The Status of Women on the Stanford Faculty
Report to the Faculty Senate
Spring, 1998
Prepared for the
Faculty Women's Caucus
by
Paula Findlen (History), Estelle Freedman (History),
Nancy Kollmann (History), Cecilia Ridgeway (Sociology),
Mary Louise Roberts (History), Debra Satz (Philosophy)
I. INTRODUCTION
In September 1993, a special Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of
Women Faculty at Stanford, chaired by Professor Myra Strober from the School
of Education, reported to the Provost and to the Faculty Senate that "Relative
to the twenty universities with which we usually compare ourselves, Stanford
is seriously lagging with respect to recruitment and retention of women
faculty." The low percentage of faculty women at Stanford, the Strober report
continued, "provides us with an important warning signal. We need to change
our policies and procedures and our recruitment and retention strategies ... "
On December 2, 1993, after discussing the "Strober Report," the Stanford
Faculty Senate approved a resolution that read as follows:
Given the findings of the Provost's Committee on the Recruitment
and Retention of Women Faculty, the Senate urges the University
administration to treat this report with the utmost seriousness
and to take appropriate measures to:
Increase the number and percentage of women faculty.
Ensure salary equity by gender.
Develop programs for retention of women faculty.
Evaluate and revise current policies affecting faculty
members' ability to meet family and career obligations.
Create a culture of faculty support.
The Senate further requests that the Provost report once a year to
the Senate for the next five years on the progress being made to
implement the Committee's recommendations.
In the intervening years some of the concerns of the Strober report have been
addressed. Women are proportionately represented in university leadership
positions; significant progress has been made at some schools at Stanford in
women's representation on the faculty; Provost Condoleezza Rice has taken
several steps to try to achieve greater gender equity on the faculty. Provost
Rice appointed Professor of Law Robert Weisberg to oversee faculty development
and in 1997 she appointed Associate Professor of Psychology Anne Fernald to
focus on junior faculty development. Although neither of these vice provosts
was charged with attention to women faculty per se, each has addressed on an
individual basis the concerns of women faculty members, including complaints
about salary disparities and efforts to retain or recruit senior women. On
grounds of principle the Provost decided not to develop hiring plans for women
faculty, as the Strober report had recommended. She did present annual gains
and losses of faculty by gender to the Senate, and she has responded to
several requests from the Faculty Women's Caucus for improved documentation on
women faculty. Acting on such a request last year she presented to the Senate
annual statistics on the hiring and retention of women faculty; acting on a
request for data on gender differences in salaries, in 1996 the Provost
established a committee to review these data by rank, division, and years in
rank. That committee's report is due in Fall 1998.
There is, however, still cause for concern. By 1997 a mood of crisis and low
morale characterized not only many women faculty members but also many junior
and minority faculty at Stanford. Several denials of tenure to women and
minorities contributed to an uneasy sense that the university's commitment to
diversity was declining and squeezing out many of the strongest women and
minority junior faculty members. At informal meetings of women and junior
faculty, stories of perceived bias circulated, fueled by the number of junior
faculty filing grievances in several schools. At a personal level, the high
costs of this climate have ranged from increased stress to the decision to
depart from Stanford (by junior and senior women).
As disturbing as these personal stories may be, at the same time the loss to
the university as a whole is incalculable. Highly qualified junior faculty
who have the potential to build Stanford's scholarly reputation and contribute
to a more diverse faculty are turning away from the university. The sense
that Stanford is inhospitable to women and minorities interferes with national
recruitment efforts and thus further undermines the goal of equity. In
contrast, some other prestigious universities have taken a very different
approach, actively recruiting women and minority faculty and building both a
critical mass of women faculty and reputations for having climates of support.
At Stanford, however, some faculty and administrators have dismissed such
efforts as a form of "affirmative action," a concept that they erroneously
equate with the lowering of academic standards. Indeed, this erroneous
conflation of affirmative action and lowering standards -- that is, the belief
that excellence and diversity are mutually exclusive -- may be preventing the
creation of policies that would help attract and retain women and minority
faculty.
The following report considers how successful we have been in implementing the
recommendations of the Strober report, what challenges we continue to face in
our efforts to achieve greater gender equity for women faculty at Stanford,
and what new strategies are required. Compiled by a subcommittee of the
Faculty Women's Caucus and placed on the agenda of the Senate by a petition
signed by the requisite 50 members of the Academic Council, this report
intends to re-open discussion of the status of women faculty at Stanford, to
propose a general recommitment to the goal of gender equity, and to suggest
specific means to improve Stanford's record on the hiring and retention of
women faculty.1
II. THE CURRENT SITUATION AT STANFORD
For the academic year 1997-98, women comprised 18.1 percent of the overall
faculty (SenD#4807). In 1996-97 women comprised 13.3 percent of the tenured
faculty (SenD#4671). These figures represent a rise from 14.7 percent of the
overall faculty and 11.2 percent of the tenured faculty in 1992-93, based on
figures provided by the Provost's Office. As Provost Rice acknowledged, in
her report to the Senate in March 1996, these figures represent "obviously
slow progress."
It is important to note that the percentages vary greatly by School. For
example, the percentage of women in the School of Humanities and Sciences
during the academic year 1997-98 was approximately 21 percent and the
percentage at the Medical School was approximately 25 percent, whereas the
percentages in the Schools of Earth Sciences and Engineering were
approximately 8 percent and 6 percent respectively (SenD#4807). These numbers
are particularly striking when one considers the sharp growth in the available
pool of women PhDs and MDs in the last two decades.
According to the National Research Council Survey of Earned Doctorates in
1996, published in Academe, women now comprise 62 percent of all new PhDs in
Education, 52 percent of all new PhDs in the Humanities and Social Sciences,
42 percent in Biological Sciences, 30 percent in Business, 20 percent in
Physical Sciences, 22 percent in Earth, Atmospheric and Marine Sciences, and
12 percent in Engineering. Current data of course speak to a potential
future; they do not address the hiring pools out of which past candidates have
been drawn. Yet even in 1985 the National Research Council Survey reported
that women comprised 33 percent of new PhDs in Biology, 18 percent of new PhDs
in Earth, Atmospheric and Marine Sciences, 16 percent of new PhDs in Physical
Sciences, and 7 percent in Engineering.
We need to assess why Stanford, while making some small growth in overall
numbers, is hiring and promoting proportionately so few of these growing pools
of women scholars. Why, for instance, have fields such as Education and Law,2
which produce high percentages of women candidates, not increased to any
degree the overall numbers of women faculty from 1992-93 to 1997-98? Why have
Engineering, Earth Sciences, and the Math and Science clusters in the
Humanities and Science been unable to add more than two women faculty to the
overall numbers during this same period? (See Figure 1)
Even in other disciplines at Stanford -- such as the humanities, social
sciences, and medicine, where the percentage of women is relatively high --
progress has been slow, especially when we consider the large pools of women
scholars and researchers in these fields. (See Figure 2). For example, women
comprise 28 percent of our humanities faculty and 23 percent of our social
science faculty; the total percentage of women in these fields nationwide is
double these numbers. Similarly, many of the recent untenured hires of women
in the Medical School have been in the Medical Center Line, which now has the
highest percentage of women faculty (33.5 percent) on the entire campus. Yet,
the merits of this kind of appointment are openly debated in the Medical
School. Certainly low turnover rates at high prestige institutions such as
Stanford slow the speed at which change can occur, but this is precisely the
reason serious discussion is needed.
The leisurely pace of change over time highlights one of many areas of our
concern. During the ten year period, 1986-96, there has been only a 7 percent
increase in the total number of women on the Humanities and Sciences faculty.
According to the figures provided by the Dean of Humanities and Sciences,
since 1980 the gender ratio of hiring at both the junior and senior levels has
been roughly 7 to 3, male to female. This means that during the last two
decades more than twice as many men as women have been hired on the Humanities
and Sciences faculty.
While we often make assumptions about which parts of the campus have the most
difficulty in diversifying their faculty, a careful review of hiring and
promotion data undertaken by the Provost's Office in 1997-98 has yielded some
rather surprising facts. For example, Vice Provost Fernald informs us:
* 41 percent of the departments in Engineering have either never
hired or never promoted a woman assistant professor.
Although not surprising, given the small percentage of women with engineering
degrees, in addition,
* 41 percent of the departments in Humanities and Sciences also have
either never hired or never promoted a woman assistant professor.
Such results indicate a record of uneven progress in faculty diversification.
They certainly help us to understand why Stanford is ranked only slightly
above MIT and Cal Tech in the number of tenured women faculty. The figures
also reveal specific areas of the campus, such as the Business School, in
which substantial progress has been made and other areas of the campus that
have made virtually no progress. Close examination, in other words,
highlights both our successes and our failures.
Attention to our successes is highly informative, pointing to potential
initiatives that can be brought to bear in situations that have not been as
favorable. The Provost's Office recognizes that the hiring and promotion
decisions we make over the next decade will influence importantly the faculty
profile in future years. No one expects that change will occur quickly given
the low annual turnover on the Stanford faculty. Nonetheless, we need to
think carefully and creatively about the opportunities that do arise.
If we do not commit seriously to faculty diversification, we will find the
number of women faculty only marginally better in 2008 than it is in 1998.
Put a different way, if we continue to hire approximately 3 women faculty
for every 10 faculty hired, the diversity of the faculty in the early 21st
century will be virtually unchanged from the current state.
As the following assessment of hiring, mentoring, and promotion patterns
suggests, the current and potential situation is not the product of a static
system but a dynamic process in which many factors are at work. Attending to
these different variables, we may find ways to discover opportunities for real
change within a system of constraints. Rather than being indifferent about
the status of women at Stanford, we see it as a challenge to meet and
overcome.
III. HIRING OF NEW WOMEN FACULTY
Although Stanford's small percentage of women faculty is comparable to
other elite research institutions, and change is typically slow and difficult
to detect, we should not conclude that we do not have a substantial problem in
the representation of women on the faculty at Stanford. Rather these
comparable numbers reveal how intractable the problem is and that special
vigilance is needed if Stanford is to remain a leader in the nation. We have
before us the option of sitting back and concluding that we are no worse than
most comparable institutions and continuing practices that have been in place
for many years. If we do, it will take decades to make significant gains in
the representation of women on the faculty. An alternative response to the
same statistics is to consider thoughtfully and planfully how Stanford can
remain a leader in a nation where the demographic profile of academics has
changed markedly in the past generation. Other institutions are responding
actively and aggressively so that they can represent the diversity of the pool
of faculty in various disciplines on their faculties.a href="#3">3 Because the student
body and the pool of potential faculty members is substantially different now
than it was in the past, we must consider whether a relatively passive
approach is a sufficient solution.
In addition, we are entering an era in which anticipated retirements of senior
faculty coupled with the current strength of Stanford's budget will entail a
great deal of hiring. These changes will bring many new faculty to Stanford,
providing us with an important opportunity to make crucial hires in new as
well as in established areas of scholarship. They should also push us to re-
evaluate the less successful aspects of our current situation while
reaffirming the positive steps that have already been initiated in order to
create a collegial atmosphere that will make Stanford attractive to and
supportive of these new faculty.
To date, there is little evidence that the university is taking advantage of
this relative hiring boon to recruit new women faculty. On average, during the
past five years, twenty to thirty percent of new hires have been women.
Moreover, there have been years when the numbers have been particularly low.
In academic year, 1996-97, for example, only 16 percent of newly hired
assistant professors were women. In this same year, one full professor and no
associate professors were hired. Although there may be an occasional year
when the number of women hired may be low, there have been no years in which
even close to half of the hires (at any rank) have been women. A hiring
pattern in which women are always underrepresented and occasionally notably
underrepresented among new hires will not remedy the problem of
underrepresentation.
There are ways to improve our hiring record. For all appointments made at the
Junior level, search committees are required to identify women candidates to
the Deans' Office, as well as to justify, in terms of gender composition, the
make-up of finalist pools. We sense that currently this gender composition
report is often pro forma. These requirements of searches must receive proper
scrutiny at the level of the Dean's Office. Departments could use this
opportunity to take advantage of the possibilities for diversifying their
faculties. For example, applying the formula "all things being equal,"
diversification might occur by hiring an equally qualified women and/or
minority candidate who is a finalist in a search. In addition, when an
outstanding woman candidate surfaces in one search but seems more appropriate
for another area of need in the department, efforts can be made to work with
the Provost to create an incremental opportunity hire.
Mentoring of Junior Faculty
Untenured women faculty often express a need for advice about the structures
and processes of university decision making. All junior faculty members need
this kind of advice, and we suspect that women and minority faculty may
benefit especially from this guidance.
Untenured women should be carefully and consistently mentored by senior
faculty in their departments from the time they arrive through the promotion
process. Such mentoring would have several important goals: to make the
requirements of tenure as clear as possible, to guide them in establishing
priorities in the management of their time and energy, to guide them towards
the best possible fulfillment of their scholarly potential, and to incorporate
them more fully into the Stanford community.
Interactions with senior women faculty across the university may be very
useful for junior women faculty. Last year women faculty initiated a series
of mentoring lunches, funded by the Provost's office, to create a culture of
support for new women faculty in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Currently, Vice Provost Anne Fernald is meeting with junior faculty to answer
their questions. These efforts should be continued and expanded.
IV. PROMOTION
Although our hiring record has improved, Stanford has made only slow progress
in increasing the number of tenured women in its ranks. The small percentage
of women among tenured faculty presents a challenging problem. Only 13.3
percent of tenured faculty are women, ranging from a low of 6.7 percent in
Engineering to a high of 17.4 percent in Humanities and Sciences (see Table
1). Some critics have charged that promotion with tenure is increasingly
difficult for women to attain in certain parts of the university.4 Because
data on tenure rates by gender are not usually made available, it is difficult
to evaluate these claims.
The School of Humanities and Sciences did provide us with data on
promotions by gender over time (see Appendix for summary). We traced the
outcomes of tenure reviews for assistant professors who were hired between
1974-75 and 1990-91 and underwent review between 1976 and 1997. Averaged over
the entire time period, promotion rates of men and women faculty are
indistinguishable. The descriptive trends over time, however, are
interesting. The numbers are small for any one time period, rendering
statistical comparisons tentative. While men's promotion rates have stayed
relatively stable across time, women's promotion rates increased rapidly at
the beginning of the period studied and are currently declining almost as
rapidly (see Appendix, Figure A3).5
V. SENIOR HIRING
Between 1991-97, 20 percent of all senior hires were women, an improvement
over the previous six year period (1986-91) when women comprised only 11
percent of senior hires. In this area, as in junior hiring, the distribution
is uneven across Schools. Since 1979 there have been 51 senior hires in
Engineering. Not one was a woman. Areas such as Education and Earth Sciences
have made few senior hires of any sort recently but yielded almost no women in
those searches. In the more recently established Medical School Line, only
one of 19 senior hires has been a woman.
Because women often suffer from marginalization in professional networks of
support and collegiality, the recruitment practices of the deans in these
searches -- soliciting verbal recommendations and peer reviews from leaders in
various scholarly fields -- may well put women at a strong disadvantage. Such
practices are widely perceived as reflecting the "old boys' network."
Some solutions to these problems are being implemented and should be expanded.
For example, in February of 1998, John Shoven, the Dean of Humanities and
Sciences, created a Task Force on Diversity to identify outstanding women and
minority candidates for the Presidential Chairs in the Humanities. This
committee should serve as a model for other initiatives during this
intensified period of hiring. In addition, Robert Weisberg, Vice Provost for
Faculty Recruitment and Development, has made an important effort to recruit
senior women and men by finding professional positions for their spouses.
Since spousal issues figure prominently in recruitment decisions for women,
such efforts should be vigorously continued.
VI. FACTORS AT WORK IN HIRING AND RETENTION OF WOMEN FACULTY
To recapitulate, Stanford hires few women relative to the national pools and
some parts of campus may suffer from problems of retention. Although we
readily acknowledge that statistical analysis of the data, given the small
numbers, must be interpreted cautiously, the seriousness of the situation
deserves close examination. Moreover, the practical significance of even
small statistical differences may be meaningful. In organizations
characterized by pyramid structures, that is, ones in which there are
increasingly fewer positions at the top, and in which early career success is
a precondition for advancement, very small statistical differences between
entering groups have striking cumulative effects over time (Martell, Lane &
Emrich, 1996).
To encourage discussion of possible bias in decision making, as one means of
forestalling bias from operating, we offer the following information about the
factors that can operate to deter the hiring and promotion of qualified women
faculty.
1) Unconscious Bias
Most professors in the academy -- male and female alike -- view themselves
as fair and impartial judges of their colleagues' performance. Indeed,
among the professoriate there are even those who are willing to "bend the
standards" in order to diversify the faculty, despite the fact that this is
neither the intention of affirmative action in general nor the desire of
women faculty at Stanford. Even this sense of good will, however, does not
insure gender equity. On the contrary, a substantial body of social
science research shows that subtle gender bias is ubiquitous in the
academy. And, although more evident in men than in women, both sexes
display gender bias against women (Foschi, Lai & Signerson, 1994).
In an effort to provide a sense of the social science literature on
unconscious bias, we provide a handful of examples of research findings:
* In a classic psychology study, Paludi and Bauer (1983) found that when a
paper's author was identified as "John T. McKay," it was assigned a
higher ranking than when the author was identified as "Joan T. McKay."
A group told that its author was "J.T. McKay" rated the paper somewhere
in between.
* Students judge male and female professors differently. Studies of
college students show that teaching excellence is attributed to
expertise in male professors whereas it is attributed to interpersonal
qualities, such as caring about students, in female professors (Kaschak,
1981).6 Because competence, not caring, is the benchmark of teaching
excellence, even highly effective female professors benefit less in the
eyes of their students.
* When "competence" is controlled experimentally, women themselves judge
their own performance poorer than men (Valian, 1998).
* Crosby and her colleagues have conducted a program of research that
illustrates that although discrimination is recognized when dealing with
group profiles, it is not perceived when evaluations are considered on a
case-by-case basis (Clayton & Crosby, 1992; Crosby, Clayton, Alksnis, &
Hemker, 1986). Note that a case-by-case approach is currently in
practice at Stanford.
In summary, gender bias is very difficult to detect. The fact that these
biases do not operate at a conscious level makes them all the more
pernicious. It is not unreasonable to suspect that hiring and tenure
processes are all affected by these small scale, incremental, and automatic
biases that operate before and at decision-making levels.
2) Controversial Research
Women and minority faculty frequently work in new and innovative areas of
research; these areas of research are more likely to be controversial.
3) Lack of Networks and Mentors
Hiring and tenure processes necessarily rely on existing professional
networks for information and assessment of a candidate as well as help with
scholarly development. But such networks, with low numbers of women and
minorities, are often hard for women and minorities to enter. There are
few mentor models, and few people willing to take the time to think about
career development from the point of view of a woman or a minority who
faces special burdens, at times including greater university
responsibilities and burdens due to other people's stereotypes.
4) Benign Neglect
Stanford's recent policy towards the promotion of both women and minorities
could be characterized as one of benign neglect. Once hired, all faculty
are left to achieve on their own merits. But benign neglect -- or color
and gender "blindness," as it can be called -- is often an inadequate
response in the context of a culture and community largely shaped by a
history of systematic inequality and exclusion. In such a context, it is
critical to send messages of inclusion and support. All junior faculty
need a stronger culture of support at Stanford, and women and minority
junior faculty may benefit particularly from mentoring about academic
environments.
5) Composition of decision-making bodies
Given the small numbers of women and minority faculty at Stanford, many
decision making bodies do not include members of these groups. Departmental
tenure review committees, the dean's advisory committee on appointments and
promotions, and the provost's advisory board are likely to have, at best,
very few women or minority members. While gender (or race) does not
necessarily predispose one to concern about equity issues, when only one
member of an under-represented group serves on a committee and is concerned
about these issues, it can be harder for that person to feel comfortable
expressing these concerns related to group identity.
6) Greater burdens on women and minority faculty
Although we urge more than token representation of women and minority
faculty on decision-making bodies, we recognize the increased burden this
places on them. At Stanford, teaching and service do not contribute
significantly to the tenure decision, which is based almost solely on
scholarly quality and reputation. Women and ethnic minorities, however,
are often asked to serve as advisors to women and minority students,
raising their advising loads considerably; and they are often asked to
serve as token representatives of their groups on university committees.
All these tasks divert energies and time from scholarly productivity, and
these activities should be rewarded in ways that support the careers of
those who serve.
VII. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN HIRING AND PROMOTIONS
We raise the question of whether the change in climate concerning affirmative
action, both statewide and within the Stanford community itself, could be, in
part, responsible for the slow progress.
In 1992, at the time that he assumed the presidency of Stanford University,
Gerhard Casper reaffirmed the University's commitment to affirmative action in
the recruitment and retention of women and minorities. Following the passage
of Proposition 209 in the fall of 1996, President Casper and the Faculty
Senate once again reiterated Stanford's commitment to maintaining a diverse
community of students, faculty, and staff. However, there has been a growing
tendency among many faculty and administrators to fall prey to some of the
more negative myths concerning affirmative action that have circulated in the
wake of Proposition 209's success.
Given the national political debates over affirmative action, it is worth
noting here that this federal policy in no way requires or recommends the
lowering of standards in order to hire women and minorities. Affirmative
action originated in the 1960s through a series of Executive Orders from
President Lyndon Johnson and expanded in the 1970s through congressional
legislation to insure equal opportunity in all workplaces, including
educational institutions. The intention of affirmative action policies has
been to level the playing field in occupations with historical patterns of
discrimination in hiring and promotion of women and minorities. In short,
affirmative action is one means of correcting past discrimination.
Affirmative action does not require quotas for hiring, but it does imply an
effort to eradicate discriminatory practices. Such practices may have been
more blatant in the past, when job descriptions and interview questions openly
discouraged the hiring of women and minorities, but the habits of
discrimination can linger long after they are legally proscribed. That so
much of our bias operates beneath the level of consciousness makes it all the
more difficult to combat, and all the more necessary to remain personally and
institutionally attentive to potential bias in our evaluations and our
procedures. The problem faced by groups historically underrepresented on
university faculties may be in large part that of perception, namely that
women and minorities are not judged as fully excellent because of the
operation of subtle and unconscious bias.
Raising awareness of potential bias may be one way to avoid its effect. We
are concerned, however, that our efforts to raise this may have lapsed over
time. For example, the School of Humanities and Sciences has changed its
policies concerning affirmative action at the point of promotion. In April,
1983, Humanities and Sciences Dean Norman Wessells wrote to Provost Albert
Hastorf that "Stanford's Affirmative Action policy does not call for the
promotion of women or members of minority groups on the basis of lower
standards than those applied to all other candidates. Rather it requires that
an especially careful scrutiny be given to assure that no consideration in the
candidate's favor be overlooked, and that in those cases that are truly
borderline, where the decision could go either way, the equipoise is resolved
in favor of the candidate.... " The dean advised the decision-making body in
the school to take affirmative action into consideration in reviewing
promotion cases.
Since 1993, however, Humanities and Sciences Dean John Shoven has acted
on the premise that affirmative action considerations may never be taken into
account in promotion decisions. In recent months Provost Rice has reiterated
the policy that the university takes race and gender into account only at the
time of hiring and not at the time of promotion. We should consider carefully
whether these changes in the meaning and implementation of affirmative action
in recent years have led to a number of the recent problems Stanford has had
in retaining and tenuring women faculty. In light of past practice, we would
like the Faculty Senate to consider whether a return to earlier policies would
not be preferable in helping to diversify the composition of Stanford's
faculty.
VIII. WOMEN FACULTY IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
The scarcity of women in positions of leadership at Stanford is real, and it
is a reflection of the scarcity of women in tenured positions. In most
categories, over the last ten years tenured women are represented in
leadership positions in proportions equal to, or exceeding, their 13 percent
proportion as a total of the tenured faculty. But those numbers are so small
that women are often isolated as the sole female member of a particular
leadership group, and the proportions have not changed significantly in most
categories in the last ten years. Furthermore, women are underrepresented at
some of the highest levels of leadership and prestige (see Appendix, Table 2,
parts 1 and 2)
Currently no dean of a school or program (such as Dean of Research or Dean of
Graduate Studies) is female; in the last ten years no more than one has been.
Although women have steadily increased in representation as chairs of
departments over the last ten years, similarly their numbers only slightly
exceed female representation in the tenured faculty (in the last four years
averaging about 15 percent). As holders of endowed chairs, perhaps the most
prestigious symbols of academic leadership, women have significantly lagged
behind men, representing no better than 8 percent of the holders.
At other leadership levels women are proportionately represented. In upper
level academic administration (President, Provost and Vice-Provosts) in recent
years women constitute one or two members of a group that has grown from about
5 to 9 members. On the important Advisory Board the picture is similar: one or
two female members in a group of seven. In the Appointments and Promotions
Committees, taking the Schools of Medicine and Humanities and Sciences as
examples, again it is clear that efforts are made to accord women proportional
representation or more; in the Medical Center Professoriate, where women
constitute nearly 20 percent of the faculty, their representation on the A & P
Committee exceeds that representation. At the Associate Dean level, women for
the last few years have represented about 25 percent of the group, down from a
early 1990s high of more than 30 percent. And in the elected Academic Senate,
women's representation over the last ten years has met or exceeded women's
representation in the Academic Council faculty as a whole (18 percent).
These statistics suggest significant efforts by the University over the last
ten years to place women in leadership positions in numbers approximating
their representation on the faculty. But they also show little change in that
achievement over time and significant failure to put women at the highest
level of academic leadership (Deans) and prestige (endowed chairs). In
addition we are faced with paradoxical results: efforts to place women in
leadership positions often are at the detriment of their academic research
agendas. Until we have a larger pool of senior women faculty, this will
continue to be a problem.
The solution to these patterns in the long term is to increase the number of
tenured women faculty at Stanford, and in the short term to appoint more women
to the highest levels of leadership.
IX. PROPOSALS
We recommend the following proposals, not as a means of ensuring results that
will satisfy everyone or fully redress the issues this report has raised, but
as a means of strengthening Stanford's continuing commitment to the excellence
and diversification of the faculty. We also raise these proposals in the hope
of inviting members of the Faculty Senate and the campus community at large to
develop other proposals to discuss and consider:
* The Provost and Deans should explicitly encourage (on an annual basis)
departments to take seriously the task of recruiting more women and
minorities. This point should also be communicated in the training of
departmental chairs.
* Criteria for selection of deans, chairs, and other high level
administrators should include a demonstrable commitment to issues of
equity. In the case of candidates who have not held administrative
positions previously, the level of commitment will be harder to assess but
nonetheless should be an important point of consideration in making an
appointment.
* The decision-making bodies (i.e. appointments and promotions committees) of
each School should regularly reaffirm their commitment to equitable
treatment of women and minority faculty. They should discuss at the
beginning of each year the effects of gender and racial biases in the
decision-making process leading to hiring and promotion evaluations in
order to be self-conscious about their potential implications in these
important decisions.
* Consider the idea of having deans invite faculty-wide nominations for the
composition of the appointments and promotions committees of each School,
where this procedure is not already in place. Such a process, already in
place for the Advisory Board, would allow a greater degree of involvement
on the part of faculty in the selection of this important committee.
* Stanford should make several mid-career hires (e.g. advanced assistant
through early full) in order to create the largest pool of diverse
candidates for senior positions. Deans and departments should also think
creatively about what constitutes "mid-career" since some of the best women
candidates may have interrupted or delayed careers. This observation
follows Provost Rice's suggestion in her 1997 report on "The Status of
Women Faculty at Stanford."
* All junior faculty should receive clear and careful guidance regarding
review procedures and promotion processes, and receive appropriate
mentoring. Recognizing that many junior faculty can be unduly burdened
with heavy advising, service, and teaching responsibilities, the Third Year
Review should attend carefully to these issues and seek to establish
appropriate mentoring when this has not occurred in the first few years.
Measures that could be taken at this point include extra leave time for
writing or the reduction of committee assignments in the years before
tenure review for those who have made strong contributions to teaching,
advising, and university service.
* Consider that files of all women and minority faculty go before the
Advisory Board, regardless of the decision at the decanal level. While
recognizing that this proposal is not without its problems in singling out
any one sector of the faculty for additional consideration, we nonetheless
feel that until the numbers of women and minority faculty are significantly
improved, additional inspection of these cases would be helpful. At
minimum, a continued assessment of the appeals procedures, as was
undertaken this year by the Provost, should help us to establish a fair
process by which individual faculty and their departments can request
additional readings of appointment and tenure denials.
* The administration should follow the suggestion made in the Strober Report
that the Provost maintain annual records on the number and percentage of
women and minority faculty by rank, tenure status, and faculty line and
report current progress annually to the Senate. The regular accrual of
this information will provide a benchmark against which to measure part of
what we have accomplished each year.7
We also wish to stress that numbers alone cannot convey the positive or
negative aspects of climate. Our suggestions above speak to the issue of
environment as well as concrete results. Recognizing that actual gains in
numbers often do proceed slowly, we want to encourage the administration and
faculty to pay equal attention to the climate in which we work and teach.
There is no easy solution to this aspect of our concerns but it is our hope
that discussion of these findings and subsequent proposals will be an
important step in ameliorating some of the tensions of the last few years.
X. RESOLUTION FOR THE SENATE
In closing, we ask the Faculty Senate to express its support for the goals of
this report by passing the following resolution:
The Stanford Faculty Senate renews its 1993 request that the University
treat concerns about the status of women faculty at Stanford with the
utmost seriousness, recognizing that the slow pace of progress here,
as at other major research universities, requires special vigilance to
achieve greater gender equity. We urge the faculty of each school to
take steps to increase the hiring and promotion of women faculty through
a variety of mechanisms, which may include the proposals contained within
the Report to the Faculty Senate, Spring 1998. We further urge that
administrators at the university, school, and department levels take
appropriate steps to foster a climate of attention to issues of gender
equity in hiring, promotion, and leadership at all levels of university
decision making. The Senate also requests that the Provost report once
a year to the Senate for the next five years, supplementing the annual
statistics of gains and losses with a report on the efforts that have
been made to recruit and retain women faculty throughout the university.
_____________________________________________________________________________
1 We have limited our discussion to gender, but we believe that many parellels
exist between gender and racial equity and urge that thorough investigation
of racial equity be undertaken by the university.
2 Although the total number of women faculty has remained small, the School of
Law has increasd the proportion of senior women to a critical mass through
promotions and senior hires. Currently twenty percent of the tenured law
school faculty are women, an increase from 8.3 percent in 1992-93.
3 For example, Provost Cantor at the University of Michigan has made the
hiring and retention of minority and women faculty a priority, providing
incentives to significantly increase faculty diversity. Harvard University
has taken the lead nationally in the hiring of outstanding scholars of
African American studies.
4 Women's Coalition for Gender Equity at Stanford University, The Status of
Women Faculty at Stanford University: A Preliminary Report, February, 1998.
5 For descriptive purposes quadratic functions have been fitted to the data on
tenure promotions across four decanal administrations. Promotion rates were
predicted using time period and time period squared as independent
predictors. The resulting curves showed different promotion patterns for
the sexes across time. There is relatively little variation in promotion
rates for men across time; the coefficients for both predictors are less
than their standard errors. In contrast there is considerable systematic
variation in promotion rates for women across time; the coefficients for
both predictors are twice their standard errors. Both curves are relatively
good fits of the data; explaining 57 and 85 percent of the variance in
promotion rates for men and women respectively. Given the small number of
time periods, calculations of statistical reliability are inappropriate;
these results are descriptive only.
6 Note that these studies require research subjects to make attributions about
hypothetical cases in which only the sex of the teacher varies; subsequently
they cannot be attributed to qualities of actual professors.
7 Recognizing the enormous effort involved in reconstructing Stanford's
records in these areas prior to 1997-98, we would like to thank Juni Kim in
Humanities and Sciences, and Kathy Gillam and Jane Volk-Brew in the
Provost's Office for helping us. We owe special thanks to Vice-Provost for
Junior Faculty Development Anne Fernald for overseeing the creation of a
single data base in which to maintain Stanford's hiring and promotion data.
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