Job searches (women/overall)

Information collected in May-June 2023 from individual private sources. Many thanks to everyone who responded! Further corrections, clarifications and additions welcome

TL;DR: I have data on 24 university positions in 2023 (plus 1 research position in ZAS (Germany) and  9 positions at the CNRS (France), where I work). The CNRS and ZAS had complete gender parity. For the remainder, shortlists for 14 positions had 50% percent or more of women (>50), 6 had less than 50%, for the remaining 4 I do not have the information on their shortlist composition. Two caveats are necessary. 1) The data points are self-selecting: I know of at least one case where people kept silent because the stats made their university look bad. 2) I know of at least two separate cases where the same woman recieved more than one first offer, and obviously shortlists of different universities often intersect.

In alphabetical order:

  1. Austin (UT)>50
    signed language linguistics
    Short list: 4/4
    The committee that selected the short list: 2/8

  2. British Columbia (UBC), 2021-2022 academic year>50
    historical linguistics
    short list: 2/3
    search committee: 4/6 (one of the women was a grad student)
    The first offer went to a man, who accepted

  3. Chicago>50
    Phonology, assistant/associate professor
    shortlist: 2/3
    The job offer went to a woman

  4. Cornell>50
    Phonology, assistant professor
    Shortlist: 2/4 (1 person on the list identified nonbinary)
    Job search committee: 3/7 (not certain)
    Job went to a woman

  5. CUNY grad center
    computational/experimental
    The job went to a man
  6. Metropolitan State University in Denver
    Assistant Professor of Linguistics
    The job has gone to a man, the shortlist is unknown
    Committee: 3/4

  7. Edinburgh
    sign language
    The offer went to a woman

  8. University of Hawaii at Mānoa
    phonetics, assistant professor
    a (gay) man was hired

  9. Kansas State University
    phonetics
    The job went to a woman
  10. University College London>50
    Syntax
    Shortlist: 3/5
    The position went to a woman

  11. Los Angeles (UCLA)>50
    Syntax (asst/assoc. level)
    Short list: 4/4 (3 junior, 1 mid-career)
    Initial offer went to mid-career woman

    Los Angeles (UCLA), 2021/2022>50
    Phonetics (asst/assoc. level)
    Short list: 2/3 (2 junior women, 1 mid-career man)
    Position went to junior woman (also the initial offer)

  12. Maryland (UMD)
    Semantics (junior)
    Shortlist: 0/4
    The offer went to a man (of course)

  13. Maryland (UMD)>50
    Phonology
    Shortlist: 3/4
    The offers went to a woman and a man

  14. Maryland (UMD)>50
    Syntax
    Shortlist: 3/4

  15. Montreal (UQAM)
    syntax, junior
    Shortlist: 1/4 (one openly gay candidate)
    Search committee: 1/3
    The first offer went to a woman, the second one, to a man

  16. Oregon
    junior position (assistant level)
    Shortlist: 1/3
    The job has gone to a man
    Committee: 2/4

  17. University of Ottawa>50
    Semantics (I think)
    Shortlist: 2/4

  18. Rutgers
    Syntax, assistant professor
    Shortlist: 2/5 (two of the men are gay)
    Job went to a woman

  19. UC San Diego >50
    sociolinguistics, assistant professor
    Shortlist: 3/4
    The offer was made to a woman (who turned it down, search failed).

  20. UC San Diego
    NLP, joint hire with the data science institute at UCSD, open rank
    Shortlist: 1/4 (all the candidates on the list were junior)
    No offer is known to have been made yet.

  21. Southern California (USC)>50
    syntax, open rank
    Shortlist: 3/6 (2 of the women junior, 1 midcareer, 2 of the men midcareer, 1 senior)
    First offer went to woman (junior), second offer went to man (midcareer)

  22. University of Toronto
    Phonology (junior)
    Shortlist: 0/4
    Initial offer made and declined, the job went to a (POC) man

  23. University of Washington>50
    syntax
    Shortlist: 3/4 were women
    The position went to the man and he was also the first offer
    Otherwise their last 3 job hires were women: phonologist 2022; psycholinguist/neurolinguist 2020; language acquisitionist 2019

  24. Yale>50
    Semantics (open rank)
    Shortlist: 3/5
    Initial offer made to man

  25. University of York>50
    languages/translation, more senior
    Shortlist: 4/5
    The first offer went to a woman, who accepted

    ----- recent, but not this year ------
    University of York
    Sociolinguistics, lecturer (assistant professor in American terms)
    Shortlist: 1/5
    The job has gone to a man
    Search committee: W3+M1+unknown

    University of York
    Phonology, junior
    Shortlist: 2/5
    The job offer went to a man
    Search committee: at least two female members


Research positions

CNRS (France)
General linguistics
When n people are recruited at once, a few more are selected (short list), and the first n of them receive the first offer
CR (researchers, i.e., junior positions): 3/6 shortlist, 3 positions: 2/3
DR (research directors, i.e., senior positions): 4/8 shortlist, 6 positions: 4/6
All the lists for all prior stages can be found here

ZAS, Berlin (permanent position)
Morphology/syntax
shortlist: 4/8
The first offer went to a woman, the second one, to a man (who accepted)


For comparison: the same information collected via Facebook in May 2015:

U of Hawaii Language Documentation position (equal representation on the shortlist): no results yet
U Toronto semantics (2/4): the first offer went to a man
Harvard semantics (3/6): the first offer went to a woman
Ottawa syntax (2/5): the first offer went to a man
Ottawa phonology (0/4): a man, obviously
Frankfurt syntax: 3/8 invited to give a job talk; 2/3 on the short list, the first offer went to a woman
Queen Mary syntax (a permanent position* and a temporary position+ (same shortlist: 2/6)): for both jobs the first offer went to a man
CUNY syntax (1/4): no results yet
Arizona semantics (1/4; the applicant pool was 65% male, 35% female): the first offer went to a man
UMass phonology (3/4): the first offer went to a woman
National University of Singapore (0/3): the first offer obviously went to a man
Berkeley (1/4): the offer went to a woman
Northwestern (no info): the offer went to a woman
Queen's University at Kingston (2/3): the offer went to a woman

McGill phonetics: 1/5, offer went to a man

CNRS : 5 research directors (3/9): the first offers went overwhelmingly to men (4/5)
CNRS: 2 senior researchers (2/4): the first offers went to women
CNRS: 4 junior researchers (4/8): the first offers went overwhelmingly to women (3/4)

I was also sent the link to the distribution of job offers for 2013-2014 (scroll down to "offers").

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