Harvard improves on tenure offers to women

During a year in which the status of women at Harvard University was the focus of unprecedented attention, the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences reversed the decline in tenured job offers to women that occurred in each of the first three years of Lawrence H. Summers's presidency.

Of the 33 offers of tenured jobs made during the academic year just concluded, nine were to women, or 27 percent. During the previous year, only four of 32 tenured offers, or 13 percent, went to women.

The representation of women among senior recruits reached a height during the last year of Neil Rudenstine's presidency in 2000-2001, at 36 percent. Then the percentage of offers that went to women declined for three years in a row.

The precipitous decline in senior offers to women under Summers's leadership alarmed many female professors, and 26 faculty members wrote a letter to Summers and William C. Kirby, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, last June voicing serious concern. While the administration also called the drop-off disappointing, some professors felt the administration did not respond forcefully until Summers found himself trying to make amends for his Jan. 14 comments about the possibility of differences in men's and women's ''intrinsic aptitude" for science.

Kirby said the improved results show the impact of at least two years of heightened efforts to promote diversity, because the intensive process of offering someone a job for life often takes more than a year.

Deans, department chairs, and members of search committees have ''been working very hard to make sure the lists of candidates they bring us are broad and inclusive, and we are making sure we encourage all who could be possible candidates to apply, not simply waiting for them to come in over the transom," Kirby said.

Harvard is now in the process of establishing new mechanisms to aid the recruitment of women. For example, a new senior vice provost for diversity will advise the president and provost in the tenure process, and the university plans to create a training program to teach professors involved in faculty searches about research indicating that even well-meaning people can harbor hidden biases against women and minorities.

None of those changes were implemented in time to influence the recent jump in offers to women, but most professors still believe the sense of urgency brought on by controversy over Summers's remarks pushed Harvard to work harder on identifying female candidates.

''The scrambling that occurred must have done something," Mary C. Waters, who just concluded a stint as chairwoman of the sociology department, wrote in an e-mail.

''It does take a long time to hire people at Harvard and we know that before January this was, to say the least, not a priority," she also wrote. ''So one could just imagine what this number would have looked like without" Summers's comments on women in science.

Though Waters characterized the 27 percent as ''low given the fact that there was supposed to be [an] all-out push for hiring women," others were more upbeat.

''I'm pleased, I think this means the faculty is working together to make an effort," said Kay Shelemay, a longtime member of a committee on women in Arts and Sciences. ''It's not just an administrative effort or a task force responsibility, it really comes down to every one of us needing to think carefully about appointments and make a very big effort to look at the widest array of candidates."

While many professors were gratified to see a reversal in the trend, there is also a widespread feeling that it represents just a start.

''Because the faculty is large and the changes are incremental, it will take long term percentage of tenure offers at least in the 30-40 range to push the overall percentage of tenure women . . . steadily upward to the point at which it reflects the availability of outstanding women in the pools for the various fields and disciplines," the 26 professors wrote last summer in their letter to Summers and Kirby.

But Kirby said much of the hope for equality lies with hiring at the untenured level, where the percentage of women in academia is higher. Harvard had a good year for hiring junior women, with 25 of the 66 untenured offers, or 38 percent, going to women.

''This is the future," said Kirby, noting that the university has recently put greater emphasis on granting tenure to its own junior faculty rather than hiring stars from outside. ''One cannot solve issues of diversity simply by exchanging with other universities their women and minority scholars."

At the tenured level, 17 of Harvard's 33 offers in 2004-2005 have so far been accepted, but only two women have said yes. One woman was among the three people who have declined their offers, meaning that six of the women have not yet responded with a decision. This is one of several factors that make it difficult to determine whether the turmoil at Harvard last year may dissuade some people from accepting a job there or even applying for one.

Professors are generally offered more than a year to make their decision, since many are weighing counteroffers and considering other factors like a spouse's job. Of the four women offered tenured jobs in the 2003-2004 year, two said yes.

Answers have been a little more forthcoming at the junior level. Nineteen of the 25 women offered untenured jobs said yes, three said no, and three have not yet accepted or declined.

''Although there was a great deal of speculation as to whether it would be more difficult to recruit faculty in this year of so much bad publicity, that has proven not to be the case . . . nor have I had potential faculty members suggest to me that the issues that have been so publicly discussed affect their decision," Kirby said. ''When top-notch academics move from one university to another, they take a very long-range view of their career."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.