Female Faculty Recruitment

What is the Action?

Recruit female staff at a faculty that offers computing courses.

Quick Facts to Support this Action

There is evidence that a better gender balanced faculty attracts female students and can lead to an enhanced gender balance among students.

• Female faculty members can act as role models and as mentors, since some female students feel more comfortable talking to a female faculty member.
• Turnover of female academic staff tends to be lower, as low as 0%, than male staff at the same computing department, when the environment was improved to be more female friendly.
• Female students look for an “existence proof” of jobs in relevant areas, filled by women.
• Undertaking just one round of targeted female faculty recruitment signals the commitment of the institution to gender equity to potential female applicants in the future.
• Working towards a faculty gender balance is working towards the United Nation’s sustainable developmentgoal number five: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Background

In Ireland, women represent only 19% of all academic staff in computing departments (data was collected in 2019 from the INGENIC network group). The most gender-diverse computing faculty in the United States in 2020 was Duke University, with 27.4% of women among academic and research staff.

When researchers explored the circumstances and statistics around computer science faculty turnover in the United States, the results revealed that female staff choose to leave their academic jobs less frequently and therefore a recommendation has been made to recruit more women for better sustainability.

Despite the obvious benefits of a better gender-balanced computing faculty, this action requires a structural change at the faculty or university level. Examples of success stories, involving results of both, longer term, consistent efforts, as well as shorter-term approaches are discussed below.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has one of the most gender balanced STEM student populations in the world, with, for example, nearly 50% of students at the Mechanical Engineering department being female. One of the key contributing factors to achieve this was changing the ways in which faculty is recruited.

First, a target was set by the Dean of Engineering to achieve a certain percentage of female faculty recruited. Additionally, there was a recruitment policy change, which required the interview panel to justify their decision when a female candidate was turned down. Additionally, these candidates were required to be kept in the pipeline of university recruitment for other roles.

Faculty recommended potentially suitable candidates for hiring, which included recent graduates or postdoctoral researchers, and some of them were directly contacted by head of department and asked to apply. All of the hired female staff from this case study reported that they would have not applied for the respective jobs they were later hired for. Reasons include lack of confidence or perception of the job description being unsuitable to a candidate.

University of Southern California

Enhanced gender balance among faculty at the University of Southern California is associated with the Women in Science and Engineering Program (WiSE), which was established in 2000 by an anonymous donation. With its help, the number of women in tenured and tenure-track faculty positions increased from 15 in 2000 to 58 in 2018 across sciences, engineering and mathematics departments.

The programme achieved this by:

➤ Recognising Practices

➤ Career Guidance

➤ Supportive Recruitment Strategies

➤ Junior Professorship

➤ Retention Strategies

Recruited staff has been actively involved in mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as receiving mentoring awards at university level for outstanding work.

University of Melbourne

An affirmative recruitment strategy was used in this initiative, which received strong support from the senior management at relevant faculty and respective schools. The strategy was implemented by performing a targeted recruitment of female applicants. This approach aimed to increase the number of women in faculty positions by allowing only women to apply in areas where women were underrepresented. It received some criticism but was deemed legal under the state law promoting equality. The champions who worked on this initiative recommend verifying local laws before applying this strategy.

With the involvement of the Associate Dean at the Faculty of Engineering and IT, three academic roles were advertised in 2016 at School of Mathematics and Statistics, where only women were eligible to apply. Since then, multiple roles have been advertised in a similar way in other departments, including engineering and information technology.

The female staff ratio at the School of Mathematics and Statistics increased from 17% in 2016 to 30% in 2023. The proportion of female staff at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology increased by 4% to 24% within one year of the strategic efforts, compared to a 3% increase in the 16 years preceding the initiative.

The approach had four key features. Firstly, support from the senior leadership at each department was secured before proceeding. Secondly, the strategy was to attract a broad pool of female applicants by recruiting at a broad disciplinary level, not limiting the positions to sub-disciplines. Thirdly, all of the jobs advertised offered unlimited contracts for research and teaching roles. Finally, this approach was a once-off initiative, with recruitment open to all genders continuing after that.

Promoting and maintaining an inclusive culture in the participating departments was crucial to ensure the retention of recent recruits. Different departments implemented different inclusion initiatives, including mentoring programmes for female staff, establishing career support and parental leave grants, as well as providing training for those on the recruitment and promotion panels to deal with implicit bias.

Lessons learned at the University of Melbourne through their implementation of an affirmative recruitment strategy include the importance of:

➤ Consulting

➤ Evidence

➤ Legality

➤ Inclusivity

Technological University Dublin

TU Dublin implemented the SUCCESS initiative in 2012 to increase its female faculty recruitment. SUCCESS consists of four strands: source, career, environment, and support.

The source strand focused on achieving better gender balance through the targeted recruitment of candidates. For instance, one of the women targeted for the role was successful in getting a departmental head position.

The career strand included initiatives aimed at boosting female staff’s skills, confidence, and career ambition. These included performance reviews, encouraging staff to participate in leadership programs, financial support for early-career researchers e.g., funding for conferences and part-time PhD course fees, and mentorship opportunities by encouraging more senior female staff to become mentors for more junior female staff.

The environment strand promoted gender equality. This was addressed, for instance by the presence of senior female academics and managers in the School, which offered role models to junior staff and students. Furthermore, the participation in networks such as Women Leaders in Higher Education (WLHE), was encouraged. The School also supported and encouraged its staff in the establishment of national networks such as INGENIC to share insights and promote joint projects.

Finally, the support strand covered practical support that was provided to female staff, particularly after maternity leave. This included planning the workload upon their return from maternity leave together with their managers, with consideration of their new family commitments in timetabling and allocation of their teaching, and striving for realistic schedules in each individual case.

This initiative resulted in 36% of the academic staff being women, as well as 50% of the senior academic leadership team being women.

Evaluation Approach

It is often difficult to identify whether an initiative to enhance gender balance among academic staff has offered measurable benefits to an institution.

Below are some examples on what has been done at several universities to look for impact of such an initiative:

➤ Tracking Recruitment

➤ Interviewing Stakeholders

➤ Following Up

Actions to consider next

Consider using this action along with some others, such as Buddy Systems.