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Duke, Princeton initiate campus gender equity reforms

Women presidents now lead prestigious private male bastions at Duke University NC and Princeton University NJ. It's no coincidence that both schools recently released gender equity studies recommending far reaching changes to improve the climate for women on campus.

Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane launched the Women's Initiative in May 2002 to understand and address the needs of women undergraduate, graduate and professional students, faculty and staff. She unveiled its report in September 2003.

Princeton participated in a meeting at MIT in January 2001 about the status of women faculty in science and engineering. That fall the new president, Shirley Tilghman, named a task force to investigate the situation at Princeton. Their report and recommendations came in May 2003.

Duke women students: thin and well dressed

Clad in baggy pants, heavier than average and oriented toward social action, undergraduate Kelly Quirk manages the student radio station. She feels she doesn't fit the norms she perceives: "The Duke ideal is white, athletic, thin, straight and well-dressed. And if you don't fit into that mold, you feel as though you are on the outside."

She's seen friends hide their sexual orientation for fear of harassment. The student newspaper reinforces the pressure to conform. "Watching the way the Duke community responds--including particular articles and columnists--to women activists on this campus has caused me not to want to be the vocal one on more controversial issues," she said, according to the report.

Women and men rarely get to know each other over dinner and a show, undergraduate Brook Palmer said. Instead they meet at off-campus fraternity parties and hook up for sex. "Women can get stranded off campus without a friend or a safe ride home," she reported.

Recent alumnae echoed students' descriptions of alcohol and eating disorders. Inhi Cho Suh (BA 1997) recalled a late-night call from a male stranger who'd seen her in the freshman yearbook, informally called "The Pig Book."

While graduates of the Women's College (1930-72) at Duke said it built their confidence, alumnae who attended Duke as a merged college for women and men said their confidence fell. "Being 'cute' trumps being smart for women in the social environment," the report concluded.

Choose children or tenure

When assistant professor Dr. Claudia Buchmann became pregnant in 1997, her sociology department didn't know how to deal with it: "There was no recognition that parenting is something people do. Pregnancy and child birth were treated as a medical problem."

Duke's only previous pregnant sociology faculty member took a few years away from work in the 1960s to raise children. The last time a woman came up through the ranks to tenure in that department was in the 1980s. Unlike most schools, Duke still has the same gender ratio of assistant professors as in 1991.

Even with a new tenure-clock relief policy, time requirements of research limit the size of most faculty families; "I don't know of a woman at Duke who has had two children pre-tenure and gotten tenure. You have to choose whether to have more than one child or have a career."

Juggling work and family is a challenge for women graduate and professional students, faculty and staff. Many feel isolated and want mentoring around women's issues. The shortage of senior women translates to a shortage of mentors.

Women staff voiced concerns around pay equity, safety, respect and opportunities for professional development. Women of color felt their contributions were acknowledged less than those of white women. Women staff added that work-life balance would benefit from family friendly policies that support parental involvement by dads as well as moms.

Graduate and professional students' responses varied sharply by school, with some schools offering few faculty role models for women and minority students. More women than men said they lost confidence after entering grad school and felt they didn't fit in.

Princeton's few women scientists

"At Princeton we are all smart enough to know that women can do anything men can do academically. But when there is such a discrepancy in the number of male vs. female professors, it suggests that women will not be hired as much as men, and that their work isn't valued as much as men's work," an undergraduate woman reported in a 2001 student government survey.

The Princeton task force that studied the status of women faculty in 13 science and engineering departments found women had increased as a percentage of faculty but were still a small minority. Among assistant professors, only half as many women as men have mentors.

Women full professors leave at twice the rate of their male peers. Women perceive they get fewer resources for lab space and equipment. They consider their departments less collegial and report lower job satisfaction.

Tenured women and men reported equal participation on university-wide committees, but women were less likely to chair their department. Although the chair is the key to departmental climate, women have chaired only geo sciences (1988-91) and psychology (since 1992). Maria Klawe became the first dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science in early 2003.

In the past five years, six men but only one woman in natural science and engineering requested tenure clock extensions following childbirth or adoption. A would-be-mother told the task force, "I have not met a woman who is a leader in my field and who had babies prior to tenure." Young moms and dads reported problems with childcare, especially when faculty meetings and seminars fell outside childcare hours.

Blaming a 'two-body problem'

The shortage of women faculty aggravates the shortage in the pipeline, as women students lack role models for an academic career in science or engineering. The ratio of women faculty in four departments (chemistry, computer science, geosciences and molecular biology) is smaller than women's ratio among PhDs in those fields in 1991-96, suggesting departments haven't tapped the pipeline.

It's no surprise that Princeton women think hiring bias favors men and men think it favors women. "When given a direct question, male faculty would give the impression that women had to do less to be successful. But indirectly, the male faculty said things that clearly indicated that they expected women to do more," one man said.

Instead of open searches, one department filled vacancies with scholars nominated by department members. Of course that perpetuated a male faculty because the men in the department knew men.

Science and engineering department chairs spoke of "the two-body problem," saying it's harder to hire women because their spouses or partners want jobs. Men are equally likely to have partners but fewer have careers.

Of married faculty in Princeton science and engineering departments, 85% of women and 48% of men have partners who work full time. Department chairs said more funds and flexibility to find jobs for partners would help them compete for women faculty.

Recommendations and response

Duke moved quickly to introduce paid leave and tenure clock relief for new parents and others in critical family care-giving situations. It will spend $2 million to double its on-campus childcare slots from 76 to 152, including some for infants and toddlers. Previously just for faculty and staff kids, it will also start to accept and subsidize children of graduate and professional students. Deans are being encouraged to establish mentoring programs. Duke is also working to bolster academic advising, career counseling and professional development.

Steering committee members are planning an undergraduate women's leadership program to build some of the benefits of single-sex education into participants' lives and classes. It will "encourage and nurture women to set their own norms and standards, and assume positions of leadership in an environment where the undergraduate men still predominantly define and control social and academic engagement."

Princeton task force recommendations include a $10 million fund to recruit and retain women, especially in fields with lots of women in the pipeline but few on the faculty. Flexible hiring lines let departments hire outstanding women without waiting for a vacancy.

They also recommended programs "to counter the notion among both faculty and students that people who actively engage in parenting can not succeed in the Natural Sciences and Engineering." Expanding on-campus childcare and helping faculty spouses find work are priorities for psychology professor Joan Girgus, appointed in September 2003 to oversee gender equity issues at Princeton.

-SGC