Science Confirms The Obvious: Science Faculty Think Female Students Are Less Competent
Sarah T. Stewart John B. CarnettWhen the only variable is gender, male students are more likely to be hired for a job, and offered more money, too. There's a canyon-sized gender gap in the academic science world. Officials keep pushing to move women into the field, and the number of degrees granted to them has increased, but those degrees don't necessarily result in more women working in the sciences. A new study shows that science faculty see female students as less competent than their male counterparts, and it could cost them jobs, a fair salary, and mentoring opportunities. To find this out, researchers sent job application materials from a potential student eyeing a lab manager position to biology, chemistry, and physics professors at six (anonymous) universities across the country. They only changed one variable in the materials: the gender of the applicant. That was enough for the faculty to...