WIKIMEDIA, BILL BRANSONIn a hypothetical hiring situation, faculty members in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are twice as likely to give a job to a female applicant than to a male one, all else being equal. The findings of the survey, published this week (April 13) in PNAS, suggest that women may have a leg up in securing an academic position in STEM.
Wendy Williams of Cornell University told Inside Higher Ed she was surprised by the findings of her study, coauthored by Cornell’s Stephen Ceci. “At one point we turned to each other while we were coding email responses from faculty across the U.S. and said we hoped that the large preference for women applicants over identically qualified men applicants would slow down because it seemed too large to be believed! It never did slow down, and the final tally was roughly a 2 to 1 preference.”
Williams and Ceci asked nearly 900 STEM faculty members to review applications from invented scientists. In only one discipline—economics—male reviewers preferred male applicants; otherwise, female applicants won out.
It’s not clear why there was such a hiring bias in favor ...
