Officials say lack of women faculty not unique to IU

Female tenured faculty account for less than 22 percent of senior-level faculty at IU, but an absence of women is not only a problem at the top of the faculty status ladder. It's evident in various academic departments, namely the sciences. \nYet this trend is a national one and not unique to IU, administrators said.\n"There was a huge controversy at Harvard about this issue because basically the president said it's impossible to hire women in the sciences," said Alberto Torchinsky, IU's associate vice chancellor for strategic hiring and support. "The lack of women is a problem. At IU and elsewhere, the numbers of women in the sciences are abysmal."\nWhile clusters of women in lower-level positions can be found in disciplines such as literature, the number of women hired in the chemistry department at the senior level can be counted on one hand, said Edwardo Rhodes, vice chancellor for academic support and diversity. Officials agree IU needs to work on providing better family benefits that will attract women in science -- and all backgrounds -- to the University.\n"By and large, you have extraordinarily low numbers of women in a Ph.D. disciplinary," Rhodes said. "Because senior faculty come out of these programs, there is a gross under-representation of women in the physical sciences, but there is probably an over-representation in other areas. There's no question that there's an imbalance."\nAnd officials agree there's no quick fix to this complex problem. National mentoring programs that bring women in science together to share information and research are effective, Rhodes said, but the real solution lies within the IU community itself.\n"I think we probably need to do more to make the campus atmosphere friendlier to women, especially in a small town like Bloomington," he said. "If your campus atmosphere isn't friendly, there isn't anything else here, and you are in trouble." \nBecause IU is constantly competing with thousands of colleges and universities for senior-level women, creating a more women-friendly Bloomington is absolutely necessary, Torchinsky said.\n"If you are a single woman around age 25 and you wanted to start a family, you wouldn't come to Bloomington (to be tenured)," he said. "There are very few eligible men, and if you're a minority, it's even worse. IU pays a price for how isolated it is."\nHowever, some have ideas for how IU can take other steps to reel in the prize senior-level women they often struggle to catch.\n"We want to attain these women, but they go to other institutions that are further ahead of us," said Carol McCord, assistant dean of the Office of Women's Affairs. "We need to say we'll pay you more, we have better child care, we'll give you more lab space. If IU does these things, they are going to bring in younger women because they are going to choose the institution they are most comfortable at."\nImproving child care is just one of the pieces administrators must patch together in the complex family issues puzzle, McCord said.\n"Most people come up for tenure at the same time, but if you are a woman and you have a child in the first five years as a faculty member, that could take a big chunk of time out of your productivity," she said. "You won't get as much done as the male colleagues who are going up for tenure at the same time you are, and you probably won't get tenured."\nBetter family-leave policies would not only help women faculty already here, but would also help make IU a more attractive package to women considering working at the University, said Julie Knost, director of the Office of \nAffirmative Action.\n"It's hard to take time beyond the classroom if you have a family, and women do still tend to be the ones that fulfill the caretaker role at home," she said.\nCurrently, women faculty are granted six weeks maternity leave. \n"There is this response for better family leave, but some think it's too expensive," she said. "Family-leave policy has been under review for a number of years now. A new president might help the process."\nIf approved by the board of trustees, family leave would cover women and men and would also give faculty a cushion if they had to leave for other family issues.\nAlthough family issues are undeniably a factor for women, some contend that administrators need to dig beneath the surface to get to the root of the problem.\n"There is no question that making IU a more women-friendly place includes beefing up childcare provisions and family-leave policies, etc., but family reasons aren't why there wasn't a woman among the IU president finalists," said Suzanna Walters, chair of the gender studies department. "I think the real issue is, do you turn the good faith for moving women up into action and back up that good faith with\nresources to make equity real"