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wdlove

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
Harvard University has seen a sharp drop in the proportion of women serving as junior professors in the humanities, according to newly released numbers, leaving officials anxious about a problem they had never expected to face in 2004.

Only 21, or 35 percent, of the school's nontenured humanities professors are women, a drop from the mid-1990s, when women were nearly half of all assistant and associate professors in the humanities.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/02/22/harvard_sees_drop_in_women_teachers/
 

Dros

macrumors 6502
Jun 25, 2003
484
1
Harvard has a terrible reputation for promoting junior faculty. When you are up for tenure, they say, "Is this the top person in the field?" If you are, you become tenured. If you are not, they make an offer to the person identified as the top and drop you.

I have known several people to turn down a job offer from Harvard for this reason. If you have or are thinking of having a family, why go someplace to only be uprooted after 6 years? For women, this factor probably plays a greater role in the decision. Harvard is a great university, but there are plenty of very good places to be a professor.
 

512ke

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2003
577
186
Gender Balance

Didn't I read recently in the New York Times that Harvard is experiencing a drop in the overall percentage of _male_ undergrad applicants?
 

Grimace

macrumors 68040
Feb 17, 2003
3,568
226
with Hamburglar.
The process of attaining tenure is sooooooo much more complicated than people think. There are reviews upon reviews; expectations of publications & research etc - the same as a lot of the top schools.

Women professors are also sought after from other universities that pay better. Believe it or not, Harvard has fairly substandard pay for its profs. I've seen a lot of our profs (men and women) lured to the private sector. ($$$)
 

wdlove

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
Originally posted by carletonmusic
The process of attaining tenure is sooooooo much more complicated than people think. There are reviews upon reviews; expectations of publications & research etc - the same as a lot of the top schools.

Women professors are also sought after from other universities that pay better. Believe it or not, Harvard has fairly substandard pay for its profs. I've seen a lot of our profs (men and women) lured to the private sector. ($$$)

I'm really surprised about the substandard pay for professors. I read that Harvard has the highest endowment in the United States if not the world. If I'm not mistaken the tuition and board if high among the Ivy league schools. They have to be hoarding it somewhere.
 

Dros

macrumors 6502
Jun 25, 2003
484
1
Originally posted by carletonmusic
The process of attaining tenure is sooooooo much more complicated than people think. There are reviews upon reviews; expectations of publications & research etc - the same as a lot of the top schools.

Women professors are also sought after from other universities that pay better. Believe it or not, Harvard has fairly substandard pay for its profs. I've seen a lot of our profs (men and women) lured to the private sector. ($$$)

Harvard may have substandard pay compared to the private sector, but it still has high salaries compared to other universities. Here are the average salaries at these institutions:

Harvard University
$117,511
Stanford University
111,077
Univ. of Pennsylvania
109,473
Cal Tech
109,214
Princeton University
108,248
Chicago
106,711

Now, Harvard is known for blowing a pile of cash on superstars (the ones they bring in when they dump their junior faculty), which could bring the average above the median pay. And it is expensive to live in Cambridge compared to most places, but not more expensive than Palo Alto or Princeton.

As for those others that say why does it matter if they hire men or women as long as they are great... if women are not coming or not getting hired and yet are doing the best stuff, then it is a problem if you want to be the best, as Harvard does.
 

question fear

macrumors 68020
Apr 10, 2003
2,277
84
The "Garden" state
depending on the dept in discussion its not always that easy...
for a long time i was looking into getting a phd in philosophy and becoming a professor. my favorite philosophy professor in the whole world, while not discouraging me, did give me a lot of advice on how hard it was for her, as a woman to teach philosophy sometimes...it can be a fairly backwards dept, and she attributed her success to her work in ethics (which makes her more unique because many philosophy depts skew towards the metaphysical) and her work in feminist theory. Still, she was one of two female professors I had in four years of philosophy classes and the only one who was tenured. When I left she had convinced them to hire another one, but still...4yrs and only one tenured prof...wiht a gap of a year with no women in the dept. And I went to Brandeis, a fairly liberal institution.
My point is that harvard may not be doing anything specific, but it points to a dearth of women being encouraged/welcomed in academic settings...not any specific discrimination, but more of an unwillingness/uncomfortableness about joining the old boys club, as many departments are these days.
my .02
 
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