Gender Comparisons

• Introduction 
• The gender gap in academia 
• Some data on the presence of women in academia 
• Why is there a gender gap? 
• Prages: monitoring and disseminating best practices 
• References 
  
   

Introduction 

This page reveals and discusses  issues related to the presence and work of women in academia. It introduces what is commonly known as the gender gap in academia, i.e. the traditional underrepresentation of women in universities.

It then presents figures on the presence and position of women in universities and briefly reports the main explanations for these figures.

ACO is working to expand and improve this gender comparison page. We invite users to send us comments and data on this important issue.

 

The gender gap in academia 

There is a common perception, supported by evidence, that women in are underrepresented in academia. This statement needs to be qualified. Indeed, in some countries women in the academic professions are equal or almost equal in number to men. Portugal is one such case. In other cases, women are quickly increasing, such as in the UK where some estimate that by 2020, women could account for the majority of all academics in the country.

At the same time, if we look at the positions occupied by female academics, we discover that women are usually concentrated in the entry level, and therefore the lowest, positions of the academic career ladder. In the UK, for example, in the year 2006/7 female lecturers (23,590) and researchers (16,815) were almost as many as male lecturers (27,340) and researchers (19,925). In both positions, the growth of women's rate was by 23% compared to 2001/2. Similar results can be found in other national academic systems (see below). The perception is that this is a recurrent, cross-crountry pattern.

Another thing to note, and one which is also relevant for the areas where the ACO monitors academic careers, is that that there is usually a difference between disciplines where women are present as academics. Broadly speaking, the proportion of women in the humanities and the social sciences is generally higher than in the natural sciences. Some even predicted that in the UK the number of female professors in the social sciences could equal that of men in the near future.

However, there is proof that even in the social sciences and the humanities the gender gap is not necessarily narrowing consistently. With respect to the US, during the last ACO conference of 2007 Lisa Lynch from the American Economic Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession Committee presented some encouraging data concerning the overall increasing presence of women among Ph.D. candidates and in professorship positions in Economics. At the same time, she highlighted some stops in this trend and addressed the problem of 'leaks in the pipeline'.

 

Some data on the presence of women in academia 

The ACO provides some figures to support the above statements concerning the gender gap in academia. The table below gives the presence of womenn in the academic systems of selected countries. It is not a complete review of the condition of female academics but it provides evidence of the gender gap in some important countries including those, like the UK, that attract many researchers and professors for their relatively open and competitive system.

Bear in mind that the titles of academic positions differ form country to country. For means of comparison we have unified them into five categories. In countries where the position or its equivalent does not exist, the space has been left blank.

Proportion of Women in Academic Positions (%)
	Ph.D. Degree	Postdoc	Junior Lecturer/ Assistant Professor	Senior Lecturer/ Associate Professor	Full Professor
Canada	--	--	41	34	18
Denmark	--	--	--	--	--
Finland	--	50	50	38	22
France	--	--	--	--	--
Ireland	--	50	--	--	10
Italy	--	--	33	--	11.4
Norway	--	43	--	31	17
Poland	--	--	55	41	22
Spain	--	--	--	--	--
Sweden	--	--	54	--	17
UK	--	--	40	--	12
USA	--	--	47	41	28

Why is there a gender gap? 

Different types of explanations have been provided to make sense of the gender gap. The first and most common of them refers to the difficulty for women to combine their academic career with maternity and other family duties that are still placed on women. Especially in highly competitive systems such as the British one, women in academia who are in their thirties are usually at the early stage of their career and therefore need to publish and go to conferences to make themselves known, do networking and ultimately move to higher positions in the career ladder.

This may coincide with the age that many women enter a period of potential family formation. Because of maternity and a tendency to assume most of the family workload women end up being distracted from their career-related obligations. Indeed, there is a perception that the majority of women in higher academic positions are single and that they tend to stick to the traditional rules that lead to a successful career in the country.

Another type of explanation refers to the different attitudes that women have towards career issues, which in turn points to the different cooperative/competitive styles that respectively women and men adopt in the workplace (academia is no exception in this respect). In particular, it is argued by some UK commentators that women often do not proactively engage in networking, and do not bargain for promotion and salary increases. These attitudes are perceived by the (male-dominated) system as lack of interest in having a proper academic career.

In both cases, the main criticism is levelled at the system and the universities which should, together with governments, thoroughly incorporate women's needs and attitudes into the system.

 

Prages: monitoring and disseminating best practices 

Prages (PRActising Gender Equality in Science) is an international project aiming to build an online database of best practices related to gender equality in the academia. Several institutions from Europe and beyond are involved in the project, including the EUI.

For more information, please visit the official Prages webpage 

On 28 October 2009, the ACO contributed to the PRAGES workshop ‘Practicing Gender Equality at the EUI: The Crouch Report Seven Years Later’ (presentation )

 

References 

Times Educational Supplement, 'Still Second Among Equals', 27 March 2008, No. 1838, pp. 30-35.

Lynch, Lisa M. 2007. 'The Status of Women in the Economics Academic Profession'. See the ACO report  and Lynch's presentation .