As promised in my last post, today I explore associations between the business school activity priorities reported on the annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) by AACSB member schools, and their reported faculty gender balance. As a reminder, the activity priority codes reported on the BSQ reflect one dimension of diversity in business school missions by identifying the rank-order prioritization of intellectual contributions, teaching, and service. There seems to be a small but clear progression in average gender balance based on whether schools reported emphasizing intellectual contributions (ICs) over teaching, or vice versa:
Table 1. Female Percentage of Total Full-time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty, by General Activity Priorities
Source: AACSB BSQ, 2015–16. Data come from all AACSB member schools that reported faculty data with gender breakouts.
I’ve grouped the general activity codes by the activity types that they each emphasize most highly in Table 1 above. Codes BPA-2 and BPA-4 both indicate that the sole high-priority activity of the school is ICs. However, the codes differ in that BPA-2 places medium emphasis on teaching and low emphasis on service, while BPA-4 holds the reverse emphases. Codes BPA-1, BPA-3, and BPA-6 indicate the same for teaching, differing in that BPA-1 places medium emphasis on ICs and low emphasis on service, while BPA-3 is the reverse, and BPA-6 holds both ICs and service as medium emphasis. BPA-5 and BPA-7 indicate both teaching and ICs are equally highly emphasized, but BPA-5 holds service as low emphasis, and BPA-7 holds it equally high with teaching and ICs.
The data show that both the mean and median percentage of female faculty are largest among schools that regard teaching as their sole high priority activity and lowest among schools that hold ICs as their sole high priority activity, while schools that emphasize both teaching and ICs equally highly constitute an intermediate position. This progression became even more obvious when the 760 schools were divided into four quartiles by their female percentage of FTE faculty:
Figure 1. General Activity Priority Groups, by Female Percentage of Total Full-time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty
Source: AACSB BSQ, 2015-16. Data come from all AACSB member schools that reported faculty data with gender breakouts.
What these data suggest is that schools with a greater focus on teaching are more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty than those with a greater focus on producing ICs. If that is indeed the case, then my next question is this: Are schools with a greater focus on teaching more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty because women are more likely to seek faculty positions at such schools? Or, are schools with a greater focus on teaching more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty because they tend to hire more women than those with a greater focus on producing ICs?
Good research.
Posted by: patrick | 19 June 2017 at 03:54
Truthfully, I don't want to perpetuate any stereotypes; rather, I'm interested in why this apparent gendered differentiation exists in the first place. The first step to that, of course, is identifying the issue.
Posted by: R. Colin Nelson | 13 June 2017 at 07:58
This is interesting. I mean on the one hand you're looking in gender equality and all that. On that other hand it just adds to the stereotype that mostly woman like teaching and should teach. I'm not entirely sure if this is a step forward, or backward for woman.
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