Institutional Transformation and the Advancement of Women Faculty: The Case of Academic Science and Engineering

Abstract

The participation, status, and advancement of women in academic science and engineering have been pressing social concerns in the United States, particularly over the past 25 years. The concern is rooted in two basic sets of issues: the provision of human resources for the science and engineering workforce, and social equity in access to and rewards for professional participation in these fields. As human resources, women are important to the size, creativity, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce, broadly (Hanson, 1996; Pearson & Fechter, 1994). Women faculty, specifically, contribute to the culture and climate of the university and the development of students’ capacities and potential in science and engineering—with potential consequences for future generations of scientists and engineers. The percentages of women faculty are positively associated with percentages of women students who are undergraduate majors in mathematical sciences (Sharpe & Sonnert, 1999), majors in science and engineering (Canes & Rosen, 1995), and majors and recipients of bachelor’s degrees in life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering (Sonnert et al., 2007). This provides empirical support for the long-standing discussion about women faculty as “role models” for undergraduate women in scientific (and other) fields (Astin & Sax, 1996; Hackett et al., 1989; Stake & Noonan, 1983; Xie & Shauman, 1997). In graduate education in science and engineering, women faculty are consequential because of whom they train and the ways in which they do so. In a survey of 1,215 faculty in doctoral granting departments in five science and engineering fields, women faculty reported acting as primary research advisors for a larger number of women graduate students than did men, and also had larger number of women students on their research teams. Further, women faculty put significantly more emphasis upon giving help to advisees across areas, not only in designing, executing, and publishing research but also in gaining social capacities, including participating in laboratory meetings, making presentations, and interacting with faculty (Fox, 2003a). The status and advancement of women faculty in science and engineering is a pressing, national issue also because of related concerns of social equity (or inequity)