Women on the FacultyA Male Bastion For Three Centuries

( The following excerpts are taken from the report released last week by the Committee on the Status of Women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, chaired by Caroline W. Bynum, assistant professor of History, and Michael L. Walzer, professor of Government. )

IOUR] report presents a depressing picture of the present employment of women in tenured and non-tenured positions in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In terms of percentages, either relative to the number of women graduates or absolutely, the figures are disgracefully small. We have argued... that national statistics do not indicate an exodus of women from academic careers of such catastrophic proportions as would be necessary to explain the Harvard situation. They indicate instead that women are less likely than men to gain employment at major universities, more likely than men to teach in junior colleges, teacher's colleges, women's colleges, or small liberal arts colleges-facts for which the Harvard situation could be one of the causes as easily as one of the results. We have discussed... the difficulties faced by women who attempt to combine family and career. But we do not believe that these difficulties entirely explain the absence of women on the Harvard faculty. We are not arguing, on the other hand, that the depressing figures are due entirely to overt discrimination, although we have found evidence of discrimination just as we have found evidence of career difficulties. To a considerable extent, the present situation must be explained by Harvard's history. A male bastion for more than three centuries, growing over time from a denominational men's college to a major university, Harvard has been slow to recognize changes in ideas about sex roles. It has tended to overlook injustices and has continued to "do business in the usual manner." But we have now reached that point which usually precedes significant change: when the injustice is so visible and the discontent so apparent that few can doubt the need for reform....

Guidelines and the Permanent Committee on Women

WE PROPOSE first, as a rough guideline, that the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences strive to achieve a percentage of women in its tenured ranks equal to the percentage of women receiving Ph. D.'s from Harvard ten years ago (9.6 per cent in 1959-60) and a percentage of women in the non-tenured ranks equal to the percentage of women receiving Ph. D.'s from Harvard today (19 per cent in 1968-69). We take these figures for convenience, because they are easily obtained each year, not because we feel that only Harvard graduates are candidates for the Harvard faculty. Since the admissions policy of the graduate departments in no sense favors women, and since virtually all department chairmen have assured us that women do fully as well as men in graduate study, the percentage of women receiving Ph. D.'s seems a good indication of what our commitment to the employment of women ought to be. It is, moreover, a guideline with progress built in; as the percentage increases, the number of women on the faculty should also increase, if the guidelines are followed. We are not, however, proposing a quota system; we regard it as perfectly compatible with our guidelines that in every particular case excellence and not sex (or race or age) should be the only criterion for academic employment. Nor do we expect even the immediate targets, fixed by the present percentages, to be reached in a year or two. Given the relatively small number of people hired each year at the senior level, progress will necessarily be more gradual, but it should be steady and consistent over time, approaching nearer and nearer to the guidelines even as the percentages they set increase. At the junior level, it ought to be possible to reach the present guideline in about five years.

This recommendation should not be taken to imply that departments with large female enrollments and large percentages of female Ph.D. recipients need strive only to meet the University-wide guidelines. Unless such departments make a serious effort to hire women in proportion to the numbers they educate, the numbers of women on the faculty will not increase rapidly or significantly. Much here depends on the Dean's efforts to encourage departmental hiring and on the firmness with which the Permanent Committee on Women requires reports of progress.

We propose secondly the creation of a Permanent Committee on Women. This committee, consisting of five members of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of whom three shall be tenured and two non-tenured, shall be appointed by the Dean. We suggest that a committee of graduate students and undergraduates be selected by the Permanent Committee to consult with it. The Permanent Committee on Women shall be charged with two tasks: periodically surveying the status of women at Harvard and devising ways of increasing the number of women on the faculty. Its purpose shall be to create a climate in which prejudice against women, or apathy toward their presence and future at Harvard, will be hard to maintain; it shall serve as a "watchdog" to make sure that the uttering of pious generalities is not substituted for serious efforts to hire on the basis of excellence rather than sex.

The Permanent Committee on Women shall report publicly to the Harvard community every year on the progress of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences toward meeting the guidelines set out above. Department chairmen shall be required to report to the Dean of the Faculty annually on the numbers of women at all levels presently in the department, including entering graduate students; on the women considered for any appointments made that year; on the relative allocation of funds and fellowships (including teaching fellowships) to men and women; and on the relative success (and reasons for lack of success) in placing male and female graduate students who desire job placement. The Dean shall supply this information to the committee, which shall then consult directly with any department whose report is unsatisfactory. The Permanent Committee shall also require and receive, through the Dean's office, reports from the Masters of Houses, the Committee on General Education, and the head of the Expository Writing program on the numbers of women tutors in their various domains, and reports from the Harvard Board of Freshman Advisors and the Bureau of Study Counsel about the number of women on their staffs. Every five years, beginning next year, department chairmen shall be required to report to the Permanent Committee through the Dean's office the reasons why each female research associate or fellow and each female lecturer, permanent and non-permanent, in that department holds an off-ladder rather than an on-ladder appointment....

Faculty Appointments

OUR THIRD recommendation is simply a strong endorsement of a policy only recently announced by the Dean of the Faculty: that department chairmen should provide ad hoc committees on permanent appointments with "evidence that consideration was given to women... by including in the materials they submit the names received and the steps taken to ascertain potential candidates...." We regard this as an absolutely crucial enforcement mechanism and would suggest that when the evidence submitted is unsatisfactory, ad hoe committees should themselves take an active role in trying to ascertain whether there are qualified women candidates for the open position....

Part-Time Teaching

OUR FIRST THREE proposals, concerned with guidelines, ad hoe committees, and the establishment of a Permanent Committee, are intended to encourage Harvard departments to increase the number of women in tenured and non-tenured positions. Our fourth proposal, on part-time teaching, is intended to make it possible for more women to accept positions on the Harvard faculty now and in the future.... We recommend to the faculty as a whole that departments be allowed to appoint in the normal way a limited number of part-time assistant, associate, and full professors. The precise number of such appointments ought properly to be a matter of negotiation between department chairmen and the Dean, but it is not our intention that, at any given moment, more than a few members of any single department would be working on a part-time basis. With regard to assistant and associate professors, we recommend that such appointments be for the usual term, though with sufficient flexibility to permit those holding them to after their time commitment from year to year.