Promoting women in academia creates lasting benefits for future generations of female scholars

Securing a permanent academic position early in one’s career is particularly important for women, according to new research by PhD candidate Milan Makany of Erasmus School of Economics and co-authors Manuel Bagues (University of Warwick, CEPR, IZA@LISER and J-PAL), Giulia Vattuone (SOFI, Stockholm University), and Natalia Zinovyeva (University of Warwick and IZA@LISER). 

The study, Female Promotions and the Academic Pipeline: Evidence from a Natural Experiment, analyses data from 4,000 university departments across Spain and reveals that promotion decisions can shape not only individual careers but also the future composition of academia.

Makany and his co-authors found that women who narrowly miss out on tenure face substantially greater long-term career consequences than men. Fifteen years later, women who failed to obtain tenure are 83 percentage points less likely to hold a tenured position compared with women who narrowly qualified. For men, the corresponding gap is only 38 percentage points. ‘Our findings suggest that the tenure stage is a critical bottleneck for women in academia,’ he says. ‘When talented women leave the academic pipeline at this point, the losses extend far beyond their individual careers.’

The study also uncovers strong evidence of a “trickle-down” effect when women do obtain permanent academic positions. Departments that promote a woman to Associate Professor gain, on average, 1.5 additional female faculty members within fifteen years and produce six additional female PhD graduates over the following decade. Moreover, female graduates of these departments are also more likely to remain in academia and advance to tenured positions themselves.

Setting in motion a chain of effects

Although the precise mechanisms remain an open question, the findings are consistent with several possible channels, including role-model effects, mentoring, and a more inclusive workplace climate. Importantly, the effects are concentrated in departments where women are present but not yet in the majority, suggesting that spillovers may build up gradually and require some pre-existing female presence rather than being triggered by the promotion of a first woman in an otherwise all-male department.

The findings provide new causal evidence supporting policies that reduce barriers to promotion for highly qualified women. These results underscore the value of ensuring that highly qualified women are not overlooked at key career stages, as their advancement can generate substantial and persistent benefits for universities and the broader research community. ‘Promoting a single highly capable woman at a key career stage can set in motion a chain of effects that influences who enters academia, who remains, and who ultimately advances’, Milan Makany concludes.

About the Research

The study exploits a unique feature of Spain’s academic promotion system between 2002 and 2008, where evaluators were assigned to promotion committees at random so similar candidates could be evaluated by relatively more or less favorable committees, moving some "lucky" candidates above the promotion threshold. This natural experiment allowed the researchers to identify the causal effects of promotion outcomes on careers and departmental composition.