"...male and female faculty members in four fields under study preferred to hire female applicants..."

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a rather non-PC post entitled “Study Suggests Sexist Hiring Doesn’t Explain Dearth of Women in Science” (thanks to the reader who emailed this):

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Sexist hiring practices are commonly blamed for the underrepresentation of women in many fields of academic science, but new research suggests that such an assumption is wrong. In the research, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, male and female faculty members in four fields under study preferred to hire female applicants, by a two-to-one ratio, over male applicants with identical qualifications and life situations (single, married, divorced).

The study, by two researchers in Cornell University’s human-development department, Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci, stemmed from five hiring experiments in which a total of 873 faculty members of both genders at 371 colleges evaluated hypothetical job candidates for assistant-professor posts in biology, economics, engineering, and psychology. Among the faculty evaluators, only male economists did not prefer applicants of one gender.

The Cornell researchers conclude that, contrary to popular views, now is “a propitious time” for women to embark on careers in academic science.

So if the experiment showed men were chosen by a two-to-one ratio over women, that would be sexist. If the opposite occurs, it is a “propitious time” for women in science. Give me a break, sexism is still sexism.

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