Women in Academia
Quick Takes
Catalyst Information Center
Autumn 2006

WOMEN IN ACADEMIA

• Women held 17.8% of president positions at 4-year colleges, men held 80.8% (with 1.4% unreported) in 2003- 2004, according to the most recent survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• As of research conducted in August 2006, women held the president position at three of the eight Ivy League schools (Ruth Simmons at Brown University, Shirley M. Tilghman at Princeton University, and Amy Gutmann at the University of Pennsylvania).
• Women had fewer and lower percentages of tenure positions than men at public and private institutions.

  

• As with corporate America, the percentage of women in academic positions dopts off the higher they climb.

  

• Women faculty members earn less than men faculty members across all ranks and all institutional types. On average, women earn 80 percent of what men earn.
• The earnings gap between men and women is largest at the rank of full professor and smallest at the rank of instructor.
• For all institutional types combined, women earn on average 90 percent of what men earn at the rank of lecturer, 96 percent of what men earn at the rank of instructor, 93 percent of what men earn at the ranks of assistant and associate professor, and 88 percent of what men earn at the rank of full professor. These ratios have changed very little over twenty-five years in the American Association of University Professors data.
• Women earned 58.9% of master’s degrees and 47.7% of doctorate degrees for 2003-2004. For the class of 2013-2014, women are projected to earn 60.3% of master’s degrees and 50.3% of doctorate degrees.