Gender and the Tenure Track: Some Survey Evidence.

Abstract This study examines the association between gender and career advancement of accounting academicians on two dimensions: (1) application for tenure at the first employment position and (2) achievement of tenure at the first employment position. Theory suggests that gender discrimination exists in tenure outcomes. We report findings from survey data collected from accounting faculty. our results suggest that little evidence exists of gender differences in either of the two dimensions examined. Using a logit model to examine the application for tenure, we found no differences between male and female faculty in the likelihood of applying for tenure after controlling for other factors that are expected to affect the decision. The decision to submit a tenure dossier for consideration appears to be strongly associated with a faculty member's level of research achievement and weakly associated with employing institution resources and expectations. We modeled the tenure award decision using another dichotomous logit model with the subsample of accounting faculty that actually applied for tenure. Again, after controlling for other factors expected to affect the decision, we found no gender differences in the award of tenure. Our finding that gender does not appear to explain tenure outcomes differs from most other gender research findings related to career advancement. However, we also found that female faculty were significantly less likely to be hired at doctoral-granting institutions for their first position. This result has implications for our other research findings. Even though women may be awarded tenure in equal proportion to men, they are achieving tenure at different types of institutions; the result is that women are still underrepresented as tenured faculty in the doctoral-granting institutions.