Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?

This paper investigates the amount of academic service performed by female versus male faculty. We use 2014 data from a large national survey of faculty at more than 140 institutions as well as 2012 data from an online annual performance reporting system for tenured and tenure-track faculty at two campuses of a large public, Midwestern University. We find evidence in both data sources that, on average, women faculty perform significantly more service than men, controlling for rank, race/ethnicity, and field or department. Our analyses suggest that the male-female differential is driven more by internal service-i.e., service to the university, campus, or department-than external service-i.e., service to the local, national, and international communities-although significant heterogeneity exists across field and discipline in the way gender differentials play out.