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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. 26IThis content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 3 Jan 2015 13:56:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsEessa Blackstone e Oliver Fulton Sex discrimination among university teachers dramatically lower in both countries: 28 and I6 per cent respectively.3 How far this decline in the proportion of women reflects discrimination in the procedure for admitting graduate students and how far it is the result of a lower application rate by women, we do not know. We suspect that overt discrimination against women at this stage is relatively rare; but more subtle factors may operate within the universities which could both improve the chances of men over women in obtaining graduate school places and result in fewer able women applying than able men. To speculate, one of the most important of these could be a difference in the degree of sponsorship and encouragement given to men by their teachers compared to that given to women. Similar factors may be at work at the next stage, in the transition from graduate student to university teacher. Sponsorship is particularly important in the U.S.A. where, traditionally, posts are seldom nationally advertised, but are filled instead via the operation of complex professional networks. In Britain, where there is a more formal and, in principle, more open system of appointing staff through newspaper advertisements to which anyone may reply, active sponsorship whereby the teacher finds a place for his or her student may be less crucial; but a cool testimonial can be equally damning in either country. For whatever reason, far fewer women hold university posts than men. It appears from a survey of applicants for university posts in the U.K. that in this country far fewer women apply for posts: indeed, the proportion of women applicants who obtain jobs is no different from that for men4 which suggests that overt discrimination at this stage too is unusual. Similar evidence is not available for America, but it is clear that 'affirmative action' programmes have been able to discover a large number of fully qualified women, many of whom would not previously have applied. One reason for the small number of women applying is attrition due to marriage and childbirth. Itisnotuncommon, especially in the U.S., for graduate students to have a child before completing their degrees.5 The solution of part-time employment is unattractive to universities and hard to reconcile with the demands of an academic career.We turn now from the question of first recruitment to the profession to that of the subsequent fate of women recruits. Table I makes it clear that women enter the profession in smaller numbers but that in both countries they obtain promotion m...