Women in astronomy have equal career prospects to men

Well, maybe. From various anecdotal discussions with colleagues over the years this appears to be variable. In my experience, the gender balance at the start of a degree was extremely male-biased. By the end of the Masters it was close to equal. It remained that way throughout the PhD process. But beyond that, because everyone disperses to far-flung pastures, it became basically impossible to judge. Certainly there do seem to be fewer female than male astronomers, in general.

This study basically concludes that there is a bias in getting women to do a PhD, but once they get one, their career prospects are exactly equal to those of men. Their chances of being hired either into a permanent academic career or leaving the field are the same as men, year on year after completing their PhD. They are no more or less likely to leave astronomy than men. However, PhD programs produce far fewer female than male astronomers (30:70 split), which explains why there are fewer women in astronomy overall (it could also be that there were biases in the past which have now been overcome). A woman who completes her PhD has exactly equal career prospects to her more numerous male counterparts.

What this doesn't address, however, is the PhD program itself. At what point does this 30:70 split emerge ? Do women simply not enrol for a PhD at all or do they drop out more frequently ? This is not addressed here, but would be a logical follow-up.

The sample is drawn from public PhD alumni and dissertation lists posted on the webpages of major PhD-granting graduate programs across the United States. We attempted to find all such listings by searching the webpages of 34 medium-to-large US PhD programs in astrophysics as listed in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) roster of astronomy programs.

My major query about the study would be whether these lists are complete. As far as I know this is not the case in the U.K.

Out of the initial sample of 1154, we removed 91 individuals for the various reasons described above, leading to a final sample of 1063 for the outcome analysis (a further 37 individuals were excluded from hiring-time based analyses only). Of these, 748 are male (70.4%) and 315 (29.6%) are female, consistent with statistics on the gender ratio of astronomy PhDs compiled elsewhere. Within this sample, 672 progressed to long-term careers in astronomy; 273 left and went into careers outside astronomy; 118 were still postdocs or in short-term contract-based positions at the time the analysis was conducted (late 2018).

Our study focuses on the transition in and out of the postdoctoral phase, and so we record only the first long-term position (and not later career moves or promotions.) However, we did also note any cases in which an individual left the field after securing a long-term astrophysics position. These were quite rare (12 men and 2 women, out of 672 total hires), suggesting that “long term” employment (as we have defined it) does indeed represent a the start of a lifetime career in the discipline.

Well I mean that's certainly very good news, but the hiring rate of postdocs to permanent seems awfully high. Perhaps there's a European bias, or perhaps my anecdotal experience is simply wrong, but the general consensus seems to be that there are far, far fewer permanent jobs available than postdoc positions. This is often reported as one of the major reasons people don't pursue a career in astronomy. Still, here's their money plot, showing the hiring/leaving fractions after PhD (men in black, women in red) :

In summary, there is no evidence for any significant difference in career outcomes between male and female astronomy PhDs in the United States. They do not directly explain the reasons for the lower fraction of women (∼15%) in more advanced career roles. However, we do note that the PhD numbers by gender show a large increase in the fraction of women over the period of the study (from 15% in 2000–2001 to 34% in 2011–2012), suggesting that a primary cause is a lower fraction of women in earlier PhD generations relative to more recent years. In any case, we firmly rule out the claim that women postdocs leave the field at three times the rate of men.

I certainly hope this is true, though the results seem almost too good. Of course, being employed is not the only mark of success - for example proposals from women have been traditionally treated unfairly. Citation and publication rates would be another factor to consider, as well as time to reach senior positions. The results of this study are encouraging, but the other known biases make me just a little cautious.

Gender and the Career Outcomes of PhD Astronomers in the United States

I analyze the postdoctoral career tracks of a nearly-complete sample of astronomers from 28 United States graduate astronomy and astrophysics programs spanning 13 graduating years (N=1063). A majority of both men and women (65% and 66%, respectively) find long-term employment in astronomy or closely-related academic disciplines.