Excerpts From the Gov Study

Data from other colleges and universities around the nation suggests that the relatively low percentage of women in Government in part is due to Harvard College's imbalanced gender distribution.

The percentage of those Government students who have heard of a case of sexual harassment in the Government Department is much higher among women than men concentrators. Forty-four percent of women Government concentrators and only 26 percent of men Government concentrators have heard of a case of harassment.

When asked if they had heard of a case of sexual harassment in a department other than their own, three out of every five women non-Government social science concentrators who had heard of such a case listed the Government Department first.

Women Government concentrators are about twice as likely to think that sexism is more of a problem in their department than either male Government concentrators or women of the other social science concentrations.

Like women in non-Government social science concentrations, women in Government rarely mention explicitly gender-related apprehensions in choosing their department. However, women Government concentrators are somewhat more likely to state that gender-related problems are reasons why other undergraduates would not choose to concentrate in their department.

When asked whether or not a teaching fellow or professor had ever made the respondent feel uncomfortable on the account of his or her gender either inside or outside of class, most women Government concentrators stated that it happened rarely or never. However, women in Government, compared to both men Government concentrators and women non-Government social science concentrators, are more likely to state that a teaching fellow has made them feel uncomfortable in class.

When asked how comfortable they felt participating in class discussions, most women Government concentrators said that they were comfortable in class discussions, but about one-quarter said that they felt uncomfortable. Compared to either men Government concentrators or women non-Government social science concentrators, women in Government are less likely to claim that they feel comfortable in class discussions in their concentration.

Women in Government are more likely than either their male counterparts or female non-Government social science concentrators to think that they have to fight to talk in class or that other concentrators are too aggressive in class discussions.

The attributes of a concentration that women in Government find the most important tend, on average, to be small class sizes, the structure and number of requirements, feeling comfortable in class and professor accessibility. Women in Government tend to rank 'feeling comfortable in class discussions' as a more highly valued attribute than either men in Government or women in non-Government social science concentrations.

No widespread support among either men or women in Government emerges for more gender-specific topics in classes.

Women non-Government social science concentrators are more likely to rank 'more of a feminist perspective' as one of their top three attributes of a concentration than are women in Government. This suggests that some women might have chosen another concentration because of the substantive content of Government as taught at Harvard.

Fifty-two percent of women non-Government social science concentrators said that they considered concentrating in Government. When asked why they ultimately chose another concentration these women cited, in descending order of frequency, concerns about the competitive nature of Government concentrators', problems with introductory courses and tutorials and problems with the structure of requirements.