Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2018396.2018410
Viewpoint
Gender Demographics
trends and Changes
in U.S. CS Departments
Ph.D.-GrAntinG DePArtmentS in the U.S. claim to have increased the number of emalefaculty, tobegradu- ating more Ph.D. students,
and to have again increased their undergraduate enrollment, especially
the enrollment of female students.
This Viewpoint is derived from a report that used Taulbee Survey data
from 1999–2009 to provide insight
into these claims and other questions regarding gender demographics. In particular, we take a close look
at whether the trends are different
for private and public institutions,
for large and small departments, and
for departments of different ranks.
The data indicates that overall both
the number and proportion of female
tenured and tenure-track faculty as
well as females receiving a Ph.D. have
increased; however, these increases
are not uniform across types of depart-
ments. In many highly ranked depart-
ments female full professors outnum-
ber female faculty of other ranks and
increases have been small. Depart-
ments that have significantly increased
the number of female faculty tend to
have done so by hiring female assistant
professors. Although the overall Ph.D.
production has doubled from 2002–
2008, the proportion of Ph.D.’s awarded
to females is lower in higher ranked de-
partments. In contrast, higher ranked
private institutions have a higher pro-
portion of female undergraduates. This
Viewpoint highlights some of these re-
sults and trends generated from Taul-
bee data; the full report is available at
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/seh/
Taulbee99-09_Full.pdf.
