Faculty Diversity in Colleges and Universities

Gender

For most of its history, the professoriate was an almost exclusively male occupation. At the beginning of the 20th century, about one in five faculty members in the United States were women. This moved up to about one in four faculty by mid-century, but started to rise more quickly in the 1970s. Between 1969 and 1999, the percentage of women in faculty positions grew from 23% to 41% and reached 46% by 2007, the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education when this entry was written. The proportion of women faculty is likely to continue to rise as the proportion of women receiving doctorates has continued to grow over the same time period, with more U.S. doctorates going to women among U.S. citizens since 2004 and more U.S. doctorates being awarded to women overall for the first time in 2009.

Though the numbers of women and men are nearing parity among the faculty, women faculty members are disproportionately represented at particular types of institutions, in certain fields, and in lower-prestige types of positions (e.g., part-time). More than half (53%) of the faculty members at public 2-year institutions were women in 2007, and slightly more than two in five (43%) faculty members at public and private 4-year institutions were women. Among 4-year institutions, private liberal arts colleges have had the highest proportions of women, and faculty and doctoral and research universities (both public and private) have had the lowest, though the proportion of women faculty at these universities is rising steadily.

When disaggregated by disciplinary area, female faculty members are overrepresented in some fields and underrepresented in others. In 2003, full-time [Page 870]female faculty members were the majority in education (61%), humanities (55%), and health (53%) fields. In such areas as fine arts (38%), agriculture and home economics (35%), the social sciences (35%), and business (32%), women constituted about a third of the full-time faculty, and, in the natural sciences, women were about a quarter of the full-time faculty (26%). Engineering remained largely male-dominated with only 9% women among the full-time faculty. The percentage of women is about 10% greater among part-timers in most areas. However, in business, engineering, and the social sciences, the percentage of women is about the same among part-timers and full-timers. In agriculture and home economics, slightly over two thirds (68%) of part-time faculty members were women in 2003, whereas women were only about a third of full-timers. Though variable by disciplinary area and employment status, the percentage of women is growing in all fields.

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