The most comprehensive analysis to date of gender and retention patterns in the entire U.S. university system has shown that, at every career age and stage, women faculty members are more likely than men to leave their jobs and are less likely to be promoted.
The research, led by Katie Spoon (CU Boulder), was published in Science Advances and includes SFI co-authors Aaron Clauset, Dan Larremore, and Mirta Galesic. Beyond examining gendered rates of attrition, the paper explores the underlying reasons that women, who hold an increasing portion of all doctoral degrees, remain underrepresented among tenure-track and tenured faculty in nearly all academic fields.
The most common reason that women faculty report for leaving academia is workplace climate, including dysfunctional leadership, formal and informal devaluation, and harassment and discrimination, and these reasons persist even after tenure or promotion to full professor. Women are also more likely than men to feel pushed out of their faculty jobs than to feel pulled toward better opportunities, especially as they increase in career age.
Read the paper “Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty” in Science Advances (October 20, 2023) at doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi2205