An Advisor Like Me? Advisor Gender and Post-Graduate Careers in Science

CERGE-EI Working Paper Series No. 594

30 Pages Posted: 7 Aug 2017

See all articles by Patrick Gaulé

Patrick Gaulé

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Mario Piacentini

Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)

Date Written: August 1, 2017

Abstract

We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based on an original dataset covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students with an advisor of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD and more likely to become professors themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.

Keywords: Science, Gender, Universities, Post-Graduate Careers

JEL Classification: J24, J16, O31

Suggested Citation

Gaulé, Patrick and Piacentini, Mario, An Advisor Like Me? Advisor Gender and Post-Graduate Careers in Science (August 1, 2017). CERGE-EI Working Paper Series No. 594, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3014467 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3014467

Patrick Gaulé (Contact Author)

Charles University in Prague - CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences ( email )

Politickych veznu 7
Prague, 111 21
Czech Republic

Mario Piacentini

Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) ( email )

2 rue Andre Pascal
Paris Cedex 16, 75775
France

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
105
Abstract Views
839
Rank
512,907
PlumX Metrics