IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upj/weupjo/95-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender Differences in Faculty Turnover

Author

Listed:
  • Byron W. Brown

    (Michigan State University)

  • Stephen A. Woodbury

    (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research)

Abstract

Over the last 15 to 20 years, colleges and universities have paid increasing attention to attracting and retaining faculty women. The rate of progress of women in academe has nevertheless been painfully slow. For example, statistics on economists collected and published by the American Economic Association (Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession 1994) suggest that in recent years, about 20 percent of Economics assistant professors in graduate Ph.D.-granting departments were women, about 10 percent of associate professors were women, and under 5 percent of full professors were women. The percentage of new assistant professors who are women has lagged behind the percentage of new Ph.D.s who are women by 10 to 15 percentage points. And the percentage of promotions to associate (and full) professor that are accounted for by women has lagged behind the percentage of assistant (and associate) professors who were women and "promotable." One of the explanations (or perhaps excuses) offered for the slow progress of women in academe is that faculty women have higher rates of voluntary turnover than do faculty men. This explanation accords with the general finding that women have higher rates of labor market turnover than do men (Blau and Kahn 1981; Light and Ureta 1992), and may provide a psychic calm both for those frustrated by the slow progress of women in academe and for those who might frustrate that progress. Studies to date of faculty turnover have used grouped (or university-level) data, which usually preclude examination of gender differences in faculty turnover (Ehrenberg, Kasper, and Rees 1991; Rees and Smith 1991). In this paper we offer evidence on faculty turnover using micro data from a single large public university Michigan State University (MSU) during the decade of the 1980s. Our findings suggest strongly that the higher separation rates that are observed for faculty women are accounted for by differences between men and women in appointment status that is, faculty women have higher turnover rates than faculty men because a higher percentage of women than of men hold temporary appointments.

Suggested Citation

  • Byron W. Brown & Stephen A. Woodbury, 1995. "Gender Differences in Faculty Turnover," Upjohn Working Papers 95-34, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:95-34
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=up_workingpapers
    Download Restriction: This material is copyrighted. Permission is required to reproduce any or all parts.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ehrenberg, Ronald & Kasper, Hirschel & Rees, Daniel, 1991. "Faculty turnover at American colleges and universities: Analyses of AAUP data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 99-110, June.
    2. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 1981. "Race and Sex Differences in Quits by Young Workers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 34(4), pages 563-577, July.
    3. Light, Audrey & Ureta, Manuelita, 1992. "Panel Estimates of Male and Female Job Turnover Behavior: Can Female Nonquitters Be Identified?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(2), pages 156-181, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicholas G. Rupp & Lester A. Zeager, 2018. "Paid Parental Leave and Female Faculty Retention," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 475-488, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nachum Sicherman, 1996. "Gender Differences in Departures from a Large Firm," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 49(3), pages 484-505, April.
    2. Zhang, Xuelin, 2007. "Gender Differences in Quits and Absenteeism in Canada," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2007296e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    3. Booth, Alison & Zoega, Gylfi, 2000. "Why Do Firms Invest in General Training? 'Good' Firms and 'Bad' Firms as a Source of Monopsony Power," CEPR Discussion Papers 2536, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Boris Hirsch & Claus Schnabel, 2012. "Women Move Differently: Job Separations and Gender," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 417-442, December.
    5. H. J. Holzer & R. J. LaLonde, "undated". "Job Change and Job Stability among Less-Skilled Young Workers," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1191-99, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    6. repec:pri:indrel:dsp018049g506t is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Anders Frederiksen, 2004. "Explaining Individual Job Separations in a Segregated Labor Market," Working Papers 869, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    8. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    9. Frederiksen, Anders & Honore, Bo E. & Hu, Luojia, 2007. "Discrete time duration models with group-level heterogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1014-1043, December.
    10. Frederiksen, Anders, 2008. "Gender differences in job separation rates and employment stability: New evidence from employer-employee data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 915-937, October.
    11. Ferreira, Priscila, 2009. "The determinants of promotions and firm separations," ISER Working Paper Series 2009-11, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    12. Zhang, Xuelin, 2007. "Differences entre les sexes relativement aux departs volontaires et a l'absenteisme au Canada," Direction des études analytiques : documents de recherche 2007296f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    13. Merja Kauhanen & Sami Napari, 2010. "Wage Growth and Mobility Between and Within Firms by Gender and Education," Working Papers 260, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    14. Patricia Simpson & Linda Stroh, 2002. "Revisiting Gender Variation in Training," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 21-53.
    15. Schwieren,Christiane, 2003. "The gender wage gap – due to differences in efficiency wage effects or discrimination?," Research Memorandum 046, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    16. Jill Marie Gunderson & Julie L. Hotchkiss, 2004. "Job separation behavior of welfare recipients: results from a unique case study," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2004-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    17. repec:mth:ijafr8:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:469-484 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Mark C. Berger & Dan A. Black, 1998. "The Duration Of Medicaid Spells: An Analysis Using Flow And Stock Samples," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 667-675, November.
    19. Jorge A. Paz, 2012. "Desempleo juvenil en la Argentina durante la recuperación económica," Working Papers 9, Instituto de Estudios Laborales y del Desarrollo Económico (IELDE) - Universidad Nacional de Salta - Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Jurídicas y Sociales.
    20. Frank Walsh & Eric Strobl, 1999. "Changes in the gender wage gap and the returns to firm specific human capital," Working Papers 199907, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    21. Bergin, Adele, 2009. "Job Mobility in Ireland," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 40(1), pages 15-47.
    22. Joseph Raffiee, 2017. "Employee Mobility and Interfirm Relationship Transfer: Evidence from the Mobility and Client Attachments of United States Federal Lobbyists, 1998–2014," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(10), pages 2019-2040, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    faculty; college; gender; turnover; Brown; Woodbury;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:95-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/upjohus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.