The Daily Pennsylvanian
Last month, eight university presidents -- including Penn's Amy Gutmann -- publicly pledged to promote gender equality among university faculty.
Now, University administrators are working to make good on that promise.
A little over one year old, Penn's Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty Development, Diversity and Equity -- which Gutmann charged with addressing questions of gender equality -- is seeking to make it easier for female professors to get tenure at Penn.
At Penn, only about 17 percent of tenured professors are female, and there are roughly three times as many men as there are women on the University's current standing faculty.
Gutmann's pledge stressed the need to "develop academic personnel policies, institutional resources and a culture that supports family commitments" so that female academics feel comfortable at Penn.
The key to achieving these goals, according to Committee Chairwoman Sherry Adams, may lie in a mentorship program the committee has developed over the past few months.
The Committee is now urging junior faculty members to participate in University-wide mentoring programs. The programs vary from school to school, but both the Medical and Dental Schools have instituted mandatory mentoring programs for junior faculty in addition to an annual leadership mentoring conferences for female faculty.
Women professors often "have greater demands on their time," Adams said. It has become "more difficult for women to deal with the stresses of academic life and make time for their families."
While these programs are open to all junior faculty, Adams believes women have more to gain from participating, especially when it comes to establishing tenure.
In striving to receive tenure, "some faculty -- women more than men -- tend to fall through the cracks," Adams said.
Although the number of women and men who are put up for tenure is about equal at Penn, the problem stems from women professors actually staying to work for the six years required before they are considered for tenure.
To have tenure at Penn, professors must "demonstrate excellence in research, teaching and their department," Adams said. However, many women at the assistant professor stage tend to "flounder" between publishing books or manuscripts and raising children and thus find it difficult to meet the six-year requirement.
Elena DiLapi -- director of the Penn Women's Center -- said that while the Committee was doing important work, the challenges of women in academia extend far beyond questions of getting tenure.
She added that adequate childcare facilities and spaces for breastfeeding were crucial to helping female professors balance both their careers and their families.
