The majority of tenured faculty members, full professors, and senior level administrators, such as presidents, provosts, and deans, are likely to be men (Hammond, 2015). Given that there are an equal or even higher number of women in academic employment, the concern becomes why men still dominate higher ranking positions within American colleges and universities. With the advent of laws to promote women's employment, the waiver of forced retirement at age 65 for faculty members, and the increases in numbers of women earning graduate degrees, it is uncertain that the percentage of women in higher education, especially among the ranks of tenure-track and tenured faculty members, has improved.

The purpose of the researcher was to investigate changes and examine differences by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's (THECB) accountability peer groups in percentages of tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure track women faculty members in public institutions in Texas. The accountability groups were set by the Texas Higher Education Accountability System (THEAS) so that institutions could be compared and grouped with other institutions having similar general academic mission and certain key academic indicators, such as size and number of graduate programs, research expenditures, and other factors. Data were extracted from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data sets over the past 20 years, from the time IPEDS began tracking data for postsecondary institutions in 1986, and replaced the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), which began tracking postsecondary institution data in 1966.