Universities gather to discuss inequality

Penn administrators joined representatives from eight other research universities to examine gender inequity in higher education on Monday. The meeting -- held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- was prompted by MIT's Gender Equity Project, a 1999 study that found gender bias within universities. In a statement authored by the leaders of the nine universities present, the schools agreed to work for greater diversity among faculty and increased equity for women faculty. The statement also pledged to decrease disadvantages to individuals with family responsibilities. "Institutions of higher education have an obligation, both for themselves and for the nation, to fully develop and utilize all the creative talent available," the statement read. "We recognize that barriers still exist to the full participation of women in science and engineering." Provost Robert Barchi, Associate Provost Barbara Lowery and Biochemistry Professor Phoebe Leboy traveled to Cambridge on behalf of Penn. Representatives from the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan and Yale were also present at the meeting. With only three attendees, Penn was tied with Cal Tech for the lowest attendance at the meeting. In total, forty university presidents, provosts and professors attended the meeting. The attendees tried to identify strategies for increasing the number of science and engineering females with doctorate degrees that enter academia. The group also examined the marginalization of female faculty. "The general exhortation that sexual discrimination is a bad thing doesn't work," said Leboy, who, with Lowery, co-chairs a Penn committee to look into gender equity at the University. "It has to go beyond simply encouraging people not to discriminate." Penn's Gender Equity Committee was charged last spring with reviewing and monitoring gender issues on campus. Last October, a progress report presented to the University Council showed that only 13 percent of Wharton School faculty and 6 percent of the School of Engineering faculty are women. Leboy declined to comment about the current progress of the committee. Many of the meeting's representatives said they felt the discussion was productive. "The fact that these steps will be taken by these nine leading research universities is very encouraging indeed," MIT spokesman Ken Campbell said. And now, the individual universities are working on initiatives to tackle the problems discussed at the meeting on their own campuses. "I'm really looking forward to what each university president plans to do -- not what they think should be done," said Yale Chemistry Professor Alanna Schepartz, who attended the MIT meeting. "Someone trustworthy needs to be watching and looking to make sure that salary, space and the groups of things that I refer to as the 'perks of the profession,' are all distributed on the basis of merit," she added. University President Judith Rodin said in an e-mail statement that Penn was working on issues surrounding gender equity far before the conference. "Of course, Penn has an effort well underway which is actually much broader than that encompassed by the MIT pledge," she said. Many females at the conference said they had personal connections to the meeting's topic. "I don't recall ever having a female professor in math, science or engineering," Stanford professor Margaret Brandeau said. "One of the things that came out loud and clear... was that the problem has no single cause and no single solution." The group agreed to reconvene and discuss progress at a later date, most likely in a year, according to Campbell. "Then we'll see who is serious about confronting this problem and who isn't," Schepartz said. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Rob Steinman contributed to the article.