Evidence of strong gender-bias in University hiring

[Axulus]

Actually yes. Role models are people you can imagine becoming. Because of this, Wonder Woman is not a role model for me.

Are you suggesting that if most of the students are white males the teachers hired should be white males to maximize the role model imagining effectiveness quotient?

I'm not sure I understand how this "role model imagining" issue justifies discrimination in hiring.

I think the argument is that it isn't discrimination but something that adds to their qualifications. Ability to be a better role model to X demographic (when the role model quotient for X demographic has not been met) is a feature that adds to their merit.

 

[ronburgundy]

This is refuted by the fact that the bias is just as strong in disciplines like psychology where 75% of the majors are already female, and half the faculty are female.

Given that 75% of psych majors are female, and half of the faculty are female, how do you square this with the contention that there is a strong female bias in the hiring of University faculty?

One would think that such a bias would equate to more than 75% of psych faculty members being female, yet, according to your own data, that is not the case.

Try putting aside your blinding faith and actually reading an tiny bit of the relevant science, such as the article I linked or even just my own OP which pointed explained why female drops from 75% to 50% in the grad school - faculty transition.

Females willingly opt out of academic careers during or post grad school. They choose not to apply for available faculty positions, but are more likely to get them when they do bother to apply. All of that is evidenced by research cited in the linked article. Partly women choose to go into private sector work (which pays more and has less hours), and partly they go into clinical private practice more (maybe for similar reasons and because it is more social and focused on helping people rather than studying them), and partly they choose to leave the workforce altogether to raise families. I had female friends in grad school that did each of these, but none of fellow male graduates did. Females are also more likely to leave their academic positions after being hired for the above reasons.
Another reason is that academic departments still have (usually to their detriment) many faculty that were hired 25-30 years ago when there was not a pro-female bias in hiring. In addition, female applicants for faculty positions tend to have fewer qualifications when they apply.

All of these combine to reduce the number of females that get hired into and stay in academic positions, noting many of these factors are self-selection not to be in those positions.

 

[ronburgundy]

This is refuted by the fact that the bias is just as strong in disciplines like psychology where 75% of the majors are already female, and half the faculty are female.
More generally, in both the life sciences and the social sciences the majority of graduates are female and their % is continually rising. The evidence is that women don't lack interest in STEM, but that many opt out of any academic career at some point (no matter how female laden) due to the greater value they place on family.
Also, having the best researchers and instructors goes a long way to getting students of any gender interested in a field. Any degree to which gender of applicants if given weight, reduces the weight given to any other factor, including research and instruction quality.

Ya, I was speaking specifically of the STEM courses.

Doesn't matter. The fact that the bias occurs regardless of the gender makeup of the discipline is evidence that the bias is not rooted in a desire to even out interests between the genders. That may serve as a convenient post-hoc rationalization for it in STEM, but its a dishonest excuse.
Also, I bet there is no similar bias in favor of hiring men in various humanities and social science disciplines where males are under-represented. Again, showing that the bias is really rooted in a rather blind "let's hire more women" orientation, without thought of how it applies, its effects, or its ethics. IOW, it is knee-jerk blind ideology (emphasis on jerk) and not a thoughtfully considered action.

 

[Axulus]

Ya, I was speaking specifically of the STEM courses.

Doesn't matter. The fact that the bias occurs regardless of the gender makeup of the discipline is evidence that the bias is not rooted in a desire to even out interests between the genders. That may serve as a convenient post-hoc rationalization for it in STEM, but its a dishonest excuse.
Also, I bet there is no similar bias in favor of hiring men in various humanities and social science disciplines where males are under-represented. Again, showing that the bias is really rooted in a rather blind "let's hire more women" orientation, without thought of how it applies, its effects, or its ethics. IOW, it is knee-jerk blind ideology (emphasis on jerk) and not a thoughtfully considered action.

You haven't responded to the argument that it fulfills a needed role model quotient for the female demographic - being a role model could be one of several job qualifications, could it not? Is this a legitimate criteria to hire for? I agree that it would mean that professions that are female dominated would also similarly need to be biased in favor of hiring more men to be consistent but, if they were, would that be acceptable, do you think?

 

[Trausti]

Actually yes. Role models are people you can imagine becoming. Because of this, Wonder Woman is not a role model for me.

Are you suggesting that if most of the students are white males the teachers hired should be white males to maximize the role model imagining effectiveness quotient?

I'm not sure I understand how this "role model imagining" issue justifies discrimination in hiring.

Maybe we can segregate students so that their teachers might fit their perceived "role model imaging." We'll call it, separate but equal.

 

[Toni]

So, what was the gender distribution of faculty ranking these theoretical candidates? What was the gender distribution of each school? What was the gender distribution of the applicants who received offers? Ranked by types is positions offered? How does this compare to the gender distributions of the departments proffering positions?

 

[ronburgundy]

So, what was the gender distribution of faculty ranking these theoretical candidates?

Both male and female faculty who did the ranking showed the bias, and even though disciplines differ in their gender distribution of faculty, the bias was largely unaffected by discipline and thus not by gender distribution of existing faculty (e.g., Psychology faculty showed 2:1 bias for female applicants despite already being a 50% female.

What was the gender distribution of each school?

There were nearly 400 schools, so the distribution is likely close to the national average, which is 56% female.

What was the gender distribution of the applicants who received offers?

Unlike most research claiming hiring biases, this was actually a controlled experiment, which is why it can conclude with certainty that the results are due to gender bias. The applicants did not actually receive real job offers. However, the article cites other research showing that when females actually apply and have equal qualifications, females are more likely to get job offers than men.

Ranked by types is positions offered?

The rankings were for hireability in a tenure-track faculty position.

How does this compare to the gender distributions of the departments proffering positions?

Its a nationally representative sample of 400 schools across all 50 states, so it likely compares very well to the departments that are offering positions?

In sum, it seems to be the largest scale and most methodologically rigorous test of actual gender bias in faculty hiring (unconfounded with other factors) ever conducted. It shows robust, replicated results of a massive direct causal impact of perceived applicant gender on faculty hiring preferences in favor of women.
It is about as close to falsification as one can get of the claim that anti-female bias remains a pervasive problem in hiring of University faculty and scientists in the public sector.

 

[dismal]

Doesn't matter. The fact that the bias occurs regardless of the gender makeup of the discipline is evidence that the bias is not rooted in a desire to even out interests between the genders. That may serve as a convenient post-hoc rationalization for it in STEM, but its a dishonest excuse.
Also, I bet there is no similar bias in favor of hiring men in various humanities and social science disciplines where males are under-represented. Again, showing that the bias is really rooted in a rather blind "let's hire more women" orientation, without thought of how it applies, its effects, or its ethics. IOW, it is knee-jerk blind ideology (emphasis on jerk) and not a thoughtfully considered action.

You haven't responded to the argument that it fulfills a needed role model quotient for the female demographic - being a role model could be one of several job qualifications, could it not? Is this a legitimate criteria to hire for? I agree that it would mean that professions that are female dominated would also similarly need to be biased in favor of hiring more men to be consistent but, if they were, would that be acceptable, do you think?

It's against the law to discriminate in hiring based on gender. No role model image exception I am aware of.

Would you accept the role model argument for promoting only male executives in a company where the majority of workers were male?

 

[Toni]

Both male and female faculty who did the ranking showed the bias, and even though disciplines differ in their gender distribution of faculty, the bias was largely unaffected by discipline and thus not by gender distribution of existing faculty (e.g., Psychology faculty showed 2:1 bias for female applicants despite already being a 50% female.

I was specifically interested in the gender distribution of the departments who received the job applications, not as specifically interested in the genders of the faculty doing the ranking.

What was the gender distribution of each school?

There were nearly 400 schools, so the distribution is likely close to the national average, which is 56% female.

I'm sorry: I wasn't specific enough. I meant, what was the distribution of the gender of the faculty in the departments which received the applications?

What was the gender distribution of the applicants who received offers?

Unlike most research claiming hiring biases, this was actually a controlled experiment, which is why it can conclude with certainty that the results are due to gender bias. The applicants did not actually receive real job offers. However, the article cites other research showing that when females actually apply and have equal qualifications, females are more likely to get job offers than men.

If you don't know the answer, it's ok to say so.

But thank you for pointing out that these were not actually genuine applicants but theoretical ones. There were no real job offers to be had just as the applicants were false applicants. It is absolutely unlikely that the faculty recruited to review the 'applications' were unaware that they were part of a study and that such awareness would not affect the results.

I am aware that in some disciplines, a strong female candidate is strongly sought after simply because of the under-representation of women in some fields. It is well known among faulty in STEM fields that the presence or lack of presence of women as faculty affects the number and proportion of females who choose a field as a major. Where there are female instructors, there is a much greater likelihood that more women will choose that field as their major.

Ranked by types is positions offered?

The rankings were for hireability in a tenure-track faculty position.

I'd be quite interested in seeing how this broke down by specific field.

How does this compare to the gender distributions of the departments proffering positions?

Its a nationally representative sample of 400 schools across all 50 states, so it likely compares very well to the departments that are offering positions?

You are missing the point of the question but it is surely my fault. I posted on the fly and wasn't as specific as I should have been.

What I was attempting to ask was how did this compare with the gender distribution of the departments BY DEPARTMENT. In other words, did it differ in fields where there are relatively few female faculty members vs fields where there is a more even or even female dominated distribution of faculty members?

In sum, it seems to be the largest scale and most methodologically rigorous test of actual gender bias in faculty hiring (unconfounded with other factors) ever conducted. It shows robust, replicated results of a massive direct causal impact of perceived applicant gender on faculty hiring preferences in favor of women.
It is about as close to falsification as one can get of the claim that anti-female bias remains a pervasive problem in hiring of University faculty and scientists in the public sector.

It would be much more telling to see who is actually hired vs these theoretical 'applicants.' In fact, there is a substantially smaller percentage of women working in academia in the fields of mathematics, engineering, chemistry and physics compared to men in those fields.

 

[Axulus]

You haven't responded to the argument that it fulfills a needed role model quotient for the female demographic - being a role model could be one of several job qualifications, could it not? Is this a legitimate criteria to hire for? I agree that it would mean that professions that are female dominated would also similarly need to be biased in favor of hiring more men to be consistent but, if they were, would that be acceptable, do you think?

It's against the law to discriminate in hiring based on gender. No role model image exception I am aware of.

Would you accept the role model argument for promoting only male executives in a company where the majority of workers were male?

Apples to oranges - one part of a university department's job is to attract more qualified students to its particular major - if female role models is a conducive part to that goal, then that type of discrimination may qualify as a reasonable requirement for the job. However, the job should be posted as such - seeking female for academic position and role model for engineering department.

 

[barbos]

I imagine that it's because they see a need to get more young girls interested in the STEM courses, so having more female professors gives them more positive role models to be able to see the viability of focusing on those majors.

True but only two fields among "biology, engineering, economics, and psychology" are STEM.

 

[dismal]

It's against the law to discriminate in hiring based on gender. No role model image exception I am aware of.

Would you accept the role model argument for promoting only male executives in a company where the majority of workers were male?

Apples to oranges - one part of a university department's job is to attract more qualified students to its particular major - if female role models is a conducive part to that goal, then that type of discrimination may qualify as a reasonable requirement for the job. However, the job should be posted as such - seeking female for academic position and role model for engineering department.

You assert these distinctions matter and trump the law. But if some employers can dispense with the laws prohibiting discrimination by gender to obtain role models how do you justify others not being able to seek the role models they believe suit their organization best?

 

[Bomb#20]

The evidence is that women are highly favored for faculty hiring in the sciences and engineering.

Why?

Because Affirmative Action policies promote and sometimes require gender-based bias in favor of women. This is done as a way of fighting past injustice and unfairness ...

Nah. This is clearly the result of the patriarchy dominating academia -- the responding professors were evidently sick and tired of their workplace not having enough eye candy.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

It's politically acceptable to discriminate against men; so what's the problem?

Why?

What could have been the history that would lead to this discrimination?

There is a legitimate interest in righting the discriminatory wrongs of the past, but it invariably occurs by equal protection and due process. Further, it's been ruled several times over the Supreme Court that quotas violate equal protection. Gender, race, etc. may be a factor among many that are considered by state universities, but those qualities may not be a single or dominant factor. Therefore, an outright discriminatory hiring practice based on one characteristic is illegal.

To justify such hiring practices you would have to show that the policy was substantially related to an important State interest. That's what's called "intermediate" or mid-level scrutiny. It's a test used for gender discrimination. So what will have to be proven is that a 2 to 1 difference in hiring preferences is substantially related to some kind of important interest. So what would the interest be? No State has an interest in having one group of people "getting back" at another group for any past mistreatment. It doesn't work that way. There would have to be a 2 to 1 or better number of applications of women along with something like a similar ratio of graduates. And even then, it might not be enough to justify the practice.

And you can't get away with a neutral policy that on its face does not discriminate but in practice is meant to do so and does so. IOW, you can't write your way into making discriminatory practices legal.

If what the OP is saying is true, then it's only a matter of time before that hiring practice gets shitcanned; and rightly so.

 

[barbos]

I remember there was a thread about the same thing but got completely opposite conclusion - bias was against women.

 

[Axulus]

I remember there was a thread about the same thing but got completely opposite conclusion - bias was against women.

And when there are contradictory statements being made - the logical and rational move is to examine the evidence - how reliable and strong is the evidence presented for each side? Was a controlled experiment performed to gather the evidence? How good were the controls? What was the sample size? Are there confounding variables unaccounted for that plausibly explain the results? Etc.

I would submit that the paper presented in the OP is good evidence.

 

[KeepTalking]

Given that 75% of psych majors are female, and half of the faculty are female, how do you square this with the contention that there is a strong female bias in the hiring of University faculty?

One would think that such a bias would equate to more than 75% of psych faculty members being female, yet, according to your own data, that is not the case.

Try putting aside your blinding faith

Try putting aside your condescension first, then perhaps we can have a civil discussion.

and actually reading an tiny bit of the relevant science, such as the article I linked or even just my own OP which pointed explained why female drops from 75% to 50% in the grad school - faculty transition.

I was simply pointing out a hole in your argument. Regardless of any excuse as to why it is not so, if there is such a strong female gender bias in hiring for psych faculty, and also a 75% female participation in the discipline, we should see more than 50% of faculty in that discipline as women.

Females willingly opt out of academic careers during or post grad school. They choose not to apply for available faculty positions, but are more likely to get them when they do bother to apply. All of that is evidenced by research cited in the linked article. Partly women choose to go into private sector work (which pays more and has less hours), and partly they go into clinical private practice more (maybe for similar reasons and because it is more social and focused on helping people rather than studying them), and partly they choose to leave the workforce altogether to raise families. I had female friends in grad school that did each of these, but none of fellow male graduates did. Females are also more likely to leave their academic positions after being hired for the above reasons.
Another reason is that academic departments still have (usually to their detriment) many faculty that were hired 25-30 years ago when there was not a pro-female bias in hiring. In addition, female applicants for faculty positions tend to have fewer qualifications when they apply.

All of these combine to reduce the number of females that get hired into and stay in academic positions, noting many of these factors are self-selection not to be in those positions.

Perhaps this helps to explain the perceived bias in this discipline. If, as your data seems to show, the male and female job candidates are equally qualified, and those who are doing the hiring see that, in a female dominated field of study females are only 50% of faculty, perhaps they are more likely to select the equally qualified female candidates to make up for the perceived disparity. Show me a study where less qualified female candidates are selected over more qualified male candidates and then we can talk about a strong gender bias in favor of hiring females.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm confused, the study seemed to deal with fake faculty hires, not real ones.

 

[Toni]

I'm confused, the study seemed to deal with fake faculty hires, not real ones.

Not even fake hires but evals of fake applicants.

Of course this is just evidence of the suppression of white men.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm confused, the study seemed to deal with fake faculty hires, not real ones.

Not even fake hires but evals of fake applicants.

Of course this is just evidence of the suppression of white men.

Well, you just don't understand how it feels to live in a world dominated by women of different color.

I was thinking this study would review the existing staff at lots of colleges/universities and look at the ratio of recent male to female hires. Then take that data and put it in a blender to see what comes out. Their study is about fictional people applying for fictional jobs... at real schools. Seeing that an interview is an important step in getting a job, it'd seem nonsensical to do a study in this manner.

That said, white men have it hard in America. When we aren't busy being falsely accused of rape, we are trying to escape unfair prosecution for killing someone. And don't get me started on the reverse racism where white men are not even allowed to vote unless we pay a poll tax.