Women in Academia: Are We Asking the Right Questions

The recent study A National Analysis of Diversity in Science and Engineering Faculties at Research Uni-versities by Donna J. Nelson and Diana C. Rogers [2] has been widely cited by the National Organi-zation for Women (NOW) and in Congressional tes-timony [3], [4]. From fifty departments in each of fourteen fields of science and engineering, in-cluding mathematics, the authors obtained demo-graphic data (gender, race/ethnicity) of the tenured and tenure-track faculty at each rank. As the first unified study of such demographic data for all fourteen fields, the study draws attention to the sig-nificant underrepresentation of women and mi-norities (Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans). In mathematics the percentage of women in the rank of full professor, associate professor, and as-sistant professor in the departments surveyed was 4.6%, 13.2%, and 19.6% respectively. The compari-son of assistant professors (19.6% female in 2002) with recent Ph. D. recipients (27.2% female over the period 1993-2002) reveals a pattern of attrition which persists across many of the disciplines sur-veyed. The survey points out that when minority status is also taken into account, the picture is even more dismal: minority women are practically invisible in all ranks of the faculty at the institu-tions surveyed.