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According to the National Research Council (2006), women earned 44.7 percent of the doctorates awarded in the biological sciences between 1993 and 2004, yet comprised only 30.2 percent of the assistant professors at the top 50 U.S. universities. In physics, the gap is far wider. Anne Lincoln, SMU assistant professor of sociology, researches the reasons for the gender disparities.

In September Lincoln received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Research on Gender in Science and Engineering program to examine women’s and men’s reasons for pursuing academic science careers as well as their perceptions about women’s contributions to academic science. Lincoln and a team of four sociology undergraduate students are nearing the completion of the sampling database – a list of all faculty and graduates students at top-20 biology and physics graduate departments in the United States – and will randomly select 2,500 of them to participate in an Internet-based survey. A subsample of about 150 respondents will later be selected for more in-depth interviews, which will take place in 2009.

“In 2010, we will be wrapping up the study and mostly running analyses on the data,” she says. Lincoln’s co-investigator is Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University. In addition to expanding recent scholarly findings related to the role perceptions have in the decision to pursue a career in academic science, Lincoln’s research is expected to provide the “necessary research underpinnings to build university policies and practices that encourage women’s interest in science majors and careers.” Research over the past four decades shows that the unemployment rate of African Americans has been substantially higher than that of whites – the black unemployment rate is about twice that of whites – with the disparity amplified during an economic recession. Recent research by Isaac Mbiti, assistant professor of economics in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, is attempting to pinpoint why.

In the paper “An Empirical Analysis of Black-White Employment Differences over the Business Cycle,” Mbiti and co-author Yusuf Soner Baskaya of Brown University used the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) prior-year income/wage information to account for productivity. While previous studies have made considerations for many variables, “they really couldn’t account for productivity,” Mbiti explains. “If the black-white differences were purely productivity differences, then accounting for productivity would erase the gaps. However, we find the black-white employment gap remains large and significant.” The report has provided important insights about the sources of differences in black-white employment outcomes, including the possibility that “these results may indicate discrimination against blacks.”

For more information: isaacmbiti.googlepages.com/research