Neue Studie: Frauen in der Wissenschaft massiv bevorzugt

CNN berichtet:

The prevailing wisdom is that sexist hiring in academic science roadblocks women's careers before they even start. (...) But the facts tell a different story. National hiring audits, some dating back to the 1980s, reveal that female scientists have had a significantly higher chance of being interviewed and hired than men. Although women were less likely to apply for jobs, if they did apply, their chances of getting the job were usually better.

(...) When we searched the literature, we could not find one empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members as evaluators and focusing on fields in which women are most underrepresented. So we did the study ourselves (published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), testing 873 faculty members at 371 institutions in 50 states. To tease out sex bias, we created fictional candidate profiles identical in every respect except for sex, and asked faculty to rank these candidates for a tenure-track job.

(...) What we found shocked us. Women had an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in all fields studied. This preference for women was expressed equally by male and female faculty members, with the single exception of male economists, who were gender neutral in their preferences.

In some conditions, women's advantage reached 4-to-1. When women were compared with men who shared the same lifestyle, advantages accrued to women in all demographic groups — including single or married women without children, married women with preschoolers, and divorced mothers.

To ensure that socially desirable responding was not driving our findings, in one of the five experiments we sent faculty just one candidate to evaluate, rather than a slate of three shortlisted candidates. Even with no frame of reference provided by a comparison with other candidates, women were rated higher and seen as more hirable than identically qualified men.

Hier findet man den vollständigen Artikel. Ein weiterer Mythos über patriarchal unterdrückte Frauen ist gestorben. Ein weiteres Mal dürften deutsche Leitmedien nur sehr begrenzt, wenn überhaupt, darüber berichten.