Comparative analysis of gender disparity in academic positions based on U.S. region and STEM discipline

Abstract

Despite a move toward gender parity in the United States (U.S.) workforce, a large gender gap persists in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); this is particularly true for academic (i.e., instructor and tenure track) STEM positions. This gap increases as women advance through the traditional steps of academia, with the highest degree of gender disparity in tenured positions. As policies, politics, and culture, which all contribute to gender equity across the world, vary across regions in the United States, we expect that the gender gap in STEM might also vary across geographic regions. Here, we evaluated over 20,000 instructor and tenure track positions in university STEM departments across the U.S. to evaluate whether and how the geographic region of a university might determine its proportion of women in STEM academic positions. Similar to previous research, regardless of geographic region, more men were employed in both tenure track and instructor positions across STEM fields. However, variation existed regionally within the U.S., with the Mountain region employing the lowest proportion of women in tenure track positions and the East North Central and Pacific regions employing the greatest proportion. We expect this regional variation could be caused by differences in state and local policies, regional representation, and mentorship, resulting in inconsistent support for women, leading to differences in work environments, hiring, and job retention rates across the country. A better understanding of which geographic areas within the U.S. have more equal distributions of women in the STEM field will help us to identify the specific mechanisms that facilitate more equal and inclusive opportunities for women and other underrepresented groups across all levels of STEM academia.