All Entries in the "Research/Study" Category
How Artificial Intelligence Can Narrow the Gender Gap in STEM Fields
A new study by researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, finds that the use of artificial intelligence in recruitment changes the gender distribution of potential hires, in some cases more than doubling the fraction of top applicants that are women.
Study Says Claims of Gender Bias in Academic Science Are Overblown
The authors from Cornell University and Boston University note that “in the most prestigious journals and media outlets, which influence many people’s opinions about sexism, bias is frequently portrayed as an omnipresent factor limiting women’s progress in the tenure-track academy.” They set out to see if this was indeed the case.
Would Paid Paternity Leave Achieve More Progressive Views on Gender Equality?
In Estonia a new parental leave policy extended fathers’ leave threefold for children born on or after July 1, 2020. It had a measurable effect. New parents were significantly more likely to express support for gender equality in the social and economic spheres than those who had children before the policy took effect.
Are Women Leaders Less Likely Than Men to Be Blamed for Bad Performance
The authors found that evaluators blame the negative results obtained by male leaders on their selfish decisions. Bad performances by women leaders are more likely to be attributed to bad luck. But the authors say this may not be a good thing.
A Study of 1.3 Million Grant Applications Worldwide Finds a Substantial Gender Gap In Research Funding
Women researchers received substantially less funding in grant awards than men — an average of about $342,000 compared to men’s $659,000, according to a large meta-analysis of studies led by Karen Schmaling, a psychology professor at Washington State University, Vancouver.
Boosting Women in STEM Fields in College Will Not Fully Close the Gender Gap in the STEM Workforce
In a study of 2.4 million college graduates between 2015 and 2019, Cornell University researchers found that 36 percent of the gender segregation seen among college-educated workers is tied to their undergraduate degrees. The rest is attributable to labor market factors, potentially ranging from discrimination to family leave policies, that may sort men and women into different types of jobs even when they have the same degree.
A Significant Narrowing of the Gender Gap in Home Ownership Rates
Today, the homeownership rate of households headed by women has reached 63 percent — just 5 percentage points below the men’s rate, down from 20 percentage points in 1990. Despite making up a higher share of college graduates, single female household heads still lag behind their male counterparts in homeownership.
Gender Differences in Employment Status of College Students and Recent Graduates
For people 20 to 29 years of age, women made up 58 percent of all students who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2022. Some 77.6 percent of these recent women college graduates were employed compared to 79.1 percent of men. But only 5.2 percent of 2022 women college graduates in this age group were unemployed, about half the rate for 2022 male college graduates.
The Gender Gap in STEM May Have Its Roots in Early Childhood
According to a new study from Michigan State University, a contributing factor in the vast gender gap in STEM fields may arise in early childhood. The authors argue that women may be more likely to develop an early interest in non-STEM fields.
Study Finds That Stereotypical Gender Roles Persist in Major Hollywood Films
A new study by researchers at Åbo Akademi University in Finland finds there are still specific patterns in the personality traits of male and female characters in films consistent with societal stereotypes. These patterns show that men on film are more aggressive, powerful, dominant, and jealous, and women are more loving, caring, happy, and docile.
Women Are Only One Third of Participants in Exercise Science Studies Published in Major Journals
The authors found that when a man was the lead author of a study in research relating to exercise science, the level of women participants in the study was lower. When there was a woman lead author, survey participants tended to be equally divided between men and women.
New Research Shows Americans Have an Implicit Bias That Favors Women
The authors investigated implicit evaluations of targets varying in race, gender, social class, and age by showing words and images to more than 5,000 test subjects who were asked to rate what they see as good or bad or positive and negative. Researchers measure not only the responses but the time it takes respondents to come to a decision. In these experiments, the largest and most consistent evaluative bias was pro-women/anti-men bias.
Pew Research Center Report Examines Gender Diversity in the Nation’s Newsrooms
The report found larger gender disparities in the beats covered by reporting journalists. For example, nearly two thirds of all reporting journalists whose primary beat was either health or education were women. But women were only 15 percent of all reporting journalists in sports and 38 percent of journalists who primarily covered science and technology.
The Gender Diversity of the Faculty at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
In 2021 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, women were more than 70 percent of the faculty in education but only 32.7 percent of the full professors. Women made up 63 percent of all faculty in public health but only 39.3 percent of the full professors.
Brookings Institution Study Examines the High School Gender Graduation Rate Gap
Nationwide, the gender gap in high school graduation rates is about 6 percentage points. But in every single state where data are available, boys’ high school graduation rates lag those of girls. In New Mexico, boys trailed girls by almost 9 percentage points in high school graduation, whereas in Vermont, the state with the smallest gender gap, boys were behind girls by just over 2 percentage points.
How Organizations Can Boost Retainment of Pregnant Women and New Mothers
A new study led by Samantha Paustian-Underdahl, the Mary Tilley Bessemer Associate Professor of Business Administration at Florida State University, finds that if companies and other organizations want to ensure pregnant employees and new mothers stay on their payrolls, they’d do well to offer competitive maternity benefits.
American Council on Education Report Documents Progress of Women Into College Presidencies
The report found that in 2022, 66.9 percent of college and university presidents were men. This is down slightly from 2016 when 69.8 percent of all presidents were men. At this rate of progress over the past six years, gender equality in college or university presidents would not occur until 2057.
Pew Research Center Study Examines Breadwinner Status in Married-Couple Families
While men remain the main breadwinner in a majority of opposite-sex marriages, the share of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husbands has roughly tripled over the past 50 years. In 1972, the husband was the sole earner in 49 percent of married-couple families. Today, the figure is 23 percent.
Study Finds Women Faculty Are More Likely Than Men to Support Limits on Free Speech on Campus
A new analysis of data from a survey on free speech conducted by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that 51 percent of women faculty reported that they could envision shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus as being acceptable, compared to just 39 percent of male faculty.
Can the Gender Pay Gap Be Partly Explained by a Reluctance of Women to Ask for Higher Pay?
Some observers have speculated that one explanation for the gender pay gap is that women are less likely than men to negotiate with their employers for higher pay. But a new report from the Pew Research Center finds that women are almost as likely as men to ask for a higher salary than was originally offered by a new employer.
Women Faculty Come Up Short in Tenure Appointments
The American Association of University Professors has released new data on the status of college and university faculty in the United States.
Gender Differences in Acceptance Rates at Ivy League Institutions
The difference was the widest at Brown University. In this application cycle, 6.73 percent of male applicants were accepted to Brown, while only 4.06 percent of women were. Women were 62.6 percent of all applicants but only 50. 2 percent of accepted students and 51.8 percent of the entering class.
Study Finds That Women in STEM Disciplines in College Experience Greater Incidence of Sexual Violence
The study by scholars at Georgia State University and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston found that women majoring in STEM disciplines that are gender balanced reported more sexual violence victimization in the form of sexual coercion, attempted sexual coercion, attempted rape, and rape compared to their peers in both gender-balanced and male-dominated non-STEM majors and in male-dominated STEM majors.
Study Finds a Major Gender Gap in Homeownership Rates Among Single Young Adults
A new report from Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, finds that the single women’s homeownership rate declined in 2022 for the first time since 2016. In 2021, the gap was only 1.8 percentage points. But in 2022, the homeownership rate for single women was 24.5 percent compared to a 33.1 percent rate for single men.
Survey Finds Women in Academic Earth and Space Science Face Widespread Discrimination
The researchers found that more than half of women scientists experienced identity-based discriminatory remarks. More than 40 percent of women respondents said they experienced bullying and intimidation and 43 percent said they thought their work was devalued. More than 15 percent of women said they had experienced fear for their physical safety.
A Shocking Rise in Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States
In 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes in the United States compared with 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019. The maternal mortality rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is the highest among major industrialized nations.
Are Gender Quotas on Corporate Boards of Directors a Good Idea?
A new study by researchers at the University of Nevada found that women are regarded as tokens when the firm meets but does not exceed the minimum number of women required by the gender quota. When the number of women on a firm’s board exceeds the quota, perceptions of the women as tokens decreases
A Persisting Gender Pay Gap in Teacher Compensation in the Public Schools
A new study by the Brookings Institution finds that although women make up roughly three–quarters of the teaching workforce, they make an estimated $5,000 less than men annually, Much of the gap is explained by men doing extra work – such as coaching – and being more likely to get paid for this extra work than women.
How Colleges and Universities Can Impact the Gender Gap in the Tech Workforce
A new study by Accenture, the consulting and technology services company based in Dublin, Ireland, has issued a new report that finds that the proportion of women to men in tech roles has declined over the past 35 years. And half of all young women who go into tech drop out by the age of 35.
The Gender Gap in Faculty at Canadian Universities
In 2019, almost 6 in 10 full-time university faculty members in Canada were men. One in five women faculty members surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed that hiring was fair and equitable at their institution, compared with 12 percent of men.
Scholars Provide a Blueprint for Ending the Gender Pay Gap in Organizations
A new study by scholars at the University of Florida, the University of Maryland, and Villanova University in Pennsylvania, found that businesses can close gender pay gaps, reward high performance and improve their compensation strategy by identifying the true source of pay inequity and fairly allocating raises to the most underpaid women.
Texas A&M University Study Finds Exercise Can Help Fight Breast Cancer
A new study led by researchers at Texas A&M University finds that a currently unspecified factor released during exercise suppresses signaling within breast cancer cells, which reduces tumor growth and can even kill the cancerous cells.
Pew Research Center Report Examines the Persisting Gender Pay Gap
In 2022, American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. That was about the same as in 2002, when they earned 80 cents to the dollar. The slow pace at which the gender pay gap has narrowed this century contrasts sharply with the progress in the preceding two decades: In 1982, women earned just 65 cents to each dollar earned by men.
Women Underrepresented Among “Super Principal Investigators” on NIH Grant Projects
Super principal investigators are researchers who received three or more concurrent grants from the National Institutes of Health. Women were significantly underrepresented among SPIs, even after adjusting for career stage and degree. Women were 26.6 percent of all super principal investigators in 2020. They were 34 percent less likely than their male colleagues to be an SPI.
College Athletic Powerhouses Receive a Grade of F in Gender Equity in Leadership Posts
In the Fall of 2022, there were 30 women who served as president or chancellor of the 130 educational institutions that make up the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Women were only 7.7 percent of all directors of athletics at these colleges and universities
