Shifts in gender ratios across roles in higher education

A recent article in The Chronicle talked about just how white higher education faculty are — see article here.  Most of the student protests about equity and diversity on college campuses this last year demanded more minority faculty.

In this graph, I found a different and fascinating story in just the first two bars in each set:

Professors are overwhelmingly male.  Associate professors are only slightly more male.  Assistant professors are slightly more female. Instructors are much more female.

It’s not surprising, but it’s interesting to see it.  The women in academia have the lion’s share of the lower status jobs, and the men have the lion’s share of the higher status jobs. When you take into account the landed-gentry/tenant-farmer relationship between the tenure track faculty and the teaching track faculty (see previous blog post), the relationship between gender and academic power becomes much more stark.