Women In Research and higher EDucation

Project Information

WIRED

Grant agreement ID: 898507

DOI

10.3030/898507

Project closed

EC signature date 12 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2021

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 191 149,44

EU contribution

€ 191 149,44

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITE DE LAUSANNE
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WIRED (Women In Research and higher EDucation)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

WIRED aimed at deepen the understanding of gender inequalities in academic career trajectories in two countries, Italy and Switzerland, with a specific focus on early-career phases and so on recruitment (and so on accessing tenure-track positions) and attrition (and so on exiting from academia). Gender inequalities in academia are a major problem not only in terms of equity but also in terms of efficiency, given that the drop-out of women from the scientific sector or their concentration in the low levels of the careers is also loss of talents and possible innovation.
Put succinctly, the project has the following five objectives:
1) Theoretically, to extend and enrich the existing theory by providing a multi-level account of micro, meso and macro determinants of gender differences in recruitment, promotion and attrition in academic careers.
2) Methodologically, to adopt longitudinal approach on data analysis
3) Empirically, to provide a comparative account of gender inequalities in academia.
4) Society-wide, to raise awareness on gender inequalities and gender biases in science and academia among the general public as well as experts, including students, science educators and high-school teachers.
5) Policy-wise, to offer policy-makers and institutional stake-holders with theoretical insights and practical recommendations to overcome gender inequalities in academia.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Done:
- Literature review on micro-meso-macro factors on gender inequalities in the general labour market and in the scientific/academic labour market more specifically
- Analysis of macro-data on gender, work and science on a comparative basis with a focus on Italy and Switzerland
- Data collection and creation of the dataset related to the Italian academic population from different sources
- Analysis of the Italian data set
- Data collection related the academic populations of the University of Lausanne and the University of Geneva.

Still ongoing:
- web-data mining and creation of the final two Swiss datasets.
- analysis of the Swiss datasets.

Overview of the results:
The results of the regression-based analyses conducted on the Italian datasets (including: random effects models, regression discontinuity models and accelerated time-failure models) show, for the first time with respect to the Italian context, that women experience an adjusted disadvantage in the transition from post-doc to assistant professor, including tenured assistant professor. The adjusted gap in promotion swing from 4 to 6%, according to whether we want to measure the transition to assistant professor in general, to non-tenured assistant professors (the so called “RTDa”) or to tenured assistant professors (the so-called “RTDb”). Moreover, women take longer to get promoted, which explain the fact that female post-docs, in average, are older than men. Looking at the determinants of this gap, the findings suggest that the disadvantage changes across scientific fields, being particularly hard in the medical sciences, followed by the social and political sciences, while the least gender unequal area is that of mathematics. All in all, the physical sciences and engineering (PE) looks the least unequal – probably because the high female self-selection – while the life sciences (LS) the most unequal but only because of the bad performance of medicine. Moreover, women must be more scientifically productive than men to have the same probability of promotion; the number of female full professors in the department positively affect women’s probability of transition but only to non-tenured positions. Finally, the disadvantage has worsened in time, thus confirming what my previous work suggested only a descriptive level (Gaiaschi, Musumeci, 2021), that is a deterioration of opportunities for women following the 2007-2017 cut in the turn-over and the precarization of the assistant professor position (L. 240/2010). These results suggest that when opportunities shrink for all, women pay the highest price.

List of future publications based on the WIRED project:
- One paper on the gender promotion gap and its determinants focusing on the transition from post-doc to assistant professor - currently working on it
- One paper on the gender difference in the length of promotion and so on the access to tenured positions (with Katy Morris) - currently working on it
- One paper on the gender effect of the L. 240/2010 law based on a regression discontinuity model (with Stephanie Steinmetz) - currently working on it
- One paper at least based on the UNIL database
- One paper at least based on the UNIGE database

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Very few studies focus on early-careers when it comes to measure the gender promotion gap in Academia, maybe because of the difficulties in collecting data on precarious researches. In Italy, two studies have measured the gender promotion gap in the transition from assistant to associate and full professors (Merini & Meschitti, 2018; Filandri & Pasqua, 2019) but not from post-docs to assistant professors, because of the lack of publicly available micro-data, including information on the gender, on post-docs. This is the first study measuring the adjusted probability, for women, to access a tenured position in Italy. I was able to reach this goal because of the partnership with the MUR (Ministry of Research) which provided me with detailed micro-data on the academic population, including the post-docs.
In Switzerland, no studies have been undertaken on the gender promotion gap at any point of the careers. Non-descriptive analyses have been undertaken on the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)’s academic population only but without specifically tackling gender differences in access to tenure-track positions (EPFL, 2020).
The lack of regression based studies on early-career steps in both countries has pushed me to concentrate the attention on this delicate phase of the academic track which has been under-explored so far.

After having found a gender promotion gap in the transition from post-doc to assistant professor with respect to the Italian field, I expect to find a gap also in relation to the two Swiss fields. Both findings will contribute to the public debate on gender inequalities at work in the wider society while providing grounds to policy makers (e.g. gender equality officers, delegates to equal opportunities policies) inside research organizations.

Web page of the WIRED project