Academic Hiring Study Reveals 2:1 Faculty Preference for Women in STEM Tenure Track

A Cornell University study by researchers Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, found that academic faculty expressed a significant preference for female candidates in tenure-track positions. The research, which involved sending fake job applications to over 800 faculty members across engineering, economics, biology, and psychology departments, indicated a 2:1 preference for women when candidates were identically qualified.

The study, titled "National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track," challenged long-held assumptions about gender bias in academic hiring. As stated in the tweet by Steve Stewart-Williams, "Williams and Ceci sent fake job applications to more than 800 faculty members in engineering, economics, biology, and psychology... As shown in the graph below, faculty expressed a strong preference for the female candidates - a 2:1 preference overall." This finding applied to faculty of both genders across most fields, with male economists being the sole exception, showing no gender preference.

Ceci and Williams conducted five randomized controlled experiments with 873 tenure-track faculty from 371 U.S. colleges and universities. They created hypothetical applicant profiles that were systematically varied, disguising identically rated scholarship and counterbalancing gender to enable direct comparisons. The researchers noted that these findings suggest a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science, arguing that messages to the contrary might discourage women from applying for STEM tenure-track assistant professorships.

A follow-up study by Ceci and Williams further explored this preference, finding that the advantage for women disappeared when they were pitted against slightly more accomplished men. This indicated that while there was a strong preference for equally qualified women, faculty prioritized quality, consistently preferring the highest-rated candidate regardless of gender. The authors concluded that these findings should help dispel concerns that affirmative hiring practices necessarily result in less qualified women being hired over superior men.

The research sparked considerable discussion within academia regarding gender bias, hiring practices, and the interpretation of such experimental results. While the study highlighted a pro-female bias in hiring for equally qualified candidates, it also underscored that quality remained the paramount factor for faculty when evaluating top-tier applicants.