TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ginther, Donna K
AU  - Kahn, Shulamit
TI  - Does Science Promote Women? Evidence from Academia 1973-2001
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12691
PY  - 2006
Y2  - November 2006
DO  - 10.3386/w12691
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12691
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12691.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Donna K. Ginther
Department of Economics
University of Kansas
333 Snow Hall
1460 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS 66045
Tel: 785/864-3251
Fax: 785/864-5270
E-Mail: dginther@ku.edu

Shulamit Kahn
Boston University
School of Management
595 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA  02215
Tel: 617-353-4299
Fax: 617-353-6667
E-Mail: skahn@bu.edu
M1  - published as Donna K. Ginther, Shulamit Kahn. "Does Science Promote Women? Evidence from Academia 1973-2001," in Richard B. Freeman and Daniel Goroff, editors, "Science and Engineering Careers in the United States: An Analysis of Markets and Employment" University of Chicago Press (2009)

M3  - presented at "Science and Engineering Workforce Project (SEWP)", October 19-20, 2005
AB  - Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences.  We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients.  We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions.  We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates.  However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities.  Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection.  Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.
ER  -