Systematic investigation of sex disparity in multidisciplinary institutions – a case study of U.S. iSchools

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this poster, we present a systematic investigation of sex disparity in 27 information schools located in the United States. Combining hand‐curated complete faculty data and automatically collected publication profiles, we portrait the landscape of sex disparity in three dimensions: (i) rank; (ii) educational backgrounds; (iii) research topics. We found that 63% of the tenured faculty members are male, although there is slightly more female (54%) among junior faculty. Across nine disciplinary categories of PhD programs, male was primarily trained in computing, while female was more evenly distributed across computing, information and library sciences. Further, male and female have significant differences in research topics extracted from their publication profiles. It is, however, worth noting that distribution of research topics becomes more homogeneous among junior faculty members. Overall, all the evidence implies a significant sex disparity in information schools and calls for immediate attention on related policies for mitigation.