"Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We

evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to

tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate

Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender

gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference

in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity

covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor

even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on

women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men,

although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance

up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children

increase men's likelihood of advancing."

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