A Family-Friendly Policy That’s Friendliest to Male Professors

Justin Wolfers:

A Family-Friendly Policy That’s Friendliest to Male Professors: The underrepresentation of women among the senior ranks of scholars has led dozens of universities to adopt family-friendly employment policies. But a recent study of economists finds that some of these gender-neutral policies have had an unintended consequence: They have advanced the careers of male economists, often at women’s expense. Similar patterns probably hold in other disciplines, too. …

Three economists — Heather Antecol…, Kelly Bedard…, and Jenna Stearns … evaluated … gender-neutral tenure-extension policies in important new research. The policies led to a 19 percentage-point rise in the probability that a male economist would earn tenure at his first job. In contrast, women’s chances of gaining tenure fell by 22 percentage points. Before the arrival of tenure extension, a little less than 30 percent of both women and men at these institutions gained tenure at their first jobs. The decline for women is therefore very large. It suggests that the new policies made it extraordinarily rare for female economists to clear the tenure hurdle. …

The authors … found that men who took parental leave used the extra year to publish their research, amassing impressive publication records. But there was no parallel rise in the output of female economists. …