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Over the last year, several high-profile popular press articles and books by both academics and business executives have addressed the experiences of professional women, offering analysis and advice related to career advancement and work-life balance (Sandberg 2013; Slaughter 2012; Kantor 2013). Meanwhile, women have not fully closed the gender gap in academia in the US or Canada, despite gains in the proportion of women pursuing university and advanced degrees (Baker 2012). About 40% of Canadian and 32% of American political scientists are women (CPSA Diversity Task Force 2012, 6; Breuning and Sanders 2007, 348). Meanwhile, the role of women in American political science was the subject of both a roundtable at the American Political Science Association (APSA) 2013 Annual Meeting (McMurtrie 2013; Economist 2013) and virtual symposium hosted by The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post (Voeten 2013).

While female academics have made progress and constitute a larger proportion of faculty in the humanities and social sciences, they continue to be particularly underrepresented in math-intensive fields (Ceci and Williams 2010, 275; in Canada, see Acker, Webber, and Smyth 2012, 746). Further, the concentration of women tends to be higher in lower ranks, lower status institutions or in contingent or part-time positions (Halse 2011, 567-8; Baker 2010, 324; in Canada, see Acker, Webber, and Smyth 2012, 746; Doucet, Smith, and Durand 2012, 54; in political science or international relations, see APSA 2005; Henehan and Sarkees 2009, 432–3; Hesli, Lee, and Mitchell 2012; Bates, Jenkins, and Pflaeger 2012 …