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However, research that doesn’t fit with the leftist ‘dogma’ gets ignored or attacked, professor says
Growing research shows that female scholars do not have a disadvantage in tenure track hiring, yet claims of gender bias continue to prevail in academia, according to a recent study by two Cornell University psychologists.
Their research, “Organized Dogmatism Controls the Message about Gender Bias in the Academy” in the Journal of Controversial Ideas, found that not only are women not at a disadvantage over equally qualified men in tenured hiring but they actually have an advantage.
“Our hope is that these results, and particularly the interviews at the end with researchers who have suffered as a result of publishing findings that went against the claim of pervasive gender bias in the academy, stimulate discussion among the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge,” co-author Stephen Ceci told The College Fix in an email this week.
“As much as we may want to deny it, these interviews document the price that researchers are made to pay for publishing findings that challenge the narrative of omnipresent gender bias,” Ceci said.
The belief of gender bias against women prevails, in part, because research contradicting it has not received much attention, Ceci and co-author Wendy Williams wrote in their journal piece, published in May. Ceci is a professor of developmental psychology and Williams is a professor of human development at Cornell.
“Because these stronger studies are cited less often, there exists a false belief among many faculty that gender bias is omnipresent in the tenure-track academy. As an example of this false belief, 248 U.S. faculty were surveyed about their beliefs regarding gender bias. They overestimated the extent of such bias in every domain,” Ceci and Williams wrote.
“We show that the dominant narrative of pervasive bias in favor of hiring men is not supported by the evidence,” the authors wrote.
Quite the opposite, women often are preferred “over comparable men,” they wrote, adding that “multiple sources of evidence demonstrate that in tenure-track hiring in the United States and many European countries, women have an advantage over equally-accomplished men.”
To back their claims, the authors cite “a 5-year adversarial collaboration by a team of researchers who endeavored to reconcile their disparate views about bias against women faculty.”
The collaboration began with three researchers who decided to resolve their differences by studying the topic, according to the journal article.
In the end, they came to agree on six areas in which gender bias was being overestimated. For example, they did find that women are more likely to receive negative ratings from students and evidence of a salary gap. In the other four areas, including hiring, however, women were found to have no disadvantage, and in one case, they found an advantage over men.
What’s more, the salary gap was not as large as most claim, the collaboration found. While most sources cite a number around 18 percent, the study found only a gap of 3.6 percent. The new number was adjusted to account for things like age, rank, and discipline.
“…men are more likely to be older and hence to be full professors than women are, and controlling for age/rank alone reduces the gender pay gap from $13,000 to $5,400,” according to the collaboration’s research.
Another problem with the pay gap research is “aggregating men’s and women’s salaries across fields in which different proportions of men and women are employed, with men employed more often in fields that pay more (e.g., engineering, finance) and women employed more often in lower-paying fields,” the Cornell researchers wrote.
“However, when the salaries are disaggregated it can be seen that men and women are similarly remunerated in both high-paying and lower-paying fields,” they wrote.
As for the reason why women might make up a smaller percentage of tenured faculty, the authors pointed to family choices.
“The collision between women’s biological clocks and the demands and timing of tenure decisions results in a regrettable loss of talent that society should strenuously endeavor to remedy,” they wrote.
“Many innovations have been tried and some could be adopted broadly, such as making the tenure schedule more family-friendly. But it is essential to distinguish this source of women’s underrepresentation from the claim that women are underrepresented in the tenure-track academy because of evaluative bias,” Williams and Ceci wrote.
MORE: Study questions existence of ‘gender bias’ in scholarly journals
Despite growing evidence, the Cornell researchers wrote that some scholars have received pushback for publishing articles that contradict the dominant gender bias narrative.
In 2015, they themselves were labeled “crustaceans” and their research was described as unscientific after they found evidence that “women have an advantage of 2-to-1 over men in academic hiring.”
More recently, Ceci and Williams surveyed 40 “active gender researchers” to ask about the responses to their findings on the matter, and 18 said they also have received backlash.
Some recalled being reported to their DEI office, campus police, or institutional review boards because their research “refut[ed] the dominant narrative.”
“A number of them indicated that they are considering no longer doing gender research, and stated that they discourage their graduate students and early-career colleagues from working on questions that challenge the dominant gender narrative, out of fear that this could lead to negative consequences in publishing, receiving funding, and being hired,” Ceci and Williams wrote.
As to where the “dominant gender narrative” comes from, the authors blamed news media, in part.
“Claims about biased tenure-track hiring are pervasive and repeatedly echoed in the prestigious science media,” including Science, the New York Times, and Nature, they wrote.
The other problem is academic leaders, Ceci told The Fix. He said the narrative continues because the academy is generally “left-leaning,” especially the leaders who oversee hiring committees, scientific research, and academic journals.
“The dogma we examined is a deeply held belief of U.S. faculty, something we know from surveys that we and others have conducted. Such deeply-held beliefs are self-perpetuating, with each new cohort grooming the next,” he said.
In the paper, the authors argue “organized dogmatism” creates a “schism” between researchers engaging in the scientific method and those who have politically or personally motivated campaigns.
“Our controversial idea is that people’s understanding of sexism against women in academic science is being deliberately controlled and molded by those with a political and personal stake in the narrative,” they wrote. “This possibility should concern us all, because if women believe the dominant narrative in the media, they may self-select out of scientific careers due to fear of bias.”
In the conclusion, Ceci and Williams lamented the way science has been stifled by “organized dogmatism.” They emphasize the importance of skepticism, doubt, and dissent in proper scientific understanding.
When asked who he wants most to read their paper, Ceci told The Fix: “Wendy Williams and I hope that college administrators discuss our results and perhaps organize discussions about them.”
The College Fix also contacted several feminist scholars for their reactions to the journal article, including Cornell Professor Kate McCullough and leaders of the National Women’s Studies Association. None responded to several emailed requests for comment.
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