Terminales carboníferos

As becomes evident when examining the sex composition of our STEM department (Table 1), there are two main variations in the presence and ranking of academic staff in the years 2010-2013. Whereas the gender (im)balance among assistant professors seems to be operating steadily around the 60/40 mark across the time span, 2012 stands out as a year with uncommonly few women in STEM assistant professor positions. The opposite might be said for the associate professor position, which undergoes a significant change towards more gender balance over the time period.

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However, the more significant statistic is that of the professor level. At any one time, the full professor title makes up the majority of positions in STEM. Moreover, and more importantly, men consistently dominate the full professor position throughout the time period. There are hardly any adjunct positions filled in the STEM department.

Men are also in the majority in STEM PhD programmes. Consider the following figure:

Table 1 Sex composition in STEM department

2010 2011 2012 2013

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women N. Professors 66 8 63 8 61 10 61 10 Associate professors 23 9 18 8 17 11 15 11 Assistant professors 7 5 8 5 6 2 5 5 Adjuncts 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 Total 96 22 89 21 86 23 82 26 % Professors 89% 11% 89% 11% 86% 14% 86% 14% Associate professors 72% 28% 69% 31% 61% 39% 58% 42% Assistant professors 58% 42% 62% 38% 75% 25% 50% 50% Adjuncts / / / / 100% 0% 100% 0% Total 81% 19% 81% 19% 79% 21% 76% 24%

Figure 1. Number of PhD candidates (newly entered, ongoing and obtained PhD) by Sex, Organizational Level (STEM).

In STEM (figure 1), more men are currently working on their PhDs while the number of women PhD candidates remains low in comparison. It is positive to observe, however, that women make up 59% of newly entering PhDs in 2013. This, however, does not necessarily signal a future change in gender distribution in STEM, as women tend to

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disappear from STEM the closer academics get to the top of the career ladder (see D6.1 and D6.2).

Table 2. Sex composition of PhDs in STEM department

2010 2011 2012 2013

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

N of newly entering Phds 25 17 17 9 10 5 12 17

N of PhDs, ongoing 81 60 89 64 77 66 97 56

N of PhDs obtained 14 7 15 8 8 6 11 8

2.1.2. SSH

Statistics from SSH differs from that of STEM at different levels. Consider firstly the sex composition in SSH departments:

Table 3. Sex composition in SSH department

2010 2011 2012 2013

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women N. Professors 25 15 24 16 25 17 26 18 Associate prof. 14 9 17 9 16 11 17 11 Assistant prof. 19 12 17 13 18 13 18 16 Adjuncts 6 9 9 10 7 9 9 11 Total 64 45 67 48 66 50 70 56 % Professors 63% 38% 60% 40% 60% 40% 59% 41% Associate prof. 61% 39% 65% 35% 59% 41% 61% 39% Assistant prof. 61% 39% 57% 43% 58% 42% 53% 47% Adjuncts 40% 60% 47% 53% 44% 56% 45% 55% Total 59% 41% 58% 42% 57% 43% 56% 44%

As evident from Table 2, men are in the majority in every academic position above the adjunct level. It is interesting to observe, however, that percentage-wise the obvious

gender imbalance seems to keep steady right under or above the ‘accepted’ 60/40 mark.

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Figure 2.Number of PhD candidates (newly entered, on-going and obtained PhD) by Sex, Organizational Level (SSH)

Table 4. Sex composition of PhDs in SSH department

2010 2011 2012 2013

Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

N of Phds, ongoing 28 58 24 61 x x 24 51

N of newly entering Phds 3 15 6 13 1 10 5 7

N of PhDs obtained 1 0 3 1 3 2 1 4

If we track the number of female PhD students in SSH from 2010 to 2013 (figures 2 and 3), it is obvious that women have increasingly been choosing the PhD option. At the same time fewer and fewer men have been doing the same, even though, when it comes to newly entering PhDs, things are lightening up towards 2013, when the number of newly entering PhDs was 42% men and 58% women. At the same time, however, this seems to be because fewer and fewer women are choosing the PhD option, not because more men opt for a PhD in SSH.

2.1.3. Comparative conclusion

When comparing STEM to SSH, it becomes obvious that more people occupy higher positions in STEM than they do in SSH and that the higher the academic position, the more likely it is that a man is occupying it. Across this time period, women made up an average of 40% of full professors and 38% of associate professors in SSH. In STEM it was only 13% of full professors and 35% of associate professors on average. Moreover, STEM has comparatively few people in adjunct and assistant professor positions compared to SSH. This might have to do with the fact that it is easier to gain promotion in the STEM department due to indirect factors such as for example higher funding (See D4.1.2).

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However, it may also in large part be due to the fact that STEM researchers simply have more time on their hands due to, among other things, fewer teaching responsibilities. On average, STEM has a much higher teacher-to-student ratio than SSH. In the time period from 2010-2013, STEM fields had an average of 111 available staff compared to

117 in STEM. Even though STEM has a slightly higher number of teachers, this number pales into insignificance if we consider the volume of the student body in SSH compared to that of STEM, as we pointed out earlier. If we take the numbers from the University of Iceland alone, there were on average 2203 students in STEM fields each year between 2010 and 2013. For SSH fields this number was 4717. This means that the student-to- teacher ratio in STEM at UI is around 1:20, and a whopping 1:40 in SSH fields.

Moreover, whereas the total number of students is much higher in SSH than in STEM, and is comprised of more women than men, the opposite applies to the PhD level. The PhD students in STEM are much more numerous than in SSH, or 153 against 86 in 2013, and comprised of more men than women. As pointed out above, the majority of the large externally funded research projects are STEM related which reveals the gendered dimensions in this.