ABSTRACT
Gender equality in American society remains a controversial topic. In a year that saw the political candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin founder amid charges of differential standards for women, charges that themselves then became contentious, it is clear that gender remains a salient political issue. Recent scholarly studies have suggested that the problem of gender discrimination extends beyond politics and the workplace, reaching into academia itself. Studies using aggregate data find both wage and hiring differentials (NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2008) and a glass ceiling (Cotter et al. 2001). Scholars also find surprising gender bias in more focused assessments of worth, such as the differential evaluations of academic citations (Johnson 1997) and the peer-review process (Wenneras and Wold 1997). Extensive in-depth interview data with female faculty at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT 2002, 1999) and the University of California at Irvine (UCI; Monroe et al. 2008) offer more detailed systematic evidence that gender equality in academia remains only a partially realized goal, with women far too often struggling to crack a glass ceiling that remains strong and oppressive. The implication of these studies is that more active policies by university administrations are required to eliminate gender equality in academia.
