Is it easier for women to get faculty jobs in science and engineering?*
Some people think that it is much easier for women to get faculty jobs in science and engineering than for men. After all, universities are "under pressure" to hire women, for reasons of political correctness– aren’t they?
A senior faculty told me, a few years back, "Yes, there are incentives for hiring women. But don’t worry– we would never hire anyone we weren’t going to hire anyway." Initially I was mystified by this statement. Now I think I understand what he meant. Here’s my impression.
Basically, getting a faculty job is very competitive. First of all, you need a PhD, possibly postdoc experience (depending on the field), a good research record, strong letters of recommendation, etc. There are many applicants for each position. A number of applicants generally have PhD’s from excellent universities, worked in well-known research groups, and have extensive publication lists.
In any given year, a department may or may not have openings for one or more new faculty members. If there is an opening, the department will advertise the position and solicit applications. They then narrow down the list to about 5 or 6 candidates and invite them to campus to interview. Of these, there will be some number that the department would really like to hire. It could be one, or two, but is probably not all 6. The people in the "want to hire" category all seem intelligent, hard-working, and dynamic, and would all be excellent additions to the research and teaching programs of the department. But the department can’t make offers to everyone, so they will try to rank people. This can be very subjective. Maybe people think that hiring in Candidate A’s subfield is of higher priority this year, or that it is most important that Candidate B could take advantage of a new research facility which is currently underutilized, or that Candidate C’s subfield is the "hottest", and so on. If they really can’t agree, they may not hire anyone.
If the department has more people that it wants to hire than there are openings, it is sometimes possible to "create" another position. This comes down to money. When a new faculty member is hired, the university has to allocate resources for her/his salary and initial startup costs for research equipment. As a result, a department can’t just add new people arbitrarily– the number of openings is determined by a negotiation process with the Dean and/or higher levels of the administration about where the money is coming from. In some (but not all) universities, there may be a little extra money set aside somewhere, maybe at the Dean’s level, to make hiring more flexible. For example, there may be money for strategically hiring star researchers away from competing institutions, or for starting new programs, making spousal hires, or any number of other "special cases", depending on the policies of the university and its governing structure. In some cases, it may be possible for the department to get money (or part of the money) for an extra position from the Dean if one of the people they want to hire is female or a minority. Or not.
So yes, being female can help. But a department will not hire you if they didn’t "want to hire you anyway." When a department hires a new faculty member, that person could potentially be working there for the next 30 years. The consensus among people I have talked to is that no one is going to make an offer to someone they don’t really want– it just isn’t worth it. But if someone is female or a minority, and the department wants them, the department might have an extra mechanism available to hire them.
Of course, you will probably not know which departments this is true of ahead of time. But the bottom line is that if there are particular places you are strongly interested in working, you should see if there might be opportunities there, even if there is no job advertised in your particular field right now. If you have a colleague there, sending them an email with your CV and saying you’d appreciate hearing of any opportunities isn’t a bad idea. If you have your application packet assembled already, you can always try sending it to departments without advertised positions, modifying your cover letter to explain that you have a strong interest in their particular university and would be like to be considered if a position were to open up. You don’t want to waste time (yours and theirs) spamming hundreds of schools, and its best to focus most of your time on places that definitely have jobs. But its also worth putting in a little time to look beyond the advertisements and go after the "dream jobs" that you are really interested in.
By the way, this advice is not just for women and minorities. I know a man who was doing extremely well in his job search and racking up lots of interviews. Several universities offered to "try and open up positions" for him when they realized he was a "hot" candidate. That option is open for anyone lucky enough to be in his situation!
* For the purposes of this discussion, I’m talking about tenure-track assistant professorships in major research universities in the US in science and engineering fields that have significantly less that 50% participation by women. Remove any of those qualifying adjectives and all bets are off– you tell me.
Your absolutely right about this. Being a woman (or a minority) doesn’t get you hired. Being good does.
I do think, however, that being female can make it a little easier to get an interview. Departments often want to at least appear to have diverse hiring practices. This makes getting a foot in the door and getting one’s chance to shine a little easier sometimes. It also sets some women up for the “token interview” where they are interviewed with no plans whatsoever to be hired. And of course all of this ignores the difficulties getting to that stage even.
Comment by anon — September 10, 2007 @ 2:57 pm
Thank you anon, these are good points.
Comment by drshellie — September 10, 2007 @ 4:42 pm
I agree that departments want to at least appear to be interested in diversity. But I think your advice is really good about contacting places directly. I remember being at many meetings where the topic of conversation was “Does anybody know anybody?” Writing letters as you suggest may lead to invitations, and even if it doesn’t, a letter writer can at least feel like they are doing something rather than nothing to sell themselves. I think it’s very positive advice.
Comment by Sfrajett — September 11, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
Excellent information. There is always a need for highly qualified individuals in the professions. William Allan Kritsonis
Comment by Anonymous — September 12, 2007 @ 5:35 am
Dr. Shellie’s observation, “Of these, there will be some number that the department would really like to hire. It could be one, or two, but is probably not all…” hits home for me.
I have been on hiring committees in three separate schools that had the same dynamic in this area. Three candidates were chosen to interview for an open (mathematics) position. In each case, the committee was careful to make sure that there was a woman on their list. But in all three situations, the lone woman candidate was a “star”: someone who the school could not reasonably expect to attract, and the other two candidates were men. In each case, the school made an offer to the superstar, who did not accept the position, and so the job went to a man.
Even though the committee thought that they were being open to gender issues, women never made it to the second tier of the list, and no one from the first tier ever accepted a position with them.
Comment by shannon — September 12, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
There is no such thing as the token interview, and I think it is a myth that women are more likely to get invited to interview at all. I would be happy to get a token interview if such a thing existed, since it would at least give me a chance to stick my foot in the door without having it chopped off.
Comment by MsPhD — September 13, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
Comment seemed to disappear - trying again…
Token interview anecdotes.
I say much about personal experience, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to say too much about the committee on which I sat where it was concluded that, “I guess we should invite the women who applied, because it would look good.”
Comment by anon — September 15, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
You haven’t mentioned the problem of departments which will interview women despite having members on the selection committee who will find every dodgy excuse they can think of not to hire female researchers.
Comment by Lab Lemming — September 16, 2007 @ 12:27 am
Hi anon– the reason your comment took a while to appear is that there was a link in it, which automatically tagged it for moderation. It’s up now.
Comment by drshellie — September 16, 2007 @ 4:25 am
The statistics don’t support your assertion that women have an advantage in making it to any stage of the hiring process… in fact, the stats say the opposite. Check out NAS’s 2007 report “Beyond Barriers and Bias”… they have a nice reference list. With the exception of a few subfields (see Kulis et al. 2002, Research in Higher Education 43:657-691), there is not an inverse relationship between the representation of women in the doctorate pool and their representation among faculty… a field with few women doctorates is just as likely to have women underrepresented in the faculty as in women-majority fields. In addition, women are least likely to make it into t-t positions in R1 universities… women are more likely to be hired into non-t-t positions and in community colleges. A warning though: make sure to take your Prozac before spending too much time on the data….
Also, how do we interpret the situation that the final candidates of a t-t search include one woman “star” and two less stellar men? Sounds to me like women’s CVs have to be much better than men’s in order to get considered (see Wold and Wennerås, 1997, Nature 387:341-343)… it doesn’t support the contention that there are few women in the field and all are stars.
Comment by amIawomanscientist — September 19, 2007 @ 6:46 am
These statements aren’t contradictory–
1) on average, the percentage of women in tenure-track jobs at R1 universities is less than the percentage of women graduating with PhD’s. (Though I don’t know if there is data, it may also be true that the percentage of hires that are female is less than the percentage of applicants who are female.)
2) If a department wants to hire a particular person (say, you), it may be able to use diversity arguments to help create a position.
For anyone approaching this year’s application season, it is probably less helpful to get depressed by the averages than to pursue whatever opportunities open up, in hopes of coming out on the upper end of the variance.
Comment by drshellie — September 19, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
Last, as a senior postgrad, I watched my dept go through a lengthy procedure to hire 4 new tenured staff. I gather there was an enormous pile of applications for the positions. Not one woman was shortlisted, although the gender imbalance on the faculty is extreme. Since my own publication record looks appalling I don’t know why I even bother to send out applications, but I do. When one of my local referees was asked for further information (from an enlightened university to which I had applied for a faculty position) he called me into his office to laugh at me for even bothering to apply. Since I’m now 40 yrs old, I think I should really give up on all the wasted effort. As a woman in my field, I think your CV needs to look drop-dead amazing before anyone even looks at it.
Comment by Kea — September 23, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
What I wonder is, what proportion of applicants are women? I see very few female candidates come through, are the ladies just not applying? Recent psychology search had 7 candidates with just one woman! This is a field that’s 50% female PhD’s,I believe.
Also, I think that whatever ‘diversity’ buys you as a woman, doesn’t compensate for the other things that hold women back (undervaluation, perceptions of style, two-body problem). The female ’stars’ do get wooed and a dozen offers, while the janes who are just as good as the joes get overlooked, or are more likely to experience two-career hurdles.
My experiences:
- 5 interviews (3 this year), so far no offers (fingers still crossed)
- nearly every place questioned me regarding spousal issues - from veiled (’gee, I can’t think of any other questions to ask…legal that is, har, har’) to direct to accusing (’so, what are you going to do with your husband if you are offered the job?!’)
- pretty sure I was the token woman at the hot Big Research U; all the men had 2007 C/S/N pubs, mine are several years old…and I knew someone on the SC. Not holding my breath.
- My opinions are despite the fact that I know many of the people involved are quite well intentioned (although the people who asked me what i would do with hubby can bite me).
Comment by anon — March 31, 2008 @ 11:19 pm
I don’t know the numbers on male v. female applicants, but would love to see.
Meanwhile, I sympathize with your job search– good luck!
Comment by drshellie — April 1, 2008 @ 1:57 am