Harvard University has gotten its first woman President — a milestone because of it being a first and a head-scratcher since you wonder what took it so long. The Boston-based Christian Science Monitor reports:
The Ivy League has reached a milestone in gender equality: Half of the eight schools are now run by women.
Drew Gilpin Faust emerged from the weekend as Harvard University’s first female president. A current Harvard dean, she will not only sit at the pinnacle of higher education, but will oversee a budget on a par with top corporations. Of the 20 female CEOs in the Fortune 1000, only one runs a firm with assets greater than Harvard’s.
Despite the 50-50 leadership split at the Ivies, only 20 percent of US colleges and universities are run by women. Dr. Faust’s appointment could have a lasting impact on the gender imbalance among faculty at Harvard, and in the leadership ranks across academia, experts say.
“This is a crack in the glass ceiling, in the sense that to have as prestigious an institution as Harvard expand their notion of suitability for the presidency, sets an example for the rest of academia that’s hard to ignore,” says Margaret Miller, professor of higher education at the University of Virginia.
Faust has an impecccable background, the paper reports:
An inside candidate, Faust came to Harvard after serving as a history professor and director of the women’s studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned degrees at Bryn Mawr College and UPenn, and has authored five books. Her rise along the traditional academic ladder marks an upward mobility that excludes women more than it does men, say experts.
“[Female academics] are promoted less frequently than men are,” says Professor Miller. “But because the numbers at the bottom end of that ladder are becoming so overwhelmingly female, that situation is changing.”
That change is working its way up from the community colleges and smaller universities, which are more likely to be run by women. “This is a case where the larger, more well-established universities are behind the curve,” says Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges.
A crucial choke point is the tenure process for professorships, which places enormous demands on candidates to prove themselves at a time when many women are bearing children. Women’s advocates stress the need for policies that stop the clock on the tenure process for pregnancies and that provide a better work-life balance. Faust’s work on the issue at Harvard paved the way for a new office of faculty development and a tenure extension policy.
Will this open more doors — more quickly? Most assuredly, yes. But this is a different world we’re living in. 2007 isn’t the same as 1957. You’ll now have a woman at the helm at Harvard. A woman is a serious contender for the Democratic party’s 2008 presidential nomination. An African-American is a serious contender for that nomination, too.
The biggest change is that none of the three are what used to be dismissively called “tokens.” And that means the doors of opportunity are now historically open more than ever.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.