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Harvard President Lawrence Summers' announcement on May 16 committing Harvard to spending $50 million for recruiting women faculty and improving the campus climate for women capped four months of apologies.
Indeed, when Summers warned women students in April about the sex bias they're likely to face in science, he seemed the polar opposite of the man who in January had questioned girls' “intrinsic aptitude” in math.
At a Harvard conference on women in science organized by female science majors, he said professors should be aware of how influential they can be in discouraging female students. (Women at Harvard drop plans to major in science at a far higher rate than males.) To show he shared their pain, Summers described how he was made to feel inadequate in college physics: After giving the wrong answer to a problem, the instructor stared at him “with a certain stunned belief that I could be so stupid.”
So-One Hwang, a senior linguistics major, was one of several female students who think Summers' remarks rang true. “I feel embarrassed to admit I didn't pursue physics or math because I didn't want to deal with the sociological factors,” she says. She cited anxiety about attaining success in the male-dominated sciences and male classmates who exclude females from study groups or treat them with disdain.
Undergraduates aren't the only women who feel this way, according to a task force that recommended numerous changes to retain women in science. “In some departments, women graduate and postdoctoral fellows report hearing disrespectful criticisms of their abilities from male colleagues and a lack of a supportive environment,” the report said.
Harvard President Lawrence Summers drew intense criticism as well as support for questioning girls' “intrinsic aptitude” in math. (Getty Images/Jodi Hilton)
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On May 16, the science task force and another on women faculty — both appointed by Summers in the wake of the controversy over his remarks — made several recommendations, including gender-bias training for graduate students who teach science to undergraduates, increased financial support for faculty child care and an automatic tenure extension during maternity or parental leave. Summers said he would institute some of the recommendations immediately, including hiring a senior vice provost for diversity charged with intensifying the search for women faculty.
Many of the task force recommendations are aimed at countering factors frequently cited as driving women from science: the lack of mentoring, informal job networking and female social support. According to Mariangela Lisanti, president of the undergraduate group Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe, her group asked for an on-campus summer dorm so women working in labs could live and eat with fellow researchers, a central place to find information about research internships and informal study centers where students could ask successful undergraduates questions about homework in difficult introductory science courses. These changes also will be implemented immediately, Summers said.
Summers “saw how what we said could be behind why women are leaving science,” says Lisanti, a senior majoring in physics.
On Summers' watch, offers of tenure-track jobs to women have fallen precipitously to 4 out of 32 tenure offers last year in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Earlier task forces' recommendations aimed at retaining women have been implemented only “spottily,” according to Harvard professor of natural sciences Barbara J. Grosz, chair of the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering. Grosz chaired a task force in 1991 and again in the late '90s. Only some departments followed their recommendations for senior faculty mentors for junior women faculty, she says.
As for the most recent report, Grosz says, “There's a higher probability these recommendations will be put into effect and sustained over the long term because we built in mechanisms for monitoring, data collection and reporting that weren't present in the previous panel's recommendation in 1991.”
For example, she says, information on recruiting and hiring will have to be reported to the new senior vice provost, and mentoring plans will become a required part of junior faculty reviews. Grosz says her task force wanted to “plug the leak” at each stage where women are known to leave science — from the first two years of college, when students get discouraged by difficult courses, to postdoctoral years when women often feel isolated in labs. Several measures are focused on helping women in childbearing years to keep their careers on track, such as a fund to pay for child care so junior faculty can travel to conferences, “which is where you get known,” Grosz says.
Some skeptics say the $5 million a year over 10 years pledged by Summers is just a drop in the bucket considering Harvard's operating budget of about $2.5 billion a year. Grosz acknowledges some recommendations like subsidized child care will cost much more. “Five million dollars per year will not cover everything,” she says, “but it's a significant contribution from Harvard's center — right upfront — that says they're behind this.”
Some advocates hope the current pressure to implement change will have national implications. As Harvard goes, so goes the world, many faculty believe.
As for Summers' apparent turnaround, Lisanti says, “The proof is going to be in the action.”
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