Institutional Commitments and Grassroots Advocacy: Advancing the Status of Women Faculty

摘要

In the past few decades, women have made great advances in the pursuit of higher education; more than half of all Ph.D. recipients in the life sciences in 2008 were women (1,2), and women constituted approximately 45% of postdoctoral fellows in 2007 (3). A much lower percentage of women, however, hold tenure faculty and administrative positions (1-4). In the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in 2006, women made up between 7.2 and 22.2% of tenured faculty (1). A National Research Council study in 2009 found similarly low numbers (4). In 2001, only 18% of tenured senior investigators at the federally funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) were women, and as of 2011, it has risen only 1 % (5). The slow growth of women faculty in the STEM fields, as well as concerns over recruitment, hiring and resource allocation (1), have prompted much discussion over the past few years.