Stanford University Has Made Only Snail-Like Progress in Reducing Its Faculty Gender Gap

According to data from Stanford’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in a Learning Environment (IDEAL) Dashboard, only 30 percent of Stanford’s faculty are women. Nationwide, 43 percent of all faculty positions in higher education are held by women.

The latest count shows 693 women on the Stanford faculty compared to 1,582 men. Over the past decade, the percentage of women on Stanford’s faculty has increased from 26 percent to 30 percent. Some divisions have performed much better in increasing the number of women faculty than others. For example, the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences has seen an increase of women faculty from 22 percent in 2010 to 36 percent today.

The graduate School of Education has the highest percentage of women faculty at 39 percent. But this has declined from 44 percent in 2010. Only 20 percent of the faculty in the School of Business and 17 percent of the faculty in the School of Engineering are women.

Writing in The Stanford Daily, Brandon Bergsneider notes that “Stanford has not only made minimal improvements in professor diversity over the past 10 years, but it also lags behind colleges across the nation. As teachers, students, and organizations make louder and louder calls for professor diversity, Stanford’s administration will need to do a better job.”