College gender gap widens: 57% are women

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CIRGE at the University of Washington conducts research on alumni careers and the effectiveness of graduate programs, both for other graduate schools and the employers of most U.S-trained Ph.D.s.

Nerad said although it is positive that an increasing number of women are earning doctorates, the real problem arises after the qualified women reach the job market.

"If women want to go on and stay in academia, there comes the trouble," she said. "Institutions have done a lot to increase women in doctorate work, but it stops there."

Nerad said that while 61% of all women Ph.D.s had a spouse with a Ph.D., J.D. or M.D. in 2002, only 21% of men have spouses who are highly educated.

"The combination of being a woman and having a partner that is also highly educated is tricky," she said. "Very few universities have dual spousal hiring, and it's very complicated to get both people stimulating jobs in the same town, and one partner has to make a sacrifice to stay together."

While women have earned the majority of doctorates awarded in education and humanities, Nerad said social and biological sciences were split evenly in 2002, and female engineering doctorates fell short of 20%.

"The number of successful women who have had Ph.D.s awarded are not medical," Nerad said. "But women earning doctorates in 2002 made an increase in all fields."