Tag Archives | STEM fields

Opportunities for Faculty Tenure at Globally Ranked Universities: Cross-National Differences by Gender, Fields, and Tenure Status

Mana Nakagawa, Christine Min Wotipka, Elizabeth Buckner

Sociological Science November 12, 2024
10.15195/v11.a39


Drawing on a unique data set of almost 12,000 faculty members from 52 globally ranked universities in four fields (sociology, biology, history, and engineering), this study describes and explains gender differences in tenure among faculty across 13 countries. In our sample, women comprise roughly one-third of all faculty and only 23 percent of tenured faculty, with significant variation across fields and countries. Findings from a series of multilevel regression analyses suggest support for a gender filter argument: women are less likely to be tenured overall and in every field. Opportunities for tenure also matter. In countries with very low- and high-tenure rates, women are much less likely to be tenured relative to men than in countries with pathways both into and upward in academia.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mana Nakagawa: Global DEI & People Development, Meta
E-mail: mananakagawa@alumni.stanford.edu

Christine Min Wotipka: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: cwotipka@stanford.edu

Elizabeth Buckner: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
E-mail: elizabeth.buckner@utoronto.ca

Acknowledgements: We wish to thank Francisco O. Ramirez, JohnW. Meyer, Woody Powell, Eric Bettinger, Shelley Correll, Evan Schofer, Lisa Yiu, and the members of the Stanford Comparative Workshop and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University for their helpful feedback and guidance. We appreciate the research and editorial assistance provided by Nozomi Nakajima, Cassandra Hsinyu Lin, Isabela Freire Rietmeijer, and Juetzinia Kazmer-Murillo. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society in 2019. The first author received funding from the Institute of Education Sciences through predoctoral training grant #R305B090016 and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research Graduate Dissertation Fellowship.

Reproducibility Package: A replication package with all original data and codes is available at https://doi.org/10.25740/yj064dj4349.

  • Citation: Nakagawa, Mana, Christine Min Wotipka, and Elizabeth Buckner. 2024. “Opportunities for Faculty Tenure at Globally Ranked Universities: Cross-National Differences by Gender, Fields, and Tenure Status.” Sociological Science 11: 1084-1106.
  • Received: July 26, 2024
  • Accepted: October 21, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Nan Dirk de Graaf
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a39


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Pathways to Science and Engineering Bachelor's Degrees for Men and Women

Joscha Legewie, Thomas A. DiPrete

Sociological Science, February 18, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a4

Despite the striking reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment and the near–gender parity in math performance, women pursue science and engineering (S/E) degrees at much lower rates than their male peers do. Current efforts to increase the number of women in these fields focus on different life-course periods but lack a clear understanding of the importance of these periods and how orientations toward S/E fields develop over time. In this article, we examine the gendered pathways to a S/E bachelor’s degree from middle school to high school and college based on a representative sample from the 1973 to 1974 birth cohort. Using a counterfactual decomposition analysis, we determine the relative importance of these different life-course periods and thereby inform the direction of future research and policy. Our findings confirm previous research that highlights the importance of early encouragement for gender differences in S/E degrees, but our findings also attest to the high school years as a decisive period for the gender gap, while challenging the focus on college in research and policy. Indeed, if female high school seniors had the same orientation toward and preparation for S/E fields as their male peers, the gender gap in S/E degrees would be closed by as much as 82 percent.

Joscha Legewie: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung. E-mail: joscha.legewie@wzb.eu

Thomas A DiPrete: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. E-mail: tad61@columbia.edu

  • Citation: Legewie, Joscha, and Thomas A. DiPrete. 2014. “Pathways to Science and Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees for Men and Women.” Sociological Science 1: 41-48.
  • Received: September 18, 2013
  • Accepted: October 10, 2013
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v1.a4

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