Most research universities in the U.S. have broad commitments to increasing the hiring of women faculty. Women make up the majority of non-tenure track lecturers across the US. Despite these gains, women continue to be persistently and substantially underrepresented in STEM fields. A 2020 study on biological science Ph.D. recipients concluded that those who are female and have children are 7 percentage points less likely than their male peers to ever obtain a tenure-track position. According to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), only 15% of tenure-track engineering faculty are women and only 14% of computer science tenure-track faculty are women.

In 2016 women occupied almost half (48.4%) of tenure track positions but women filled only 37.6% of tenured faculty positions and 36.1% of full professor positions. At research universities, men outnumber women in tenured positions by 2.3 to 1.0. Women with young children are less likely to enter tenure track positions than their childless peers, especially at research intensive universities. 

In order to stop the leaky pipeline of women faculty in STEM and professional programs, many institutions have formal policies and recruiting efforts to strengthen opportunities for women with tenure track positions. Many institutions also have informal policies. For example, at UMBC eligible faculty may use any form of annual, sick, personal or holiday leave, accrued or otherwise available under existing policies to attain the 12 week paid parental leave. If the faculty member has insufficient leave to attain 12 weeks of parental leave, UMBC will supplement paid leave days to bring the faculty member up to 12 weeks of leave time. For this example, we would count UMBC as having zero paid weeks of parental leave as faculty have to use sick, personal or holiday leave before the informal supplemental paid leave kicks in.