Missing Numbers

ONE long-serving member of the faculty once commented that Harvard is a revolving door for junior professors; tenure is out of reach for most young scholars. But for women scholars. Harvard is more of a locked door.

To begin with, the numbers are staggering. A mere 7 percent of Harvard tenured faculty are women, and only 25 percent of the junior faculty are women. Despite their sparse representation on the faculty as a whole, women nevertheless bear the brunt of the administrative burden. Women represent 31 percent of departmental head tutors, although they comprise only 14 percent of the faculty eligible for such posts.

In addition to administrative responsibilities, women faculty are more likely to be called upon to advise women students who are looking for role models in academia.

BUT being a junior professor is a competitive business; less than one-tenth make it to the senior ranks. The key to the door, according to professors and administrators, is publication. Trying to juggle research, teaching, administrative duties and maternity leave, women faculty often fall short of Harvard's expectations for publication. The net result is that in the past 10 years only 14 more women have been added to the rolls of senior faculty at Harvard--of 383 tenured professors, only 27 are women.

The numbers work against women scholars in more ways than one. Many women specialize in non-traditional fields or take feminist approaches to their research. The fact that men often judge their work leads to subtle or blatant biases blocking the route to tenure; this is exacerbated by the dearth of available female senior faculty able to review their record. Says Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Alice A. Jardine, "Junior women faculty are not only discriminated against because they're women, but also because senior male faculty don't agree with their work."

Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence has been attempting to address the problem of junior faculty advancement as a whole for almost two years. (His plan would gradually increase the proportion of professors promoted from within Harvard's own ranks). But Spence has neglected to focus on the even larger problem of tenuring women at Harvard--either in-house or externally.

It's time Harvard paid attention to the careers of young women scholars and their new fields of research. The University must address why women junior faculty are overburdened with administrative duties. And Harvard must draw in more women senior faculty to provide crucial role models for the student body, add academic expertise form different viewpoints and make it clear that two decades after the start of the Feminist Revolution women have an equal shot at academic achievement as men.