I'm disappointed that the following needs to be said, because professors ought to educate themselves on basic facts, instead of accepting myths uncritically and behaving harmfully towards minoritized women in STEM.

People, especially women, who are Black and/or Indigenous have especially challenging pathways into tenure track faculty positions, because academia is still racist and sexist in ways that are intersecting and nonlinearly compounding.

The following myths and facts are paraphrased from the 1996 research article about Ford Foundation Fellows by Smith, Wolf-Wendel, Busenberg et al, "The Pipeline for Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths" at

Academia changes slowly, so these 1996 research results still hold, and in fact other studies indicate that the representation of Black faculty has worsened since 2005.

To summarize the research...

Myth: Potential faculty of color are sought out by numerous institutions, and the competition to hire them is fierce, because there are so few candidates of color.

Fact: Supply and demand statements like this are greatly exaggerated.