Female Representation in Academia: Are Women Underrepresented among Faculty at Public Colleges and Universities?

Abstract

There is widespread global attention toward improving female representation in higher education institutions. In 2020, the Educational Official Act was amended to promote gender-conscious academic recruitment in favor of female faculty, who are historically underrepresented in academia, highlighting a notable disparity in female faculty representation between public and private institutions in South Korea. This amendment requires all public colleges and universities to maintain a proportion of female full-time faculty at a level equivalent to that of their private counterparts. Using college-major level information from 2000 to 2022, we examine whether female faculty representation in public institutions lags behind that in private institutions. The estimates show that public institutions generally underperform in recruiting female faculty, but this difference becomes negligible among high-selectivity institutions. It is worth noting that no significant difference is found in female faculty representation between public and private institutions in fields such as computer science, biology, nutrition/food science, medicine/pharmacy, economics/business, other social sciences, and arts/athletics, while the largest gap is observed in the field of education. The results suggest considering college-major specific characteristics when designing and implementing gender-conscious policies and practices to promote women in academia.

KEYWORDS:

• Female representation
• academia
• female faculty
• gender equity policy
• gender gap

JEL:

• I2
• J2
• J4

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

2 For example, women hold 29.68% of professor positions in the UK (Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2021/22), 26.3% in Germany (Federal Statistical Office, 2020), 35.86% in the U.S. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021/22), and 18.8% in Japan (Gender Equality Bureau of the Japanese Cabinet Office, 2020).

3 The percentages of female faculty in science and engineering, traditionally male-dominant fields, are 16.6% and 11.7% in Norway, 16.2% and 15.1% in Sweden, 13.7% and 10.5% in Finland, and 11.6% and 8.3% in Denmark. These figures are significantly lower than the percentages of female faculty in social sciences and humanities, historically female-dominant fields, which stand at 31.3% and 32.7% in Norway, 31.0% and 36.8% in Sweden, 37.0% and 43.8% in Finland, and 23.8% and 33.1% in Denmark (CORE, 2020).

4 Humanities/social sciences encompass language, literature, social science, and theology. The field of science covers natural science, marine science, agricultural and forestry science, fishery science, nursing, health science, pharmacy, and oriental pharmacy. Arts and athletics include music, visual arts, sports, and dance. Medicine comprises fields such as medicine, dentistry, Korean medicine, and veterinary medicine. Engineering refers to all engineering fields. Human ecology consists of home economics, categorized under social science, as well as fashion/textiles and food/nutrition, both classified under natural science. KEDI's aggregated data on the female share of full-time faculty by field provides the overall female representation in human ecology, used to calculate the female share in science in this paragraph. Similarly, education comprises various fields, including educational leadership, education policy studies, language/literature education, social studies education, elementary education, and special education, all classified under humanities/social science. Additionally, math education, science education, and nursing/health education fall under the science category; engineering education is classified under engineering, and arts education and physical education under arts/athletics. In this paragraph, the overall female share of the faculty in education is used to calculate the female share in humanities/social science.

5 The areas near Seoul encompass Seoul itself, Incheon, and Gyeonggi-do.

6 Admissions selectivity information is not publicly available. Therefore, we adopt an alternative approach using a chart that estimates the Collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT) score required for admission to specific colleges and majors. This chart is published by private for-profit after-school tutoring institutions, commonly known as Hakwons, including Daesung, Jongro, Uway Joongang, Etoos, and Jinhak. It serves as a valuable resource for students in determining which colleges are suitable for their applications. To categorize institutions into different levels of selectivity (high, medium, and low), we rely on the average CSAT cutoff scores for college admissions provided by Daesung from the year 2009 to 2022. High-selectivity institutions require scores in the range of 80-100%, medium-selectivity institutions fall within the 50-79% range, and low-selectivity institutions encompass scores from 0-49%.

7 The Education Statistics comprise five survey components: (1) Common Statistics on Early Childhood, Elementary, Secondary, and Higher Education, (2) Statistics on Employment After College, (3) Continuing Education Statistics, (4) Lifelong Learning Statistics, and (5) International Education Statistics.

8 In the Education Statistics framework, postsecondary institutions are classified into 11 distinct groups: University, University of Education, Industrial University, Junior College, Technical College, Distance University (including Cyber University and Air & Correspondence University), Corporate University, Polytechnics, Graduate School, Professional School, and Miscellaneous School. Accredited degree-granting postsecondary institutions in South Korea commonly offer multiple degree programs at various levels, including associate, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees. In the data, to prevent double counting, each faculty member is affiliated with only one degree program within an institution, regardless of their teaching and advising roles. Accreditation and certification assessments are conducted separately for undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. Therefore, the data presents information separately for undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, even though they are all offered by the same institution. For instance, Seoul National University offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs in nuclear economics. In the data, information about the bachelor's degree program is listed under the institution name ‘Seoul National University,’ while information on master's or doctoral degree programs is listed under ‘Seoul National University Graduate School.’ In this study, to control the number and gender composition of the student population and the number of faculty for each degree program, we reformat the data from a long format to a wide format, with the institution and major as the logical units of observation.

9 The 47 public institutions in South Korea consist of 34, 10 universities of education, two graduate schools, and one city university. The 10 flagship universities include Seoul National University, Busan National University, Kangwon National University, Chungbuk National University, Chungnam National University, Kyungpook National University, Gyeongsang National University, Jeonbuk National University, Chonnam National University, and Jeju National University. The 10 universities of education are located in Seoul, Gyeonggi/Incheon (Gyeongin), Chuncheon, Cheongju, Gongju, Daegu, Busan, Chinju, Jeonju, and Gwangju. There are four national institutes of science and technology located in Daejeon (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, KAIST), Ulsan, Daegu/Gyeongbuk, and Gwangju. Two graduate schools include the National Cancer Center Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy and the Graduate School of Korean Studies. Additionally, there is one city university, the University of Seoul.

10 There are a total seven 4-year women’s universities in South Korea, including Ewha Womans University, Sookmyung Women’s University, Sungshin Women’s University, Dongduk Women’s University, Duksung Women's University, Seoul Women’s University, and Gwangju Women’s University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jihye Kam

Jihye Kam is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Sungshin Women's University. Her research areas include education policy, economics of education, and applied microeconomics. Dr. Kam's methodological research focuses on statistical methods to estimate the causal effects of educational policies and practices. Before joining Sungshin Women's University in 2023, she was an Assistant Professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, her MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her BA from Seoul National University.

Soohyung Lee

Soohyung Lee is a Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University. Dr. Lee is an economist specializing in data-based research topics that examine the determinants of the efficiency of individuals and the market as a whole. Her research fields lie at the intersection of Econometrics, Labor, Public, Development, and Market Design. Before joining SNU, she held faculty positions in the Economics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Sogang University. Additionally, she served as a research fellow at Harvard Business School and as a visiting professor at Hitotsubashi University and Waseda University. Dr. Lee received her PhD from Stanford University and her BA from Seoul National University. Prior to starting her PhD studies, she served as a Deputy Director in Korea's Ministry of Finance.