Appointment Procedures as Tournaments: Revisiting Male and Female Scientists’ Chances of Being Appointed as Professor

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 04. Higher Education

Abstract

For a long time, discrimination against female scientists was regarded as a major reason for their significant underrepresentation among university professors. However, evidence from recent studies of the academic system contradicts this assumption—that is, women are in fact in a more favorable position than men in terms of appointment procedures. Our primary thesis is that these different viewpoints are too superficial and do not take into account specific hiring procedures and their respective logics. Appointment procedures might be regarded as tournaments that consist of several selection rounds, from application to eventual appointment. Selections are based not only on an applicant’s qualifications but also on who is competing with whom, and for what position. For our study, a labor queue model has been applied to process-produced data collected on more than 200 such appointments processed at a medium-sized German university (2001-2013). In addition to procedural data regarding the five stages of the selection process, additional information on the applicants’ academic career were included into our analysis. The results suggest that, given their academic qualifications, fewer female scientists apply for tenured positions than might be expected. As the appointment procedures progress through the first couple of stages, the proportion of women among the applicants increases. Analyses based on performance indicators suggest that, on the whole, women have a fair chance of being placed first on a shortlist—a finding contrary to previous assumptions about either discriminatory or preferential treatment of women who are on a career path to tenured professorship.

Authors

• Katrin Auspurg, University of Munich

• Thomas Hinz, University of Konstanz

• Andreas Schneck, LMU Munich