Respond to this article . The University of California hires female faculty at lower rates than the available labor pool, leading to a gender disparity among professors. Also, opening up applications to international candidates, as well as focusing faculty searches on male-dominated fields like engineering and physical sciences, significantly reduce the number of women in the applicant pool, according to the study. Thus, the actual pool from which the UC hires professors is only 33 percent female.
Gender disparity is especially significant in the physical sciences.
In the engineering school at UCLA, for example, about 10 out of the 140 professors are women. J. Woody Ju, chair of civil and environmental engineering, said only one of the 15 professors in his department is a woman, despite continuous attempts to attract female faculty. The relative pool of outstanding doctoral candidates are male. But the same is not true at the undergraduate level, where in the civil engineering almost half of the students are female. Now, if 80 to 90 percent of our faculty are white men, we can't use that to prove discrimination exists.