Women Preferred For STEM Professorships – As Long As They’re Equal To Or Better Than Male Candidates

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How much do hiring decisions in academia factor in the gender of the applicant? Files image via www.shutterstock.com.

Since the 1980s, there has been robust real-world evidence of a preference for hiring women for entry-level professorships in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM). This evidence comes from hiring audits at universities. For instance, in one audit of 89 US research universities in the 1990s, women were far less likely to apply for professorships – only 11%-26% of applicants were women.