It’s a Man’s World at MIT
Posted on December 6th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
In the Globe, Linda Wertheimer investigates the problem of gender inequity at MIT.
Just one out of 25 faculty members granted tenure this year at MIT is female, a gender imbalance that appears to contrast with the university’s decade-old effort to boost the status of women.
[Blogger journalistic pet peeve: “appears to contrast”? Come on, Linda. I know you don’t want to look like you’re editorializing, but of course it contrasts.]
The point was brought home recently when the school’s in-house newspaper published a portrait gallery of the faculty members granted tenure this year; among the sea of male faces was the lone woman.
…[Nancy] Hopkins, an outspoken critic of former Harvard president Lawrence Summers for his remarks about women’s ability in the sciences, said it was unnerving to see only one woman among the newly tenured professors featured in last month’s Tech Talk newspaper.”It’s a shock. I don’t have a thousand words as good as that picture,” said Hopkins.
There’s no simple villain here, not at a university with a female president. But according to Wertheimer, university officials “will investigate impediments to women receiving tenure.”
Note the implicit assumption in that quoteâit’s important. If there aren’t as many women getting tenured as men, it’s because there are “impediments” to women receiving tenure. Yikes. That’s like a judge opening a trial by telling the defendant that he’s guilty, and this trial is going to find out why.
The questions that, in part, precipitated the demise of Larry Summers continue to plague academia. In a small way, perhaps, Summers can take comfort from that.
10 Responses
12/6/2024 9:34 am
And yet, “investigate” suggests that they are going to look into whether there are impediments. Seems possible to read the quote either way, unless you’re assuming something. But if you live in this world as a woman who has to slow down her career in order to have children, it’s hard to believe there are not impediments. They may not come when it’s time to come up for tenure; more likely they come a lot earlier than that.
12/6/2024 9:37 am
“The questions that in part precipitated the demise of Larry Summers…”
Precipitate? to cause to happen suddenly or prematurely.
Richard, you are reinforcing the media myth about the cause of Summers’ ouster. The qualifier “in part” does not save this at all given the way the media outside Harvard continues to play this story. You are usually more accurate.
12/6/2024 10:55 am
Thank you, anonymous 8:37, for your correction. The primary reasons for Summers’s resignation still receive far too little attention in the media. Even reporters to whom I’ve carefully explained those reasons continue to fall back on the “remarks against women in science” cliché.
12/6/2024 11:15 am
I don’t think ‘precipitate’ is inaccurate. The emphasis in the definition I think is not on ’cause’ but on ‘sudden': hence the OED has “to hasten the occurence of” right alongside your definition.
It’s probable that without the groundwork laid by all the bad publicity of the women-in-science thing, the faculty would have had a much harder and certainly slower time getting their prybar under Summers’s seat.
It’s tough to avoid the appearance of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but this was a pretty decent try.
SE
12/6/2024 4:12 pm
The women in science comments were the best material for the press - even better than the Cornel West business (which was only personal) and the Shleifer affair (which was far worse ethically, as it involved the president protecting a corrupt friend at Harvard’s expense, but not as sexy). To the extent the NATIONAL embarrassment Summers caused, with the assistance of the media, led the Corporation to believe it would be better off without him, Richard is correct in pinning his demise on the women in science remarks. But inside the faculty, that was only one of Summers’s many problems, no one of which would have gotten a majority of the faculty to vote against him. And maybe not the most critical, as it was the Shleifer affair that tipped the centrists.
12/6/2024 10:07 pm
Where is Shleifer now? and where is Summers? If this affair was so significant why doesn’t the faculty propose an in depth discussion at an upcoming faculty meeting?
12/7/2024 12:02 am
SE who is usually on the mark is off on this one. The women in science talk-or rather the immediate faculty reaction that was precipitated by the talk-actually may have delayed the Corporation’s response for longer than would otherwise have been the case. The members who were disenchanted with Summers now did not think they could do anything immediately without seeming to be merely caving into faculty pressure.
The comments by 3.12 are perceptive, except for the part about the Corporation worrying about the national embarrassment. During this critical period, their concern was much about what the alumni and donors (and the public) would think if they did not stick by their CEO in face of faculty pressure. They were right about that reaction.
Judith Ryan as usual is on target
12/7/2024 8:37 am
3:12 here. You know, 11:02, you are probably right about the WIS business putting the Corporation in a position where it couldn’t do anything to Summers immediately, for fear it would seem to be dumping him for the wrong reasons. I stand corrected. I wonder how bothered the Corporation was about the Shleifer affair and the role Summers played in disgracing the university on that one. I have never seen anything about that.
12/7/2024 1:06 pm
What is now happening at Harvard as regards to women on the tenured faculty and in leadership positions? Are the trends any better than at MIT? Does having a female president really help these problems?
12/7/2024 9:05 pm
“women on the tenured faculty and in leadership positions”
there are women in leadership positions. Or did you mean highly effective women in leadership positions?