More than 20 years ago, Wharton Insurance Professor Olivia Mitchell attended a conference on pensions. What she remembers today is not what was discussed but how the other researchers looked at her. During the question and answer period after the presentation, Mitchell, who was sitting near the back of a long, narrow room, stood up to ask a question. "I started posing my question and 99 faces turned around and looked at me and 99 faces were men, and I realized in that moment that I was the only woman in the room," Mitchell said. Mitchell's first reaction was "Oh, that's strange," and her second reaction was "I'd better ask a good question." While women have made great strides in the world of business academia since Mitchell first started teaching two decades ago, a clear imbalance still exists. Among the country's top business schools, women make up approximately 20 percent of the faculty. Currently, women comprise 16 percent of the faculty at Wharton, but less than half of those women are tenured. Even fewer women are endowed professors, department chairwomen or heads of Wharton's 17 research centers. And while women at Penn say there is no cure-all for the discrepancy, many suggest that the University target specific recurring obstacles -- low enrollment in the doctoral pipeline, family obligations and the difficulties facing dual-career couples -- in order to reach greater gender equity.
'Not a Token'
When Management Professor Karen Jehn started at Wharton in 1992 after graduate school, she had to become acclimated to being one of few women in a male dominated department. "It was not an inviting, friendly environment," Jehn said. "I went through struggles here early on." At that time, several male colleagues made Jehn feel downright uncomfortable. Jehn is the first and only tenured female faculty member in the Management Department's 90-year history. And as a woman, she is not alone in feeling isolated in the world of business. Like the sciences, business has traditionally been a male-dominated field and women, in the past, have been slow to enter the profession. When current Wharton Business and Public Policy Department Chairwoman Elizabeth Bailey received her doctorate in the early 1970s, she was the first woman ever to receive an economics doctorate from Princeton University. And Bailey was a trailblazer yet again when she became the dean of Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration, the first female dean of a major business school. She attributed the "firsts" phenomenon to the 1960s Civil Rights Act, since businesses and academics were forced to look at whether they "were giving women a fair shot." However, Bailey said there were times when she has wondered whether her gender affected her professional career. When she was interviewing for Carnegie Mellon, she was unsure whether the school was interviewing her simply to maintain the appearance of diversity. "Are you just interviewing me so that you can show you've had a woman that you interviewed?" Bailey said she asked at the time. "'No, no, we really want you,'" was their response, she recalled. There seems to be a general consensus from female faculty that the atmosphere now in business schools is much more inviting than it was before. The situation now "means that I'm not a token," Mitchell said. "It means that I'm not the only one around that has to sit on every single hiring committee and every single search committee."
'Trying to be aware'
Some attribute the gender discrepancy to the lack of women in doctoral programs. For example, Wharton's doctoral program is only 27 percent women. And as a result, Wharton has been trying to increase the inflow of women to its graduate programs. "The solution to that, ultimately -- despite how aggressive we are in looking -- is that we've got to improve the pipeline of people entering doctoral programs," Wharton Dean Patrick Harker said. According to Harker, Wharton is also trying to increase opportunities for research on the undergraduate level because people decide on graduate school "often while they are an undergraduate." However, some female faculty members believe that the answer to more balanced numbers lies deeper than the doctoral pool alone. Instead, they say, the school should focus on retaining the women it has to create a more supportive environment. "The question will be developing and retaining [women] along the way," said Management Professor Nancy Rothbard, who, like Jehn, came from a doctoral program that had equal numbers of female and male students. To that extent, senior female faculty members have taken it upon themselves to act as mentors to their junior counterparts. For example, Jehn is involved in a reading group for doctoral students and junior faculty members to help the professors network and to talk about issues pertaining to women. She tries to make "Wharton, my department, a better place for women," so as support and retain Wharton's existing female faculty. In the years since women first entered business academia, there appears to be a greater focus on the recruitment of women and minorities in general. "In terms of recruitment, we've always been very aggressive in looking for the best talent particularly from under-represented groups," Harker said. Faculty members seem to agree. "Schools have actively been trying to be aware of gender diversity in the last couple of years, certainly," said Rothbard, one of the female professors hired this year.
'Some weigh children more, and others career more'
The decision to start a family and have children also inevitably draws women away from Wharton, as well as academia in general. In a stressful environment such as academics, where a commonly accepted motto is "publish or perish," the burden of research and family might be too great for some faculty members. "I know women who have postponed having children," said Management Professor Steffanie Wilk, who has a nine-month-old child. "Some weigh children more and others career more." Many say the burden of the work might impact one's decision to start a family. "I do not believe that you can expect to take time off and then return to work and expect people to treat you as if you never left," Mitchell said. While the hours academics work appear flexible, "it is also stressful, and even more stressful pre-tenure," Wilk said. To help alleviate the stress, Wharton does institute a policy of adding a year on to the tenure clock of professors -- male or female -- who have children. However, this does not always turn out to be an advantage. "If it is given to everybody, it's not going to necessarily help the people who are spending most of the time [caring for children]," Bailey said. Women also might be present in lower numbers, especially among the top business schools, because of the prevalence of dual-career couples. If both spouses have high profile careers that make it harder for people to simply pick up and move, women might be more willing to move and take up other careers. "Through general socialization, women might be more flexible about that," Rothbard said. One of Rothbard's research areas is work-life and career development. As a result, some women might give up their academic careers for other positions, such as within government. Some women in Wharton, for instance, have Ph.D.s, but chose administrative roles or adjunct faculty positions over teaching.
A Subtle Impact
Having few female faculty affects future generations, since the next generation of faculty members are the ones currently sitting in classrooms. While the low numbers might not deter women from entering graduate school or academia, the disproportion might have cursory effects. For example, one reason Rothbard chose to go into academia was partly because her mother was an academic, which made her aware of the profession. It doesn't have "necessarily a conscious impact on people, but more subtle," Rothbard said. To that effect, many professors do try to make sure that they are available to students, men and women alike. "I welcome that and I relish that and I value that and to the extent that I can make a contribution training the next contribution, I always try to make a special effort," Mitchell said, adding that she tries to keep in contact with students after they leave. While there are no answers to the complicated issue, some feel that it is important to have the issue out in the open as to help women progress in the future. "Avoidance and denial are the worst thing," Jehn said. "We need to make sure that... we are conscious about it and talk about it."
