Over at the Washington Post's The Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten introduces the symposium (via bookforum's omnivore):
Despite substantial progress, it is irrefutable that a gender gap persists in academia – as it does in many other professions. By 2010, women constituted 40 percent of assistant professors and 30 percent of associate professors but only 19 percent of full professors in the political science profession (source). These figures have gone up steadily but slowly (see here) and it would be tempting to believe that the disappearance of the gender gap is merely a matter of time.
Yet, there are still structural obstacles that stand in the way of full equality. Those range from overt sexism to (more commonly) implicit biases and the fact that men on average still do less than 50 percent of childcare and household tasks. The intense discussions surrounding Anne-Marie’s Slaughter‘s article on work-life balance, Sheryl Sandberg‘s Lean In, and the New York Times article on gender issues at the Harvard Business school illustrate that concerns about gender equality in universities and workplaces are alive and well.
And for good reasons. Women are still more likely to consider dropping out of graduate school. There is ample evidence of persistent implicit biases. For example,psychologists have found that women are described in more communal terms in letters of recommendation and that such communal characteristics negatively affect hiring decisions in academia.
More here. In the symposium:
Explaining the gender gap Jane Mansbridge
How to reduce the gender gap in one (relatively) easy step B.F. Walter
Closing the gender citation gap: Introducing RADS Daniel Maliniak and Ryan Powers
Why it matters that more women present at conferences Sara McLaughlin Mitchell
Student evaluations of teaching are probably biased. Does it matter? Lisa Martin
The gender gap from the gatekeeper’s perspective Rick Wilson
Editors and the gender gap Marijke Breuning
Why is work by women systematically devalued? Brett Ashley Leeds
Gender bias in professional networks and citations David Lake
The gender citations gap: A glass half-full perspective Beth Simmons