An ADVANCE for Whom? A National Study of Initiatives to Improve Faculty Gender Equity

This study examines whether the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE-IT grant program identifies and funds institutions that improve faculty gender equity. By using matching procedures and a two-way fixed-effect event study, we find that when universities received ADVANCE-IT grants, their proportion and headcount of women faculty as full-time new-hire, overall faculty, and tenured and tenure-track faculty are not different from multiple comparison groups of universities—including universities that received other types of ADVANCE grants. Drawing on the concept of intersectionality, we further disaggregate women faculty into subracial/ethnic groups. We did not find consistent evidence supporting that ADVANCE-IT universities increase the proportion or headcount of women faculty in subracial/ethnic groups. We discuss implications for federal grantmaking and diversifying higher education faculty.