involved in the after school Robotics Team called RoboBees and she is the Team Captain for First Tech Challenge." Zoe is pictured here in 2010 at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at 14 years old.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/141020110349-zoe-einstein-stem.jpg?q=w_1920,h_1080,x_0,y_0,c_fill/w_480)
"At school she spends most of the day in technical and mechanical courses preparing her for starting college next fall. She is actively involved in the after school Robotics Team called RoboBees and she is the Team Captain for First Tech Challenge." Zoe is pictured here in 2010 at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at 14 years old.
![Monique Wingard received a full scholarship of nearly $5000 to Startup Institute Chicago this month. Back when she was just nine, her mother Julia captured this moment at a school science fair. Monique says participating in the fair was a turning point: "[The fair] helped build confidence in myself, my ideas, creative approach to problem-solving, and speaking in front of small groups about a topic of importance to me."<br /><br /><br />"It was just really exciting to attempt to get other people just as pumped as I was about my work on 'Sound Investigating Pitch.' My love for music is what prompted me to choose this topic for the science fair. Just looking at this photo now makes me beam with pride. I was a nerd before it was even cool, and now I can make a pretty good living being one and teaching others to wear that title as a badge of honor."](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/141020110349-science-fair-stem.jpg?q=w_705,h_720,x_0,y_0,c_fill/w_480)
"It was just really exciting to attempt to get other people just as pumped as I was about my work on 'Sound Investigating Pitch.' My love for music is what prompted me to choose this topic for the science fair. Just looking at this photo now makes me beam with pride. I was a nerd before it was even cool, and now I can make a pretty good living being one and teaching others to wear that title as a badge of honor."
"This small investment of his time and encouragement multiplied exponentially, as I went on to internships at NASA and a large community hospital. I also competed at the international science fair, and paid for half of my college education with scholarships resulting from my science fair awards."
Tomasello's daughter Catie is pictured here, age six, with popular TV scientist Bill Nye. "As a kindergartner, Catie competed in the NSTA/Toshiba Exploravision competition and won 2nd place. She has since competed three additional years in this competition, winning 2nd place in the nation three times."
"A 'proud mom' moment came this summer when Catie explained her team's winning idea, the WateRenew, to a room of over 200 at the National Press Club, packed with corporate officials from Toshiba, including the CEO, educators, scientists, and members of the press. The scientist who created the Wave Wing prototype offered Catie and her teammates each a job upon college graduation with a degree in a science field. Catie is in sixth grade now, but she already has a job waiting for her!"
Issaka recently found out about Tech Needs Girls which helps teach girls like her to code.
"Now a days when you don't know Information Communication technology, you won't be employed for work," says Issaka. "As Kwegyir Aggrey said in his proverb if you educate a man you educate an individual and if you educate a woman you educate a whole nation. I am excited to be learning to code."
"They are forced to marry at a tender age. Every female becomes a teacher to her newborn child. If they are denied educational opportunity what kind of people does our community expect to raise? An educated female will give her child first hand skills to allow her to become a responsible person in the community."
"With that money I can pay my own school fees to continue to get an education. I would also like to build an education mobile app to help other girls in different countries who may not have access to education learn from their mobile phones. Who knows I could one day build a huge software company and be the next Mark Zuckerberg."
"Our aim is to promote hands-on discovery of molecular and cellular biology by developing interactive outreach activities," says Grenon. "Such activities include school roadshows and science festival workshops. We aim to inspire and engage young people in biomedical sciences and provide role models of real people studying science."
We ran five national experiments with these otherwise-identical female and male candidates, systematically varying their personal attributes and lifestyles in a counterbalanced design. Every time we sent a given slate of candidates to a male faculty member, we sent the same slate with sexes reversed to another male faculty member, as well as sending both slates to two female faculty members. Then we compared the faculty members’ rankings to see how hirable each candidate was, overall.
What we found shocked us. Women had an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in all fields studied. This preference for women was expressed equally by male and female faculty members, with the single exception of male economists, who were gender neutral in their preferences.
In some conditions, women’s advantage reached 4-to-1. When women were compared with men who shared the same lifestyle, advantages accrued to women in all demographic groups—including single or married women without children, married women with preschoolers, and divorced mothers.
To ensure that socially desirable responding was not driving our findings, in one of the five experiments we sent faculty just one candidate to evaluate, rather than a slate of three shortlisted candidates. Even with no frame of reference provided by a comparison with other candidates, women were rated higher and seen as more hirable than identically qualified men.
We interpreted our findings to mean that anti-female bias in academic hiring has ended. Changing cultural values, gender-awareness training and trends such as the retirement of older faculty members have brought us to a time when women in academic science are seen as more desirable hires than equally competent men.
When we looked at the effects of lifestyles on hiring, some traditional values emerged. In a competition between a married father with a stay-at-home spouse and an equivalently qualified divorced mother of two preschoolers, female faculty members preferred 4-to-1 to hire the divorced mother, but men felt the opposite. (Note, however, that both genders preferred a divorced mother when she competed against a divorced father.)
In another comparison examining the effect of taking a one-year parental leave in graduate school, we found that male faculty members preferred mothers who took lengthy parental leaves, whereas female faculty members did not. Perhaps the men preferred women they perceived as good mothers rather than as stereotypical aggressive careerists. Neither female nor male faculty cared about fathers’ parental leaves.
Our results, coupled with actuarial data on real-world academic hiring showing a female advantage, suggest this is a propitious time for women beginning careers in academic science. The low numbers of women in math-based fields of science do not result from sexist hiring, but rather from women’s lower rates of choosing to enter math-based fields in the first place, due to sex differences in preferred careers and perhaps to lack of female role models and mentors.
While women may encounter sexism before and during graduate training and after becoming professors, the only sexism they face in the hiring process is bias in their favor.
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