A Study of the Leaky Pipeline Phenomenon for Women in Physics Past the Postdoctoral Level, and a Critique of the AIP 2005 report on Women in Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

The author has recently examined the departmental web pages of the `top 50' physics research universities, as ranked by the National Research Council (NRC). Most of the departmental web pages contained biographical data (ie; year and institute of PhD, etc) of their faculty members. Of the approximately 1750 faculty members at the `top 50' universities that were examined, approximately 100 were female, and around 1425 had available biographical data. Based on this data, the predicted fractions of female faculty members at the `top 50' universities are 0.129, 0.104, and 0.052 at the assistant, associate, and full faculty levels, respectively. The observed fractions are 0.107, 0.109, 0.043, respectively. The overall observed number of women faculty is about 15% less than expected, and the depletion is statistically significant. Unfortunately, the study finds that the "leaky pipeline" is found to be alive and well for women in academic physics above the postdoctoral level, at all stages of the faculty career ladder. This result is stark contrast with the conclusion of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) 2005 report on Women in Physics and Astronomy; the AIP report concludes that women are actually more likely to be hired at the faculty level than their male peers. In this paper, we will discuss the two key flaws in the AIP analysis that led to their faulty conclusion, then describe in detail the analysis performed by the author that corrects these flaws to get an accurate estimate of the `leakiness' of the academic pipeline for women physicists past the postdoctoral level.