This chapter provides descriptions of the classes of interventions – top down, bottom up, and idiosyncratic – that occur in academic departments attempting to bring about gender equality. We analyze the pros and cons of each of these types of intervention. Our proposal is to help administrators and policy analysts understand what kinds of interventions, given their limitations and advantages, bring about the best outcomes under different circumstances. Later in this chapter, we explain in detail how departments can use specific practices to change, develop, or enhance these interventions through task redesign, social networks, or university-industry relationships.

To study programs systematically, we delineated four groups of departments in each of the five target disciplines: biology, chemistry, physics, computer science and electrical engineering. The first group of departments had initiated programs whose stated objective was to be more inclusive of women. The other three groups were delineated on the basis of outcomes, as recorded by the National Research Council's (NRC) annual compilation of doctoral degrees granted. In each of the five fields for the decade-and-a-half up through 1990, we selected the ten departments that had graduated the highest proportion of female doctorates, the ten that had graduated the lowest, and the ten that showed the most improvement in women's graduation rate across that period. We then selected the two departments from each group that displayed the most consistent numbers and trends.