Exploring the leaky pipeline: Tokenism, status group effects, or self-selection?

Abstract

In most European universities today, more than 50% of bachelor's degrees are awarded to women, but the corresponding share of full professorships is only about 25%. This phenomenon is called the leaky pipeline. Most explanations refer to gender biases and stereotypes, motherhood, discrimination, and tokenism. We take a novel approach by comparing the leaky pipeline across various fields of study in the two largest Swiss universities. We start from Rosabeth Moss Kanter's token hypothesis, which suggests that women suffer from their minority position. According to this hypothesis, it is expected that the higher women's share of positions is in a field of study, the less pronounced is the leaky pipeline. In contrast, the status group hypothesis and the self-selection hypothesis each predict different outcomes: The higher women's share of a field of study is, the more pronounced is the leaky pipeline. Our data refute the token hypothesis. To test the second and third hypotheses, we conducted a representative survey at two Swiss universities. We find strong evidence for self-selection effects but no status group effects. Our findings show that men and women in different fields of study have different preferences that shape their careers, family dynamics and partner choices. Thus, the leaky pipeline differs across disciplines. Measures to mitigate the leaky pipeline should take these differences into account.