Analysis by Gender of the Doctoral and Postdoctoral Institutions of Faculty Members at the Top-Fifty Ranked Chemistry Departments

An examination of hiring practices at the top-50 National Research Council (NRC)-ranked chemistry departments is reported. Data from the study show that hiring of tenure-track professors has focused on candidates who graduated from doctoral programs of only a few schools. Of the domestically trained faculty members receiving their doctoral degree after 1979, 60% completed doctoral training at just 10 universities. Additionally, male doctoral graduates from these universities were hired more frequently than were their female counterparts. Further, men that had their initial postdoctoral fellowship at one of the top-five postdoctoral schools were hired preferentially by the top-50 NRC-ranked departments. Women who did their initial postdoctoral fellowship at a university ranked below the top-ten were hired more often than were those who held a fellowship at a top-five university. The low rate of hiring female doctoral graduates was found to correspond to the distribution of women in the postdoctoral pool and not to that in the doctoral pool. Ways to increase the number of women on the faculties of Ph.D.-granting schools are proposed.