Presidents sign joint statement

President Tilghman and eight other university presidents issued a statement this week reaffirming their commitment to gender equality in faculty hiring.

The statement, which grew out of a meeting this summer, reflects a collective effort on behalf of the nine research universities to create a more diverse faculty.

"Our goal as research universities is to create conditions in which all faculty are capable of the highest level of academic achievement," the presidents wrote. "Continuing to develop academic personnel policies, institutional resources, and a culture that supports family commitments is therefore essential for maximizing the productivity of our faculty."

President Tilghman said in an interview Wednesday that the issue requires collaboration.

"We see this as an issue where collective action can be very effective," she said.

The presidents of the nine universities first met in 2001, when they affirmed their commitment to gender equality in engineering and the sciences.

Tilghman said she thinks that familial commitments could be a factor in preventing women from applying for jobs on university faculties.

"I think the likeliest explanation is that this is the period where women begin to have children," she said.

Tilghman noted that while the percentage of molecular biology Ph.D.s granted to women has increased by 50 percent in recent years, only 25 percent of applicants for University professorships in the field come from women.

To make the job more accessible to applicants with families, Tilghman said that the University has reformed its tenure policy for professors with children in order to help faculty balance their work and their family.

Once hired, a professor with no children faces a six-year "tenure clock," after which the University decides whether he or she will receive tenure or be dismissed. Professors who are also parents, however, receive one extra year per child before evaluation.

"While considerable progress has been made since 2001, we acknowledge that there are still significant steps to be taken toward making academic careers compatible with family care-giving responsibilities," the statement said.

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Tilghman agreed that there is still work to be done.

"We're making progress ... but it's been slow," she said.

Among those who signed the statement was Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who drew criticism last winter for suggesting that "intrinsic aptitude" may be responsible for the comparatively low representation of women in science and engineering faculties.

At the time, John Hennessey of Stanford and Susan Hockfield of MIT, who also signed the statement, publicly criticized Summers' remarks along with Tilghman.

The presidents of the California Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan; the University of Pennsylvania and Yale also signed the statement.