IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0267561.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Leak or link? the overrepresentation of women in non-tenure-track academic positions in STEM

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie Rennane
  • Hannah Acheson-Field
  • Kathryn A Edwards
  • Grace Gahlon
  • Melanie A Zaber

Abstract

This paper examines gender variation in departures from the tenure-track science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) academic career pathway to non-tenure-track academic careers. We integrate multiple data sources including the Survey of Earned Doctorates and the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine longitudinal career outcomes of STEM doctorate women. We consider three types of careers after receipt of a PhD: academic, academic non-tenure-track, and non-academic positions. We find that STEM women are more likely to hold academic non-tenure-track positions, which are associated with lower job satisfaction and lower salaries among men and women. Explanations including differences in field of study, preparation in graduate school, and family structure only explain 35 percent of the gender gap in non-tenure-track academic positions.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie Rennane & Hannah Acheson-Field & Kathryn A Edwards & Grace Gahlon & Melanie A Zaber, 2022. "Leak or link? the overrepresentation of women in non-tenure-track academic positions in STEM," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(6), pages 1-15, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0267561
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267561
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267561
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267561&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0267561?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jennifer Hunt, 2016. "Why do Women Leave Science and Engineering?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 69(1), pages 199-226, January.
    2. Heather Antecol & Kelly Bedard & Jenna Stearns, 2018. "Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2420-2441, September.
    3. Luke Holman & Devi Stuart-Fox & Cindy E Hauser, 2018. "The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented?," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-20, April.
    4. Jordi Duch & Xiao Han T Zeng & Marta Sales-Pardo & Filippo Radicchi & Shayna Otis & Teresa K Woodruff & Luís A Nunes Amaral, 2012. "The Possible Role of Resource Requirements and Academic Career-Choice Risk on Gender Differences in Publication Rate and Impact," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(12), pages 1-11, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Zhang, Ming-Ze & Wang, Tang-Rong & Lyu, Peng-Hui & Chen, Qi-Mei & Li, Ze-Xia & Ngai, Eric W.T., 2024. "Impact of gender composition of academic teams on disruptive output," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    2. Alexander Tekles & Katrin Auspurg & Lutz Bornmann, 2022. "Same-gender citations do not indicate a substantial gender homophily bias," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-12, September.
    3. Antonio De Nicola & Gregorio D’Agostino, 2021. "Assessment of gender divide in scientific communities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 3807-3840, May.
    4. Tove Faber Frandsen & Rasmus Højbjerg Jacobsen & Jakob Ousager, 2020. "Gender gaps in scientific performance: a longitudinal matching study of health sciences researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1511-1527, August.
    5. Manuel Goyanes & Tamás Tóth & Gergő Háló, 2024. "Gender differences in google scholar representation and impact: an empirical analysis of political communication, journalism, health communication, and media psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(3), pages 1719-1737, March.
    6. Josh Yamamoto & Eitan Frachtenberg, 2022. "Gender Differences in Collaboration Patterns in Computer Science," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, February.
    7. Tatyana Deryugina & Olga Shurchkov & Jenna Stearns, 2021. "COVID-19 Disruptions Disproportionately Affect Female Academics," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 164-168, May.
    8. Koffi, Marlene, 2021. "Innovative ideas and gender inequality," CLEF Working Paper Series 35, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    9. Parminder Bakshi-Hamm & Andreas Hamm, 2022. "Knowledge Production: Analysing Gender- and Country-Dependent Factors in Research Topics through Term Communities," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-37, November.
    10. Benjamin Bennett & Isil Erel & Léa H. Stern & Zexi Wang, 2020. "Paid Leave Pays Off: The Effects of Paid Family Leave on Firm Performance," NBER Working Papers 27788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Hunt, Jennifer & Garant, Jean-Philippe & Herman, Hannah & Munroe, David J., 2012. "Why Don't Women Patent?," IZA Discussion Papers 6886, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Ioana-Alexandra CHIRIANU & Irina IONESCU, 2014. "Status Of Women In The It Between 2000-2014," SEA - Practical Application of Science, Romanian Foundation for Business Intelligence, Editorial Department, issue 5, pages 209-216, November.
    13. Chaojiang Wu & Erjia Yan & Yongjun Zhu & Kai Li, 2021. "Gender imbalance in the productivity of funded projects: A study of the outputs of National Institutes of Health R01 grants," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(11), pages 1386-1399, November.
    14. Ursprung, Heinrich, 2019. "Endogenous maternity allowances as exemplified by academic promotion standards," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-11.
    15. Mike Thelwall, 2020. "Mid-career field switches reduce gender disparities in academic publishing," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1365-1383, June.
    16. Gabriela Fontanarrosa & Lucía Zarbá & Valeria Aschero & Daniel Andrés Dos Santos & María Gabriela Nuñez Montellano & Maia C Plaza Behr & Natalia Schroeder & Silvia Beatriz Lomáscolo & María Elisa Fanj, 2024. "Over twenty years of publications in Ecology: Over-contribution of women reveals a new dimension of gender bias," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(9), pages 1-18, September.
    17. Oriana Bandiera & Ahmed Elsayed & Anton Heil & Andrea Smurra, 2022. "Economic Development and the Organisation Of Labour: Evidence from the Jobs of the World Project," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2226-2270.
    18. Nikolaos Theodoropoulos & John Forth & Alex Bryson, 2019. "Are Women Doing It For Themselves? Gender Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap," DoQSS Working Papers 19-07, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    19. Dilmaghani, Maryam, 2021. "The gender gap in competitive chess across countries: Commanding queens in command economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 425-441.
    20. Cl'ement de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultf{oe}uille, 2020. "Difference-in-Differences Estimators of Intertemporal Treatment Effects," Papers 2007.04267, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2024.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0267561. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.