The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University just released a large scale study of dual-career academic couples. The Clayman Institute is one of the nation’s oldest research organizations devoted to the study of women and gender, and is also ABI’s partner in researching obstacles and solutions facing technical women in industry (look for the report to come out October 1!).
In their study, authors Londa Schiebinger, Andrea Davies Henderson, and Shannon K. Gilmartin find that 36% of faculty at leading U.S. research universities have academic partners. Women faculty are more likely than man to have academic partners, and men are more likely than women to have stay-at-home partners. This pattern creates more dual-career constraints on women faculty.
The report finds that in Engineering, 64% of female faculty are partnered with another faculty member, compared to only 25% of men faculty. The overall pattern for women in science is one of disciplinary endogamy: 83% of women scientists in academic couples are partnered with another scientist. In Computer Science, 100% of women respondents were partnered with a faculty in their own department.
Academic couples value the career of each partner equally in making career decisions.
One key obstacle to women’s adacemic advancement, the report finds, is that they are more likely to be the “second” hire in dual-career hiring. 37% of survey respondents say that a second hire is treated with less respect than a first hire.
The report calls for universities to develp a clear protocol around academic couple hiring. Dual hiring can increase gender equality – especially, recruiting women and underrepresented minority faculty as first hires rather than as second hires increases equality.