In Case You Missed It…
For years, we’ve been told that universities discriminate against women and racial minorities - and that White men are the chief beneficiaries of this biased system. A growing body of research suggests, however, that the reality is now closer to the reverse.
The latest example comes from a new paper by political scientist Scott Desposato. Desposato tracked more than 400 political science PhD students who entered the job market in 2023. His question was whether they’d secured a tenure-track assistant professorship by the following autumn.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, female and underrepresented-minority candidates were considerably more likely to have done so than non-minority men. Was this because the former had better credentials? Apparently not; the disparity persisted even after statistically controlling for PhD-program rank, publication record, degree status, and academic subfield.
Based on Desposato’s findings, John Holbein on Twitter/X calculated the chances of four hypothetical individuals landing a position: a White man, a White woman, a minority man, and a minority woman. The candidates were identical in every respect, other than their sex and race. As shown in the graph below, the White man had around a one in four chance of getting the job, whereas everyone else had closer to a one in two chance.
How important was identity in determining who got hired? The answer seems to be “very.” Co-authoring a paper in the American Political Science Review - the discipline’s flagship journal - substantially increased a candidate’s chances of securing a position, just as you’d expect. But it didn’t increase their chances nearly as much as simply being female or an underrepresented minority. Only a solo-authored APSR paper was worth more on the job market than these demographic variables.
Desposato’s research doesn’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the differences were due to discrimination. In principle, they could reflect unmeasured differences among candidates, differences in the positions they applied for or were willing to accept, or other confounding variables.
But it seems unlikely. Other research points in the same direction (see, e.g., here and here), and in any case, it’s an open secret that academia has been putting a thumb on the scale for women and underrepresented minorities for many years. The most plausible interpretation of Desposato’s data is that the relevant hiring committees were discriminating against White men.
Ironically, this was happening under the cover of the assumption that academia routinely discriminates in favor of White men. I was raised to think that discrimination is wrong, and I once assumed that most of my peers agreed. Apparently, though, many think it’s perfectly acceptable - as long as it’s against the right groups.
You can access Desposato’s paper here for free.
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Related Reading From the Archive
The Truth About Sexism in Science
It’s an idea so widely accepted that we rarely think to question it: Women face rampant discrimination in STEM fields, while men coast along on a cushion of unearned privilege. You’ll hear this claim echoed everywhere, from the most prestigious scientific journals to the pages of
As you noted, some are remarkably honest about their discriminatory beliefs too.
Here's a collection of fun quotes I have gathered from academics over the past few years.
Dr Nicky Lisa Cole - Sociologist
“Within the social sciences, the development of a feminist perspective and feminist theories have always been about de-centering the privileged white male perspective from framing social problems, the approach to studying them, how we actually study them, what we conclude about them, and what we try to do about them as a society.”
Because apparently the highly convenient perspective of feminist standpoint theories claims:
“That the standpoint of women has an epistemic advantage over phenomena in which gender is implicated, relative to theories that make sexist or androcentric assumptions.”
Catherine McKinnon (Feminist Legal Scholar) makes it more explicit:
“The privileged standpoint is not that of women, but of feminists (MacKinnon 1989). Men can participate in the feminist movement. But they cannot assume a dominant role in defining (hence knowing) its aims, given the feminist interest in overcoming male dominance.”
AND THE WINNER FOR ME IS..............
Philosopher Sarah Harding who coined the term “strong objectivity”:
“Harding suggests that starting research from the lives of women "actually strengthens standards of objectivity".[1]Strong objectivity can be contrasted with the "weak objectivity" of supposed value-neutral research”