Do Trustees and Administrators Matter? Diversifying the Faculty across Gender Lines. NBER Working Paper No. 15606

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities--trustees, presidents/chancellors, and provosts/academic vice presidents--plays in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNational Bureau of Economic Research
Main Authors Ehrenberg, Ronald G, Jakubson, George H, Martin, Mirinda L, Main, Joyce B, Eisenberg, Thomas
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published National Bureau of Economic Research 01.12.2009
Subjects
Administrators
Central Office Administrators
College Presidents
Colleges
Diversity (Faculty)
Gender Issues
Higher Education
Institutions
Trustees
Women Faculty
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Summary:Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities--trustees, presidents/chancellors, and provosts/academic vice presidents--plays in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected on for a large sample of American academic institutions. We find that, other factors held constant including our estimate of the "expected" share of new hires at an institution that should be female, that institutions with female presidents/chancellors and female provosts/academic vice presidents, and those with a greater share of female trustees, increase their shares of female faculty at a more rapid rate. The magnitudes of the effects of these leaders are larger at smaller institutions, where central administrators may play a larger role in faculty hiring decisions. A critical share of female trustees must be reached before the gender composition of the board matters.