Beyond Gender Schemas: Improving the Advancement of Women in Academia

Why are so few women at the top of their profession, whatever the profession is? After all, the data show that progress has been made: men and women make roughly equal starting salaries at similar ranks. So is there a problem? Yes, not one but two. The data also show that: 1. a problem remains: advancement is slower for women than for men; as careers progress, even controlling for a variety of variables, women earn less than men. 2. the problem is general, occurring in all the professions— science, business, medicine, law, academia. The statistics on women in academia are well documented and summarized in a number of places. 1 The generality and ubiquity of the problem shows the necessity for a general explanation. Since the phenomena are not confi ned to a single profession, we need to understand what underlies them. The explanation I focus on is social-cognitive; it examines the moment-by-moment perceptions and judgments that disadvantage women. The social-cognitive account relies on two key concepts: gender schemas and the accumulation of advantage. Very briefl y: the gender schemas that we all share result in our overrating men and underrating women in professional settings, only in small, barely visible ways: those small disparities accumulate over time to provide men with more advantages than women. As I present it, the social-cognitive account is " cold. " It is purely cognitive rather than emotional or motivational. It is intended to explain what goes wrong