Faculty gender disparity reported

A special committee investigating gender equity issues at Penn reported yesterday that women make up just 13 percent of the Wharton School faculty and 6 percent of the Engineering School. At its second meeting of the academic year yesterday, the University Council heard a progress report on the status of women at Penn that also revealed few significant salary disparities between men and women. The Gender Equity Committee was charged last spring with examining gender discrimination issues among Penn faculty. Though committee co-Chairwomen Phoebe Leboy and Barbara Lowery emphasized that further data needed to be collected and analyzed, the committee found that female faculty members totaled 24 percent of the 525 members of the standing faculty in 1999. But the University-wide number may be misleading, Leboy said, because of the massive differences between schools. For instance, while 98 percent of Nursing faculty are women, females constitute just 6 percent of Engineering and 13 percent of Wharton faculty. The committee also presented Council with the changes in female representation between 1988 and 1999, with the percentage of women in both Engineering and Wharton decreasing. "It looks like we are running into some problems in these two schools," Leboy told the committee, though she cautioned that the loss of a single female professor in those schools can look skewed because the female representation was fairly small to begin with. University President Judith Rodin said before the meeting that it was important to address the female faculty retention of Penn. "In some way, we're not retaining," she said. The 14-member committee also gathered data regarding the status of female professors. "There is a disproportionately [high] number of women at the assistant professor level," Leboy explained. Women are also underrepresented on the tenure track, the committee found. However, Lowery said the committee had found that there was no significant gender discrepancy in the salaries of faculty members outside of the Medical School. Salary data for the Medical School is still being gathered. Finally, the committee presented a breakdown of the representation of females in leadership positions at the University, with 25 percent of dean positions and 24 percent of associate, vice or deputy dean positions being held by women. It also reported that women make up just 8 percent of departmental chairs University-wide. "We need to do some work," Lowery said. Both Lowery and Leboy reminded Council that the committee's work, though progressing, was far from done. The committee -- which hopes to present a final report in the spring -- will also interview and distribute questionnaires to faculty members in an effort to try and understand the more qualitative aspects of gender equity, such as faculty perceptions, mentoring and scholarly activity. "We just wanted to show the committee how far along we've come," Lowery explained. Also at the committee meeting, Provost Robert Barchi presented reports highlighting the achievements of the University in the past several years and future projects Penn would tackle. The Committee on Pluralism and Committee on Admission and Financial Aid also presented their annual reports.

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