Many Black Women Veer Off Path to Tenure, Researchers Say

The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 9, 2008

Washington — Black women appear to be substantially less likely than other segments of the population to get on and stay on academe’s tenure track, according to a forthcoming report commissioned by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
The report, the highlights of which the association presented here today, says survey data collected from doctoral recipients suggest that “black women have a distaste for or trouble navigating some aspects of the tenure process,” even though they do not appear to have any distaste for academe itself.
“We don’t know what is going on, but the data suggest that black women are not faring as well” as other groups, said Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, a professor of economics at the University of Vermont and research fellow at the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance. Ms. Sharpe is a co-author of the report, along with William A. Darity Jr., a professor of African-American studies, economics, and public policy at Duke University, and Omari H. Swinton, an assistant professor of economics at Howard University.
The researchers based their analysis on data from surveys that the National Science Foundation has administered to the same doctoral recipients repeatedly since the the early 1990s, to track their progress over time. The fields covered by the surveys included engineering, mathematics, the sciences, and the social sciences. [To read the full story, go to: http://chronicle.com/news/article/5111/many-black-women-veer-off-path-to-tenure-researchers-say?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en ]