Women's Path to Tenure: Analysis of the Leaky Pipeline Phenomenon

This paper seeks to explain the leaky pipeline phenomenon at the University of Pennsylvania, characterized by the decreasing representation of women faculty at higher ranks of the professoriate. This study incorporates social role theory into its assessment of archival data on the composition of the faculty from 1999-2016. The paper finds no strong evidence of hiring discrimination; mixed evidence on the retention of women faculty, or that women are no less likely than men to leave the University; and little evidence of a positive trickle-down leadership effect, as universities who had never appointed a woman president had the greatest representation of women full professors in the years analyzed. The paper’s findings suggest that biased performance evaluations, unequal divisions of home responsibilities, and informal network exclusion of women faculty may contribute to the leaky pipeline, and highlight how historic gender roles continue to have salient consequences for women in the workforce