Female Representation in Academia: Are Women Underrepresented among Faculty at Public Colleges and Universities?

Jihye Kam and Soohyung Lee

International Economic Journal, 2024, vol. 38, issue 2, 185-211

Abstract: There is widespread global attention toward improving female representation in higher education institutions. In 2020, the Educational Official Act was amended to promote gender-conscious academic recruitment in favor of female faculty, who are historically underrepresented in academia, highlighting a notable disparity in female faculty representation between public and private institutions in South Korea. This amendment requires all public colleges and universities to maintain a proportion of female full-time faculty at a level equivalent to that of their private counterparts. Using college-major level information from 2000 to 2022, we examine whether female faculty representation in public institutions lags behind that in private institutions. The estimates show that public institutions generally underperform in recruiting female faculty, but this difference becomes negligible among high-selectivity institutions. It is worth noting that no significant difference is found in female faculty representation between public and private institutions in fields such as computer science, biology, nutrition/food science, medicine/pharmacy, economics/business, other social sciences, and arts/athletics, while the largest gap is observed in the field of education. The results suggest considering college-major specific characteristics when designing and implementing gender-conscious policies and practices to promote women in academia.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10168737.2024.2309353 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:intecj:v:38:y:2024:i:2:p:185-211

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RIEJ20

DOI: 10.1080/10168737.2024.2309353

Access Statistics for this article

International Economic Journal is currently edited by Jaymin Lee Editor

More articles in International Economic Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().