Look who’s talking: gender differences in academic job talks

Abstract

The “job talk” is a standard element of faculty recruiting. How audiences treat candidates for faculty positions during job talks could have disparate impact on protected groups, including women. We annotated 156 job talks from five engineering and science departments for 13 categories of questions and comments. All departments were ranked in the top 10 by US News & World Report. We find that differences in the number, nature, and total duration of audience questions and comments are neither material nor statistically significant. For instance, the median difference (by gender) in the duration of questioning ranges from zero to less than two minutes in the five departments. Moreover, in some departments, candidates who were interrupted more often were more likely to be offered a position, challenging the premise that interruptions are necessarily prejudicial. These results are specific to the departments and years covered by the data, but they are broadly consistent with previous research, which found differences comparable in magnitude. However, those studies concluded that the (small) differences were statistically significant. We present evidence that the nominal statistical significance is an artifact of using inappropriate hypothesis tests. We show that it is possible to calibrate those tests to obtain a proper P-value using randomization.