From The New York Times > Education > For Women in Sciences, Slow Progress in Academia:
"Even as the number of women earning Ph.D.'s in science has substantially increased - women now account for 45 percent to 50 percent of the biology doctorates, and 33 percent of those in chemistry - the science and engineering faculties of elite research universities remain overwhelmingly male. And the majority of the women are clustered at the junior faculty rank.
At Harvard, for example, there are 149 men with tenure in the natural sciences and just 13 women. Cynthia Friend, the chairwoman of the chemistry department, remains the only woman who has ever received tenure in chemistry at Harvard. (By comparison, women have done better in the humanities departments at Harvard, where 39 women and 98 men have tenure.)
Nor is Harvard's record unusual. The faculties of most elite institutions are not only mostly male, they are also overwhelmingly white. According to a 2004 survey by Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma, there are 13,235 professors on physical sciences and engineering faculties of the 50 top research universities, and only 468 are black or Hispanic."
... Female scientists, and senior female professors in general, have been particularly concerned about Harvard's record in the past decade, including the last four years under Dr. Summers, with the number of tenure offers to women on the faculty of arts and sciences dropping to 4 out of 32 last year from 14 out of 41 in the 1999-2000 academic year.
read the rest of the article (NYTimes.com)
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