Are We There Yet? Biases in Hiring Women Faculty Candidates.

T here's quite a debate in the popular press right now on the topic of how women are faring in the academic STEM fields. On one hand, we have a Nobel Laureate unapologetically calling for single sex laboratories 1 because " girls " distract male scientists, and on the other hand, we have a group of human ecology researchers claiming a significant hiring preference for women over men in STEM faculty positions. The former example can be discounted because the statements are clearly those of one individual; the latter, however, is an extensive scientific study published in PNAS 2 and merits thoughtful discussion. reports on five hiring experiments in which current faculty were presented with fictional faculty candidates, each having equivalent qualifications, differing only in gender. The outcome of this work showed a 2:1 hiring preference for women candidates compared to their male counterparts by nearly all of the applicant reviewers. These results, contrary to popular wisdom, have received a lot of press coverage and have initiated vibrant discussion. In fact, if you look at the data related to the hiring of assistant professors in chemistry between 2001 to 2013, 3 the reported 2:1 preference does seem reasonable, but only if male and female applicants each made up half the applicant pool (which they do not). So, why do not we see this apparent 2:1 preference in our hiring numbers? Unfortunately, there are some aspects of Williams and Ceci's experimental design that fail to realistically simulate the actual faculty hiring process, thereby presenting what we consider an optimistic impression of gender equity in STEM hiring. One design issue is that the professional narratives and CVs used in the gender comparison study represented only " off-scale " candidates. This is not particularly realistic and in this case, may have made it easier for participants to make the honorable choice to improve gender equity. Previous studies (like this one 4) that have used more realistic qualification levels for male and female candidates revealed an unconscious bias against women candidates; when we're a little less clear that an applicant's success is assured, perhaps we put our faith disproportionately in the male candidates. Another potential issue with the Williams and Ceci work is that the applicant reviewers knew that the candidates were hypothetical, whereas other studies specified that actual candidates were being considered for real positions. It seems reasonable to assume that applicant reviewers …