| Author(s) | Donna K. Ginther; Shulamit Kahn |
| Journal | Science |
| Abstract | The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans’ underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses. |
| Keywords | Expectations of brilliance; Female representation; Mathematical content; Faculty beliefs; Gender disparity This content was generated by artificial intelligence using the text of the original work and reviewed by the author. |
| Date Published | January 16, 2015 |
| Volume | 347 |
| Issue | 6219 |
| Pages | 262-265 |
| DOI | DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa9632 |
| URL | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaa9632 |
| Google Scholar Link | https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?cluster=6180156866076868640&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 |
| Open Access? | No |
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