Sexism in the Academy: Women's narrowing path to tenure

This was addressed in the article from multiple angles:

The first being that women have to work harder than men for recognition, and that they benefit less from co-authored papers with men (because it's assumed that the man did most of the work). There's also feeder labs with male PIs that are less likely to hire women in addition to sexual harassment potentially stymying professional growth.

So while none of these are directly responsible, each individual piece contributes to the systematic sexism women face and can potentially explain the gap.

There is a lot of specific data presented in the article, such as that women have higher writing standards, in the form of more revisions to publication. If we have concrete data that is only explainable via anti-female or pro-male bias, we should probably conclude that bias (sexism) is the primary cause for disparities in career progression. Other factors may also contribute to the effect, but arguing that sexism isn’t a primary factor, despite data showing sexism has a strong explanatory effect, is not much different from arguing that the world’s warming probably isn’t human caused because we’ve been coming out of an ice age regardless of human activity. While likely true, we have enough data to conclude that’s not the primary explanation for recent global warming.

I think that their statistic of women being full professors being lower than the percentage of women assistant professors, highlights that women aren't promoted as much to higher levels. Full professors and assistant professors are in the same vocation, and I would doubt that someone (regardless of gender) who has spent decades in academia to become an academic wouldn't want to become a full professor.

Probably an unpopular opinion but I've noticed when labeling the reasons for something as being due to systematic sexism, or racism, the statement implies something greater and beyond an individuals control is holding them back, rather than personal choice, or maybe a multitude of variables.

This creates and easy explanation/scapegoat for a problem rather than trying to actually figure out all variables involved.

It very well could be that when taking into account all the variables, it is systematic sexism/racism or whatever the claim may be. However one should be careful to jump on the ship that claims sexism/racism first without looking at all the other reasons and factors that could be at work. (Biological differences, family vs career importance, instances of sexism/racism, instances of reverse sexism/racism [helping an individual solely based on their race/sex], subjective influence, personal upbringing etc.)

Wait, so, more women than men get bachelors and graduate degrees. And, women are almost at parity with men for faculty positions [1]. But, yet only a small portion of women get tenure. I'm calling Occam's Razor here.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_315.10.a...

As an anecdote, living in a college town, I know many academics at various levels in their career. I happen to know 3 couples where both partners in the marriage are in academia, and actually in the same general branch. In all three cases, the women have been talked to about how they must be treated tougher because their spouses are in academia as well and it the administration needs to prove to the academic world that the women are not riding on the coattails of their husbands.

The men have not had any such discussions with their superiors.

Additionally, why is assuming there is no sexism and proceeding with the status quo better than the assumption there is sexism and trying to improve the situation?

>Why is the implication that this is due primarily to sexism?

Well perhaps because of the persuasive evidence the article cites from peer-reviewed journals. For example, in the paragraph below from the article:

"In one experiment, reported by Corinne A. Moss-Racusin and her coauthors in PNAS, 127 US scientists were asked to hire an undergraduate lab assistant and decide on a salary based on fictional CVs of equally qualified men and women. The scientists were more likely to offer the position to men as well as more hours of mentorship, and gave a lower salary to women, about eighty-eight cents to the dollar."

"Sexism" is a fuzzy concept. I came from a department with rampant problems with sexism (by personal observation as well as legal decisions), and I never heard anyone express anything about women being inferior. The way the sexism was manifested was far more indirect and subtle.

One way this occurred was in discussions about sex-differentiated choices. So, for example, a big problem the department had (has?) was (is?) groups of male faculty deciding that the choice to have children is a choice against a career. The implied assumption was that women stay home, and men have no reason for family leave or any impact on their working. This eventually led to sex discrimination lawsuits by men as well as women surrounding family leave and promotion policies surrounding tenure, but the problems didn't entirely go away.

The far biggest problem that I saw though was what I'd call indirect sex biases, where the biases were against sex-differentiated interpersonal styles. So the bias wasn't against gender per se, but against traits that females differed from males in on average. This struck me the most clearly when we were hiring faculty one year; the female faculty candidates tended to be more polite, calm, and deferential in research talks, but no less competent; the male candidates tended to be more aggressive and dominant. The hiring faculty in the audience, though, would see the female interpersonal style as a sign of weakness, and become more aggressive in their questioning, later concluding that the female candidates were less competent, when they were subject to much more stringent questioning the male candidates were never subject to, solely because the male candidates were more aggressive in their responses. This came up in other ways as well, such as in promotions; the department lost a sex discrimination lawsuit after women who were objectively more accomplished were less successful in tenure promotions primarily because they were seen as not socially dominant or attention-seeking enough.

I could go on and on.

We are seeing a lot of evidence that academics is increasingly a narcissistic pissing contest. I suspect a lot of women just get out while they can because they see it for what it is, and are on the losing end of a game whose rules they disagree with to begin with. Some of it is outright sexism, but some of it is bias that affects women differentially because of average group differences.

It isn't the default assumption. It is the conclusion of decades of research and analysis that have sought alternative explanations and been left with bias.

Lol every time a piece like this gets posted some 'experts' come out of the woodwork and go like 'but what if women actually liked having low-paying low-status jobs though? Something something population differences something genetics something evolution blah blah.' (Note that none of these people are in fact evolutionary biologists) It's like a broken record, despite the enormous literature accounting for sexist biases in hiring, promoting, rating performance, evaluating stereotypes, etc. At this point I'm left to wonder if any of these people are arguing in good faith.

For your second question: sadly, liberal and progressive views do little to combat innate biases. Every single person on the planet has some biases that they might fail to recognize and there've been some recent studies that showed students respect female professors less than their male counterparts and evaluate them lower overall. That's not some systemic hatred toward women, that's just a result of the way society views female educators. For examples, look at these studies: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

It's almost impossible to give a meaningful answer to the first question. Asking people doesn't really answer the question because the meaningful version of the question is a nuanced counterfactual that would never really be asked in surveys. Lots of people would want to be professors under the right circumstances. If you make a career path that's needlessly precarious and and the only people who "want" to risk trying to have that kind of career are privileged people, then you could just throw up your hands and say "well I guess no one else wants to be a professor," or you could be honest about what people's motivations are and try to create a more humane system.

Speaking to your second point, the faculty's political leanings depend a lot on the department, and even then you can be surprised at the varied political views within a single department. Some of my profs in my dept. seemed very liberal, but that doesn't mean they won't sexually harrass people. I've overheard my old profs talk about women's breasts in their offices across from mine (this was a former job).

And there are some profs who will straight up leer at their students. It only takes one or two like this to cause a lot of tension in a workplace.

We're also missing: What percentage of women are accepted for a open professor position? It doesn't make sense to look at the number of male vs. female professors currently employed. These are positions where people stay for decades, and we've only truly been focused on the issue for the past 10 to 15 years.

Hidden deep in some statistics from the Danish ministry of education the numbers show that women are now more likely (edit: I was wrong about this part, it is just as likely, not more) to get hired as professors that men. It will take years to hit 50% male and 50% female professors, but the alternative is to fire existing professors, solely become they're men, or create new jobs, marked for women only, even if you technically don't need more professors.

Edit: For those who can read it: https://ufm.dk/publikationer/2019/filer/maend-og-kvinder-pa-...

The main point is that a woman is just as likely to be hired for an open position as man is. The interesting part is that women only make up 30% of the qualified applicants. So a women applying for a university job has a better chance of getting hired, compared to her male rivals. Page 73.

> What is the expected level of sexism at the university?

It remains high.

A friend of mine has been told by a potential adviser that he does not accept female students. My wife has consistently been asked whether I will give her permission to work as a postdoc at schools she is applying to (it might harm my career, the horror!). I know several women who have hid pregnancies while on the job market and many women who have hid their marital status when applying for faculty positions. Word gets around quickly when people start asking weird questions about "will you be able to handle the work" when making assumptions about having children. My wife and several other friends have had uncomfortable comments (both positive and negative) written about their physical appearance in student evaluations on their teaching.

This is just off the top of my head.