The Royal Historical Society in the UK published the report Gender Equality and Historians in UK Higher Education in 2015. The report found that while there was a ‘roughly equal gender balance’ among school and university students studying history, more than 60 per cent of academic history staff are male and only 20.8 per cent of history professors are female.

The report also found that the situation was worse in some sub-fields of the discipline. The Economic History Society, which has been tracking the problem for 25 years, reported that their membership and attendance at their events routinely divided 75 per cent men to 25 per cent women. Although cultural history usually had a better ratio, intellectual history or international history often did not. ‘So,’ the report stated, ‘while History in the schools runs the risk of being perceived as “a girls’ subject”, and young women achieve more top grades at ‘A’ level, History in the universities is still overwhelmingly male-dominated both in certain fields and at senior levels. The growing body of research into hidden gender bias in humanities subjects reveals a host of concerns relevant to historians.’

The subsequent RHS report in 2018 reported that basic structural inequalities in gender have improved only marginally. The total number of women in academic appointments had increased to 41.6 per cent, and the number in professorial positions had increased to 26.2 per cent: 44.5 per cent of all other appointments are women.

Both the Royal Historical Society and AdvanceHE (which supports the strategic needs of higher education with specialist knowledge and resources) use data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The available data only distinguishes between appointments at professorial level and those that are not.

Figure 1: Academic appointments in history in the UK, by gender and level, 2016-17

Source: Underlying HESA data used by Advance HE, Equality + higher education: Staff statistical report 2018, available at Advance HE website, accessed January 2019.

References

Royal Historical Society, Gender Equality and Historians in UK Higher Education(2015).

Royal Historical Society, Promoting Gender Equality in UK History: A Second Report and Recommendations for Good Practice (2018).