University makes pledge to ensure gender equality in engineering, sciences

After years of internal studies about gender representation among their faculties, Princeton and eight other research universities officially recognized the current gender inequality in the engineering and the sciences by signing a pledge to work toward the full participation of women in those fields.

Though a long-recognized issue, "It is important for us to commit ourselves," said Associate Provost Georgia Nugent. Echoing a statement released by the conference, Nugent said she felt "there are a lot of factors shaping the problem, and there will probably need to be more broader changes within the discipline."

University Vice President and Secretary Tom Wright '62 said President Shapiro — who attended the conference — is taking the appropriate step in signing the pledge to confront the issue.

"President Shapiro felt there was a lot of valuable data provided about practices that worked," Wright said. "He intends on finding ways to continue to add and keep women here in science and engineering."

During the conference, hosted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Jan. 29, Shapiro and leaders of the other eight universities outlined three specific goals for the future: a faculty whose diversity matches that of the student body; equity for, and full participation by, women; and a profession, and institutions, in which individuals with family responsibilities are not disadvantaged.

The conference came at the heels of a study done by three female professors at MIT — Nancy Hopkins, Lotte Bailyn and Lorna Gibson — that Charles Vest, president of MIT, released in 1999. The study revealed financial and resource inequities at MIT.

However, Princeton conducted a similar internal study of its faculty in 1998-99 and found the same types of inequalities that exist at MIT were not prevalent at Princeton.

"It's great that it is not an acute problem at Princeton," Nugent said. "But we still do experience some difficulties in finding female faculty members in certain areas."

With less females majoring in these disciplines at the undergraduate level and even less earning doctorates, the dearth of female professorial candidates has become a perpetual cycle, according to Nugent and Erhan Cinlar, chair of the operations research and financial engineering department.

"It has been a very difficult problem for the engineering departments to add female professors," Cinlar said. "When there are two or three percent of female doctorates in your field and you want to increase your faculty to 50 percent, it is very difficult."

Since the mid-1990s, Princeton has been working on initiatives to reach a gender balance, Nugent said. However she added that the University has confronted several problems along the way.

"With the economy doing well now we're basically offering much less money than the private sector can," Cinlar said of his and other fields. "And with so few female doctorates it has created incredible demand among the universities."

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Cinlar added that his department has had to compete with businesses that have gone after females in the scientific and engineering fields "with a vengeance."Cinlar said that following the breakup of AT&T, universities of Princeton's caliber have had greater success attracting female professors.

"With those companies focusing more on management concerns there was less research freedom," Cinlar explained. "Now people are looking to universities."

Both Nugent and Cinlar focused on the third goal set forth during the conference as a concern for Princeton — how to attract female faculty with families.

"Unlike the University of Michigan [one of the nine institutions that signed the pledge], it is very hard to find jobs for married couples at Princeton because of our size," Cinlar said.

This has become a larger problem because there are more career couples now than 20 or 30 years ago, Nugent added. "It has become somewhat of a life issue."

However, Cinlar said the University has allowed his department to remain competitive by providing generous financial support when departments do have a specific candidate in mind. "They have really put their money where their words are."