Assuming that the men and women were on the whole equally well qualified (and there is no evidence to the contrary), the difference in admission rates looks like a strong piece of evidence to show that men and women are treated differently in the admissions procedure. The university seemed to prefer men, 44 to 35.
Each major did its own admissions to graduate work. They looked at the data for each major separately to identify the departments that discriminated against women. A puzzle appeared. Major by major there did not seem to be any general bias against women. On the whole, if there was any bias it ran against the men.
Here is the data for the six largest departments. These accounted for over one-third of the total number of applicants. The data was typical of the whole campus -- except that the bias looks worse.
| Men | Women | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dept | Numb. Applicants | Admitted | Numb. Applicants | Admitted |
| A | 825 | 62% | 108 | 82% |
| B | 560 | 63% | 25 | 68% |
| C | 325 | 37% | 593 | 34% |
| D | 417 | 33% | 375 | 35% |
| E | 191 | 28% | 393 | 24% |
| F | 373 | 6% | 341 | 7% |
| Total | 2,691 | 45% | 1,835 | 30% |
How would you explain this?
After you have thought about this, see the following for more discussion.
This was based on the article:
B. Bickel, E. Hammel, & J. W. O'Connell, "Is there a sex bias in graduate
admissions?", Science, Vol. 187 (1975), pp. 398--404.