Women have substantial advantage in STEM faculty hiring, except when competing against more-accomplished men

TLDR

Audits of tenure‑track hiring show a preference for female applicants over male ones, yet these studies do not control for applicant quality, leaving open the possibility that faculty may favor women even when they are less qualified than male peers. The study examined faculty preferences by having 252 reviewers rank hypothetical tenure‑track candidates—two men and one woman in one condition, and two women and one man in the other—where the slightly weaker candidate was always the opposite gender. Faculty of both genders and all fields chose the more‑qualified men over slightly‑less‑qualified women and the stronger women over slightly‑less‑qualified men, indicating that the observed preference for women among equally qualified applicants does not apply when women are even marginally less qualified.

Abstract

Audits of tenure-track hiring reveal faculty prefer to hire female applicants over males. However, audit data do not control for applicant quality, allowing some to argue women are hired at higher rates because they are more qualified. To test this, Williams and Ceci (2015) conducted an experiment demonstrating a preference for hiring women over identically-qualified men. While their findings are consistent with audits, they raise the specter that faculty may prefer women over even more-qualified men, a claim made recently. We evaluated this claim in the present study: 158 faculty ranked two men and one woman for a tenure-track-assistant professorship, and 94 faculty ranked two women and one man. In the former condition, the female applicant was slightly weaker than her two male competitors, although still strong; in the other condition the male applicant was slightly weaker than his two female competitors, although still strong. Faculty of both genders and in all fields preferred the more-qualified men over the slightly-less-qualified women, and they also preferred the stronger women over the slightly-less-qualified man. This suggests that preference for women among identically-qualified applicants found in experimental studies and in audits does not extend to women whose credentials are even slightly weaker than male counterparts. Thus these data give no support to the twin claims that weaker males are chosen over stronger females or weaker females are hired over stronger males.