earned 19 percent of bachelor degrees and 12 percent of doctoral degrees in physics, and 18 percent of undergraduate degrees and 11 percent of doctoral degrees in engineering. The latest figures available, for 2002, show that women earned 45 percent of all Ph.D.'s conferred in the United States, and among Americans, women received just over 50 percent of Ph.D.'s that year (Wilson, 2004).
By 2002, the proportion of women teaching-faculty members had risen to 28 percent, but even so, the more prestigious the institution, the fewer women it had (Wilson, 2004). Women made up 48 percent of the professionate at two year colleges in 2001 compared to 38 percent at baccalaureate-granting institutions and only 28 percent at research institutions. A survey by the American Association of University Professors in 2002-2003 found male assistant professors at doctoral institutions earned $5,687 more per year than their female counterparts. A recent study showed that women were being hired at the top 50 research universities at much lower rates than women were earning doctoral degrees.
Administrators point to some logical reasons for this hiring discrepancy (Summers, 2005; Wilson, 2004). While women are earning 45 percent of doctoral degrees across all fields, most of the new hires at research universities are in male-dominated fields in which a much lower proportion of women are earning degrees. The majority of women earning doctoral degrees are doing so in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts. A research university hires more scientists and engineers than a four-year institution. In biology and chemistry, research universities hire only scholars with several years of postdoctoral experience, which again narrows the pool. Taking this into account, the life-sciences departments in the California system are hiring equal proportions of men and women. Part of the problem at Harvard, according to women there, is the emphasis...