Over 50 female faculty members at Harvard University who are concerned about declining female tenure rates met with Harvard President Lawrence Summers and other administrators last week.
The meeting was held in response to a letter signed by 26 Harvard professors in June and sent to Summers and Harvard's dean of the faculty, William Kirby. The letter said that the school needed to address the percentage of female faculty receiving tenure at the university, which has declined steadily since Summers arrived in the 2001-02 academic year.
According to the letter, 37 percent of Harvard's tenure offers went to females in the 2000-01 academic year. Last year, the percentage hit an all-time low of 11.1 percent.
"I think the numbers cited in the letter speak for themselves," Penn professor Janice Madden wrote in an e-mail interview. "There is a startling decrease in the proportion of women among tenured faculty appointments at Harvard."
But tenure is not the only matter of concern for many of Harvard's female faculty members.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the letter also pointed to Summers' focus on hiring "rising young scholars," which often excludes women because their careers "tend to peak a bit later than men's careers."
According to Madden, this occurs because the tenure system requires a very high level of research productivity in the first seven to 10 years on the job, a time when many women choose to have children.
Madden added that the current tenure system "makes it extremely difficult for women to combine family and career success."
The meeting at Harvard last week was meant to address such concerns, based on a two-page faculty proposal that called for better diversity recruitment efforts, according to an article that appeared in The Harvard Crimson.
Summers told the Crimson that the meeting was "very constructive," adding that "obviously this is a matter for people at every level ... [and] this is something we'll all be addressing together."
"It's obviously going to be a major focus as we recruit this year and beyond."
According to Madden, such deliberate attention to the issue is necessary.
"I share the concerns of the Harvard women faculty that this decrease [in tenure offers] shows the need for more vigilance from, and encouragement by, the Harvard administration to have faculty conduct broader searches that are conducted so as to include the many qualified women faculty available in the candidate pools," she wrote.
While Madden noted that there are "certainly a large number of women receiving tenure and getting outside appointments to tenure at Penn each year," she added that women are underrepresented among the senior faculty at "virtually all elite institutions."
"Until we solve that problem, which forces many women to decide between a research career at an elite university and a family, we will not have substantial increases in the number of tenured women faculty at places like Penn," Madden wrote.
