The Old Boys’ club appears a long way from extinction in academic science. That’s the disturbing finding of five Yale University researchers who, a few days back, published a study spotlighting the university world’s stubborn gender gap on hiring. The study’s most embarrassing finding showed that a group of biology, chemistry, and physics professors favored a male job candidate “John” over a female “Jennifer” with identical qualifications for a fictitious science lab manager position. The professors’ bias cut across both gender lines and field of study, with women just as likely as men, and biology professors as likely as their physics or chemistry counterparts to favor the male.
