'Leaky pipeline' can derail female profs

Like many women in academia, University President Amy Gutmann has struggled to balance her professional career and family life.

"If I hadn't had a high-powered professional career, I would probably have more children," Gutmann said.

For female professors striving to reach the highest ranks in their fields, issues like child-rearing make obtaining tenure more of a struggle than it is for their male counterparts.

A 2004 nationwide study by the American Association of University Professors showed that the percentage of female professors is disproportionately low and that women are least well represented among the higher ranks -- a phenomenon that has been termed a "leaky pipeline."

"We would hope that universities would be a place where gender equity is something that people believe in and practice," said John Curtis, director of research for the AAUP. "It hasn't quite worked out that way."

Penn has not been able to escape this national trend, as men outnumber women nearly three to one on the University's standing faculty.

About 36 percent of assistant professors and 29 percent of associate professors are female. However, only about 17 percent of full professors, those who have tenure, are women.

Some believe that many women choose a more secure employment future in industry rather than turning to academia. Also, issues intrinsic to women, such as pregnancy, may affect a woman's decision to enter into academia or seek tenure.

"I think the biggest issue we're facing right now is the issue of managing family, child-rearing and professional career that disproportionately burdens women faculty members," Gutmann said.

Both Associate Provost Janice Bellace and History professor Ann Farnsworth-Alvear said that the concurrence of a woman's peak fertility years and the crucial period in seeking tenure is a factor in the low number of female professors.

Farnsworth-Alvear, who had her first child while an assistant professor at Penn, said that many women get advised to wait until they have tenure before asking for maternity leave.

Bellace said, "The effort you make to become a full professor does come at a very bad time" for women.

"If you wait until you get tenure, at least you're secure," Bellace said. But "you can only delay having children so long."

However, Microbiology professor Helen Davies is unsure if the decision to have a child is a major factor in the low number of female full professors.

"It may be a part of it," Davies said, "but then why does this happen to women who are not going to have children? Why can't they rise?"

One answer may lie in the academic-promotion processes, which some say discriminates against women.

When evaluating a professor, committees assess scholarship, teaching and research on the basis of letters of recommendation from peer institutions.

Farnsworth-Alvear said that although the process does not differ across gender, females still have a tougher time getting tenure than males.

"In theory, it is a total merit-based system," Farnsworth-Alvear said, adding that for her it was. However, she said that this is "not every woman's experience."

She added that it is harder for women to get their work nationally recognized and that at times a man will get more recognition than a woman for the same work.

Farnsworth-Alvear said that she is positive that she got tenure at Penn because "strong senior women supported" her. She said that members of the assessment committee may recognize their younger selves in the professor seeking tenure, which she said has the effect of favoring men.

Agreeing, Davies said that "the people who make these decisions tend to choose people more like themselves ... and, so far, women don't make out as well as men."

Letters of recommendation from peer institutions, which play a large role in getting tenure, may also be inherently biased, according to Harvard University professor Pippa Norris.

Norris said that as committees look for tenure references, peers at other Ivy League universities are contacted. However, these are "the areas where there aren't women faculty."

Therefore, the selection process "reproduces a certain group," such as male professors because the process leaves out "a whole bunch of networks" that could potentially be more helpful to females, Norris said.

The issue has sparked several court cases, including a few at Penn.

In 1985, then-Management professor Rosalie Tung sued the University, alleging that she had been denied tenure on account of the peer reviews of her Wharton colleagues, which she said discriminated against her on the basis of her sex and race.

However, Davies, who has been at Penn since 1949 and seen many women sue the University on the basis of sexism during the academic-promotion process, said that many settlements have been ones in which the woman agrees not to go public with the incident, which makes it harder to determine if discrimination actually occurred.

Farnsworth-Alvear echoed Davies' sentiments and explained that sexism in the academic promotion process is very hard to check and measure.

She noted that the way sexism affects tenure is very specific to a department but that sometimes it is also very diffuse, since scholarship is evaluated nationwide.

Still, some officials believe that the reason fewer women obtain tenure is simply because there are fewer women seeking it.

Bellace said that the number of females and males who are chosen to receive tenure reflects the current doctoral pool.

She added that women are more likely to go into industry, rather than teaching, because "it's a more secure employment future."

"If you go on a tenure track, you're going a minimum of six more years, and at the end of the day you might not make tenure," Bellace said.

She also mentioned that women are more likely to apply to and be hired at small liberal arts colleges than to top research universities.

Consistent with Bellace's conjecture, the AAUP study demonstrated that although women make up only 33 percent of faculty at doctoral-level institutions nationwide, they constitute 41 percent of faculty at baccalaureate and master's degree institutions.

But, Norris said, women "want to [teach at] the same high-powered institutions" as men but that "the selective process isn't choosing women."

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