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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

“Research finds no gender bias in academic science”

Brian Leiter

This is striking:

Claims of widespread gender bias in tenure-track hiring, grant funding and journal acceptances in the academic sciences are not supported by the data, a new study finds.Is

The paper published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest looked at two decades of research regarding biases that tenure-track women have faced since 2000. In the end, the authors determined tenure-track women in science, technology, engineering or math were at parity with men in tenure-track positions in the same fields when it comes to grant funding, journal acceptances and recommendation letters.

Women did have an advantage in the hiring process for the tenure-track jobs, though the evidence did show a bias against women in teaching evaluations and salaries. The salary gap, according to the report, was concerning but smaller than the oft-quoted statistic that women in STEM fields make 82 cents for every dollar that men earn. On average, the gap was 9 cents on the dollar, although the gap shrank to less than 4 cents when controlling for experience, type of institution and productivity, among other factors.

If anyone has examined the methodology of this study carefully, I'd be interested to know whether it seems sound.  I have neither the time nor competence to evaluate it.

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6 responses to ““Research finds no gender bias in academic science””

  1. Elizabeth

    Just from the excerpt:

    "No gender bias" yet it mentions at least two gender biases (evaluations and salaries). Saying the gap shrinks to less than 4% when controlling for experience and productivity…perhaps women scientists' experience and productivity are negatively impacted by gender bias and a field that does not accommodate parental responsibilities that are primarily undertaken by women.

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  2. Daniel Greco

    You left out the most notable aspect of the study. It was an adversarial collaboration between one team (Ceci and Williams) who've generally been skeptical of claims of widespread gender bias, and another author (Kahn) who "has a long history of revealing gender inequities in her field of economics." Here's how they describe the process of writing it:

    "This article represents more than 4.5 years of effort by its three authors. By the time readers finish it, some may assume that the authors were in agreement about the nature and prevalence of gender bias from the start. However, this is definitely not the case. Rather, we are collegial adversaries who, during the 4.5 years that we worked on this article, continually challenged each other, modified or deleted text that we disagreed with, and often pushed the article in different directions."

    So if your reaction to work like this is to assume that it was probably written by people who set out to minimize gender bias, and made analytical choices that would make it easier for them to draw the conclusion that it's not a big deal, I think that would be too dismissive.

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  3. Anonymous

    It also shows no bias against or significant bias in favour of women in multiple major areas. The salary gap of 4% is way lower than the number usually used. The basic thrust is we should acknowledge very significant progress has occurred and should consider using more targeted action to address inequality. That’s obviously subject to someone saying that the lingering issues can’t be more directly targeted. The key argument is that we should be careful to describe the situation of women in the sciences accurately at the risk of inadvertently discouraging women from entering them.

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  4. Anonymous2

    This paragraph fits with the previous point:

    “We all have to do a better job of verifying facts,” the report says. “Despite our finding of little bias against women in four of the domains we examined (and a pro-female bias in tenure-track hiring), many scholars and advocates appear to believe, state, and write otherwise … In support of their beliefs, the authors selectively cited congruent evidence and ignored contrary findings, which they may hold to a higher standard of evidence because of their prior beliefs.

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  5. Eric Wolf

    A recent book – Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling systemic barriers to advancement, by Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Lariviere (Harvard 2023) – concludes that "the structure of scientific labor and rewards ― publications, citations, funding ― systematically obstructs women’s career advancement." It's reviewed in the current issue of Science (April 28, p. 352).

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  6. Vicky L Brandt

    The article is very well-reasoned and transparent in its thinking: well done to the three authors, who–as noted by Daniel Greco as well as by the title and introduction to the paper–were not of the same mind on these issues when they began, but came to consensus on the published material. For what it's worth, about ten years ago I was invited to collaborate with two authors who were commissioned by a major scientific journal to write an opinion piece about how to improve women's success in the sciences. My investigation of the data available at the time did not substantiate the authors' view that there was significant bias against women in the biomedical sciences, but they were immovable (explicit bias?) and so I withdrew. The article was published without the editor or any reviewers pointing out flaws in their analysis of the data.

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