Abstract

The “dominant gender narrative” in science holds that bias against women is pervasive and occurs in every domain, including tenure-track hiring, letters of recommendation, awards, grants, journal publications, authorship assignment, citations, salaries, promotions, and teaching evaluations. Many of these claims are repeatedly broadcast despite their nullification by larger, stronger studies and meta-analyses that do not find gender bias. Because these stronger studies are cited less often, there exists a false belief among many faculty that gender bias is omnipresent in the tenure-track academy. As an example of this false belief, 248 U.S. faculty were surveyed about their beliefs regarding gender bias. They overestimated the extent of such bias in every domain. We illustrate this misalignment of beliefs by focusing on just one of the many domains in which bias against women is alleged but has been nullified by stronger studies: tenure-track hiring. We show that the dominant narrative of pervasive bias in favor of hiring men is not supported by the evidence. The reality is the opposite of what is believed, with women preferred over comparable men: multiple sources of evidence demonstrate that in tenure-track hiring in the United States and many European countries, women have an advantage over equally-accomplished men. Yet, the claim of bias against hiring women faculty continues to be widely cited in the premier science media. Challenging the gender narrative should be part of normal scientific discourse; however, doing so often evokes a backlash—as documented in testimonials by researchers who have been attacked.

Keywords: censorship in science; misaligned faculty beliefs; gender bias; academic hiring; organized dogmatism

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).

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Ceci, S.J.; Williams, W.M. Organized Dogmatism Controls the Message about Gender Bias in the Academy. Controversial Ideas 2026, 6, 4.

Ceci SJ, Williams WM. Organized Dogmatism Controls the Message about Gender Bias in the Academy. Controversial Ideas. 2026; 6(1):4.

Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M. 2026. "Organized Dogmatism Controls the Message about Gender Bias in the Academy." Controversial Ideas 6, no. 1: 4.

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Organized Dogmatism Controls the Message about Gender Bias in the Academy