Another female pres. for the Ivy League?

In its 371-year history, Harvard University has been led by scientists, clergy, lawyers and literary scholars - but never by a woman.

And as the Harvard search to replace ex-president Lawrence Summers closes in on a short list of candidates, one name is notably missing: Amy Gutmann.

The Harvard Crimson reported this month that Gutmann had been dropped from the university's list of potential candidates for its presidency.

But the omission of Penn's president's name from Harvard's roster is no indication of the growing female administrative presence in the Ivy League.

Penn paved the way for the trend of female presidents when Judith Rodin took the spot in 1994. Since then, some of the University's top-tier counterparts, such as Princeton and Brown universities, have followed suit with women presidents of their own.

But at Harvard, having a female president has greater implications.

"It's very politically correct and very smart of them to have two women finalists," Mary Wenniger, the founder and editor of the Women in Higher Education journal, said.

Wenniger's comment harkens back to Summers's comments about women in science - and their so-called lack of innate aptitude in the field - that caused a national stir in 2005 and eventually contributed to his resignation.

According to reports by the Crimson, two of the university's presidential candidates being closely considered are female.

One is current Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, and the other is Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Faust.

Gutmann - the first and only female Ivy League president to succeed a female Ivy League president - said increased attention toward female candidates is "a confirmation that there's more equal and open opportunity than there was in the past."

And beyond the Ivy League, experts say the increased attention to female candidates is representative of an improved pipeline for women in academia.

A 2001 study by the American Council on Education found that 21 percent of university presidents were women, up from 9.5 percent 15 years earlier.

"It's exciting that women are being considered in their own right," Kathy Schultz, a Graduate School of Education professor who has taught courses in Gender and Education, said.

She noted that, until there are more tenured female professors, there will continue to be a larger proportion of males in consideration for university presidency positions.

"The real success will be when it doesn't need to be noted when the new president is a woman, . [and] we're clearly moving in that direction," Gutmann said.

Nevertheless, experts still say that in a position as important as a university president, there's much more to consider than gender.

Ultimately, man or woman, "I think they will choose what's best for Harvard," Wenniger said.

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