And an interview writeup/article.

It could take nearly 100 years before half of all professors in science and engineering are female, according to an article out on Friday in the journal Science.

The assertion is shocking because people in academe have been working for decades to increase the number of women in those fields. The article says it will take so long for universities to attain equal numbers of women and men even though the proportion of women being hired in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the so-called STEM fields—is on the rise and even though, once women are hired, their rate of advancement is the same as for men.

One reason for the lag is that the proportion of women among those being hired is still low. “In the last four years we’re seeing 27 percent of new hires in science and engineering are women,” said Cheryl Geisler, dean of the faculty of communication, art, and technology at Simon Fraser University, in Canada, and a co-author of the article. “It was 25 percent earlier in the decade, so it’s just been creeping up.”

At that rate, it may be 2050 before 50 percent of new hires in science and engineering are female, said Deborah A. Kaminski, a professor of mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Ms. Geisler’s co-author. And even after one-half of all faculty members hired are women, “it will likely take at least another 40 years before the actual population of science, engineering, and mathematics professors is 50 percent women,” says a news release on the article, titled “Survival Analysis of Faculty Retention in Science and Engineering by Gender.”