When Morenike Adetula '06 was trying to choose a concentration in her sophomore year, she was troubled that, at the time, she knew of only one female professor among the more than 30 members of the economics department's faculty.
Since then, she said, "a few more" female economics professors have been hired, but the striking imbalance that remains can be "discouraging" to interested female undergraduates who may lack role models in the department. Although Adetula has played an active role in the department, serving as head of its department undergraduate group, she said she recognizes that other female students may not be as willing to get involved.
Adetula's story illustrates a problem faced by many colleges across the country.
A 2005 study cited by the National Organization of Women found that women made up only 11.5 percent of tenure-track economics department faculty, but over 32 percent of undergraduate concentrators at the universities surveyed were female.
Last week, The Herald reported on a growing gender gap in the University's undergraduate student body. In 2004-2005, the undergraduate population was 54 percent female, yet among the faculty, women held only 31 percent of tenure or tenure-track positions.
From a courtroom to the Office of Institutional Diversity
Despite the current gender imbalance in the faculty, the University has made significant progress over the past 30 years.
In 1975, a female faculty member brought a lawsuit against the University, alleging sex discrimination in hiring, promotion, contract renewal and tenure. The case was settled out of court for $1.1 million in 1977, and the University signed a consent decree, or agreement, to reform employment policies and address gender discrimination.
Brown immediately granted tenure to four women and additional compensation to another. A monitoring committee was formed to help create and implement goals and timetables for adding women to the faculty, as well as develop written standards for faculty employment.
In the first decade following the case, the number of female faculty rose from 12 percent to 20 percent. Since then, the percentage of women in the faculty has steadily continued to rise.
Despite the changes, a University petition to terminate the consent decree in 1989 was rejected by court ruling. Instead, Brown was ordered to grant 13 more women tenure by 1991. The decree was finally terminated in the early 1990s after a faculty vote determined the qualifications had been met, according to Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen.
Allen's office was created in 2002 exclusively to monitor diversity issues. Among other things, her office helps compile statistics on gender and other diversity issues for the University and works with individual departments to ensure that faculty-hiring searches take diversity concerns into account.
Gender in the hiring process
When searching for a new faculty member, departments are not under any obligation to hire based on diversity, but the administration can encourage them to "make an extra effort," said Elizabeth Doherty, director of faculty affairs.
Each department must submit a hiring plan that is expected to look at the existing demographics of the department as well as those in the academic discipline as a whole. Departments can signal that they are encouraging females to apply by placing advertisements in publications such as the Women's Review of Books.
Departments' shortlists of candidates are reviewed by the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action, which checks whether the list's demographics are representative of the field and whether "the department has really made every effort to address the inequity (that may already exist) in the department," Doherty said.
Before departments offer a position, they must file a compliance report on their consideration of diversity issues.
"There really are a lot of checks on the system and many opportunities for conversation at different stages of the process," Doherty said.
The Target of Opportunity program, instituted in 2004 as part of the Plan for Academic Enrichment, allows departments to truncate the normal hiring process and access more resources to bring in professors who can fill gaps in the existing faculty. These hires are not necessarily based on a need for increased diversity or gender balance, but Allen said many of the resources have been directed toward that objective.
Allen said that the physical sciences have been a special target for the program - as of 2004, only 9 percent of the physical science faculty was female. The problem, however, also stems from the lack of women in the pipeline of available hires.
Doherty said explanations for the gender disparity in the physical sciences are complex.
"What is it that happens to women? Is it that other fields are more attractive or is that academia is more hostile? I think it's probably some of both," Doherty said.
Monitoring women's issues
Once a month, the University's Committee on the Status of Women meets to examine and discuss women's issues for faculty, staff and undergraduates. But on Tuesday evening, the faculty unanimously approved the committee's request to streamline its focus to only those issues that concern faculty.
"The committee has been around for so long that we have to update," according to Catherine Dubé, chair of the committee and senior lecturer in community health and family medicine.
"Brown is ahead of the game" in comparison to peer institutions, Dubé said.
The committee has worked with the University to implement the "stop the clock policy," which allows women to take maternity leave without an effect on the limited time period they have to achieve promotion. Additionally, the committee identified various daycares around the University's campus that can provide childcare for faculty.
Dubé attributes an increased access to information and statistics on diversity at Brown to President Ruth Simmons.
"There is a sense that (administrators) are willing to get through some of the secrecy so that we can decide where to place our efforts," she said
After noticing that women compose roughly 31 percent of tenure-track faculty, 38 percent of research faculty and 72 percent of lecturers, the committee decided to look at class differences among these different types of faculty.
Dubé related her own experience of inequality. After her promotion to senior lecturer, she assumed that, like those promoted to associate professor, she would receive an honorary degree from the University. When she made the request, however, she was told that only those on tenure track receive honorary degrees.
"I think that's fundamentally unfair," Dubé said."It's such a simple thing that the University can do to provide equity."
She wrote a letter to Simmons with the committee's support, and at a meeting last year, the Brown Corporation changed the policy. During Commencement exercises this year, senior lecturers, along with the rest of their colleagues, will receive honorary degrees for the first time.
Also in May, the committee will host a faculty forum in which Simmons and Allen will present their findings on gender-related issues at the University.
It's not just Brown...
Gender gaps in the faculty extend beyond Brown and may be even more significant at other schools.
"When compared to other Ivies, we're doing well. We're all about the same - between 27 to 32 percent," Allen said.
Lee Warren, associate director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, said that "Harvard is just terrible in terms of (gender balance) for senior and tenured faculty," but that "more and more" the university is making the necessary changes.
She added that Harvard has just begun compiling gender statistics like those that Allen and others have been putting together at Brown for four years.
Warren said Harvard's gender monitoring process was started in response to the now-infamous remarks made by President Lawrence Summers last year, in which he speculated that "innate" gender differences contributed to the lack of women in scientific fields. "When the president makes a remark like that," Warren said, "it becomes something that gets discussed."
She said the gender gap in faculty poses problems for female students when they begin to seek mentors. Warren said that although many male faculty members are good with female students, they are not necessarily "speaking the same language as their students."
Back at Brown, Adetula said that the two economics courses she took from a female professor - Lecturer Rachel Friedberg - were two of the most interesting courses she has taken in the department.
"I'm not sure whether it was the subject matter of EC 111 ("Intermediate Microeconomics") and EC 162 ("Introduction to Econometrics"), whether the material itself was just more interesting, or whether it was that her lectures were really upbeat, or maybe that she is younger than many other professors in the department," she said.
A look ahead
While the gender imbalance will take time to equalize, female students looking for female role models can find individuals outside of their departments.
Adetula said she has two advisors - her male concentration advisor and her female academic advisor - and that, for her, the gender gap has not been much of an issue.
Warren said that although universities can take steps to address gender disparities now, significant results may take time to emerge.
"It's a long-term process," Warren said. "These things don't just happen overnight."
