Do women promote women?

It's tenure and promotion time. In universities across the country, assistant professors are preparing their files, bundling together every article they have ever published. The files are sent out to external reviewers, experts in the candidate's field, whose carefully worded letters can make or break young academics' careers.

Every year I am asked to do one or two of these reviews. I would like to think of this as a recognition of my national - or even international - scholarly reputation. But since almost every one of the reviews is for a female candidate, I suspect I am asked in part because I am a woman - and having a woman involved in the promotion process is seen as a way of ensuring that young female academics are fairly evaluated.

But is it?

Having both men and women on hiring, tenure and promotion committees is standard practice in Canadian universities. Yet I have been unable to find much evidence that mixed-gender committees are more likely to hire or promote women than all-male committees.

Female economists do support each other professionally. Women cite women more often than men do. Women are more likely to co-author with other women also.

But studies of hiring practices? That sounds more like sociology. And the sociological literature gives mixed results. Some studies have found that the gender of the manager makes no difference to how well female employees are paid relative to males, others have found that women enjoy higher wages in female-led firms. Yet even these studies do not get at the basic question: does having a woman on the hiring/promotion committee improve the hiring/promotion prospects of female candidates?

My guess is that female committee members probably make less of a difference than one might think. Deirdre McCloskey asserts that female economists are assumed to be nice, and there is some truth in that - by which I mean yes, people do assume female economists are nice.

But I'm not. I haven't always fought hard for female candidates when I've been on hiring committees - and there's a couple of candidates who, looking back on it, I wish I had pushed for. Bad judgment? In one case. Professional jealousy? In another case. Wanting to be one of the guys rather than the equity officer? Perhaps.

For men, this might seem like a minor matter - well, it probably doesn't hurt to have a woman on the committee, and it might help, plus it makes the people in human resources happy.

But for women, it's a big issue. Some people call it the "gender tax," the extra committee work women are asked to do just because they're women. The question is: is that tax worth paying?


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