December 6, 2007

Tenure at MIT Still Goes Mainly to Men

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — where almost a decade ago officials pledged to do something about the gender discrimination experienced by female faculty members — it appears that change is slow.

Only one out of 25 faculty members granted tenure at the university this year is a woman, The Boston Globe reported. Women have been achieving tenure at a lower rate than men over the past 10 years, the newspaper reported, citing an MIT analysis. Women make up 16 percent of the tenured faculty, up from 10.5 percent a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the number of female junior faculty members granted tenure each year since 1997 has ranged from zero to eight, compared with a range of 10 to 24 men a year during that same period.

The gender gap was illustrated recently in the university’s in-house newspaper, which published photographs of the faculty members who were granted tenure so far this year. Only one woman, Amy Finkelstein, a professor of public economics, was pictured. “When I looked at her picture, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at MIT whose research in the early 1990s on gender bias against female scientists at the institution served as a catalyst for science departments across the country. (In a follow-up report last year, Ms. Hopkins said that gains for female professors tended to peak during specific initiatives but trail off in subsequent years.)

Susan Hockfield, MIT’s president, told the Globe that she also found the single photo of a woman among the pictures of newly tenured professors was “unsettling,” but added that the university was still committed to hiring more women and improving their tenure rates. —Audrey Williams June

Comments

1. Here’s another way to present this story: “MIT Now Has Woman President; Number of Tenured Women Increased by 52% over Decade.” Anyone who has worked extremely hard on something difficult, complex, and important would have to be impressed by that progress.

   — S. Britchky    Dec 6, 04:32 PM    #

2. MIT’s statement of ‘commitment’ to hiring more women is a meaningless without a simultaneous commitment to a numerical result over a specific period of time.

   — ml    Dec 7, 06:08 AM    #

3. One of the purposes of tenure in the teaching profession is to establish permanence. Tenure is given and continued based on superior performance as evaluated by colleagues and peers. Gender should not be an issue.

   William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

   — Dr. William Allan Kritsonis    Dec 7, 07:03 AM    #

4. It’s stunning to think that a highly attractive university like MIT could not get close to parity in this in 10 years. One could argue that recruitment might be an issue at a lesser-known institution, but a 16/84 split after a decade of “effort” speaks volumes as to their lack of true committment to the issue.

   — John    Dec 7, 07:36 AM    #

5. Read a futurist book like “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil and then let me hear your argument why the institution of tenure makes any sense at all in 2007. You want to give a lifetime appointment today to someone who could be around in 2037? Go figga.

   — Philip J Tramdack    Dec 7, 07:52 AM    #

6. S.Britchky, regarding the change from 10.5% to 16%: Anytime you only report the relative increase (52%) without mentioning the absolute increase (5.5%), it is misleading. This is a tactic used by drug companies to make the benefits of their drugs sound larger. Going from 1.05% to 1.6% is still a 52% increase, but would anyone consider this true progress?? As far as catchy titles go, you’ve gone to the opposite extreme.

   — CE    Dec 7, 09:58 AM    #

7. I certainly agree that women should be as eligible for tenure opportunties as men and that administrators should work hard to level the playing field, but these reports and the ensuing complaints always trouble me by blaming the “administration” and the “institution.” Isn’t the tenure process largely in the hands of faculty or those within the faculty realm? Isn’t it the colleagues of these women, who haven’t gotten tenure or haven’t been supported, encouraged, or favorably reviewed, who are largely responsible for these statistics? Who shaped these policies and fights hard to keep them in place? In my experience, it’s the tenured faculty of an institution that determines how challenging a process tenure is, not the faceless “administration.” Am I wrong or is this just another uncomfortable truth? The problem will never be solved if the real causes aren’t addressed.

   — jpl    Dec 7, 10:03 AM    #

8. As a junior professor at MIT, let me say (anonymously, of course) that the issue of tenuring women and minorities is serious problem here; but the problem is far more complicated than a mere reflection of sexism or racism at the Institute itself. In fact, it reflects a larger dysfunction in the Institute’s tenuring process. About a third of junior professors get tenure—which means about two thirds do not. This might seem to some to be indicative of high standards. But the question then becomes: whose standards?

   MIT does not really tenure for excellence in research. Like other top-of-the-top universities, MIT tenures for reputation of excellence in research. (Forget about teaching or service; neither factors into the equation.)
   This means two things: First, cutting-edge research, risky research, or what the corporate-types like to call “thinking outside of the box” is not viable when faced with a grueling tenure process, based so heavily upon peer review that—in order to garner outstanding reviews—one must cater to the preconceptions of one’s peers at other top institutions. Thus, much like that Other university up the road, MIT is forced poach its very best scholars who first proved their genius elsewhere, because the tenure process does not allow its own junior faculty the time or intellectual flexibility to excel at that level.

   What does this have to do with gender (or race)? Well, peer review might claim to be an “objective” analysis of research, but any psychologist or sociologist worth their salt will tell you that evaluation of one’s peers is a social process. And look at the gender and racial breakdowns of these “peers.” White to a man. MIT’s unyielding adherence to reputation can and will only reproduce the social circle (white, male) of those called upon to evaluate the reputation. Meanwhile, there is a myopic and simple-minding insistence, pervasive throughout the institute, that this tenure process is somehow “objective” (tossing out a century of social science on the impossibility of such a thing), which leaves the Institute unable to address the problem.
   Only after women and minorities (and white men with numbers of women or minorities in their social circle) have broken into other top and just-below the top institutions, and occupy positions of power in the profession, will they then advocate for those in their social networks in tenure cases at MIT. And only then will MIT’s tenuring process be physically able to recognize these one-time outsiders as worthy of tenure.
   Just my opinion, of course. Others—particularly those who have already made it through the tenure process here—would certainly disagree. Perhaps if I survive it, I’ll become just as convince of my own greatness.

   — jr    Dec 7, 11:21 AM    #

9. Yes, these data show that the number and percentage of female faculty receiving tenure at MIT is increasing slowly. However, by themselves, these numbers do not prove that gender discrimination took place. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to provide evidence that female tenure candidates achieved the research record necessary to attain tenure, but were turned down because they were women (i.e., because of their genitalia or feminine attributes). These numbers do not prove that this took place at MIT. Further evidence is needed as the ostensible correlation may be spurious. Yes, tenure is a social process and it is to a certain extent, subjective. Moreover, tenure decisions are very discriminatory by definition. Tenured faculty and university administrators must discriminate between those candidates that merit tenure and those that do not. It is more reasonable to believe that this discrimination is based predominantly on some combination of the quantity and quality of the candidates’ academic achievements, not on their genitalia and/or masculine/feminine attributes. This process is even more discriminatory at elite research institutions like MIT, where tenure candidates may be turned down even though they have achieved research records that would merit tenure at the vast majority of universities in the nation (the social and subjective component at work). I would also point out that in these debates, people never seem to mention the quality and standards issue. It seems logical to believe that the vast majority of highly educated people would not turn down a candidate that has achieved the necessary record of accomplishments for tenure because of their genitalia or femininity. The flip side of this is whether a candidate without the necessary record of accomplishments should be granted tenure because of their genitalia or femininity so the percentages improve more quickly and become more equal? Those who use identity politics to try to leverage power and resources for individuals who may not merit them would say yes. However, the reality is that one form of discrimination has simply been replaced by a new form. Further, the quality of the university faculty and the institution would be lowered if persons with less competence are granted tenure simply because of their genitalia and feminine/masculine characteristics.

   — RG    Dec 7, 12:30 PM    #

10. The issue of tenure at MIT is more then just how many female and male faculty received tenure over the last several years. As reported in the Boston globe it is the case that 1 of 25 faculty receiving tenure this year is female and 16 of 108 in the past several years where females but also as reported in the Boston Globe article 41% (43/104) of female and 48% (179/372) of male faculty going up for tenure are successful. Although the gender disparity in the percent of faculty successfully getting tenured is a problem in and of itself a bigger issue is why MIT hires so many more male then female faculty. Given that across all areas of academia there are more females them males receiving bachelors degrees and near parity in receiving PhDs would not one expect MIT to be hiring near equal numbers of males and females? Maybe not, MIT is predominantly an Engineering and Science school and the disparity in hiring matches the disparity in female and male PhDs in engineering and science areas. Although MIT administrators should be held responsible for providing support for female faculty, to expect gender parity in number of tenured faculty at MIT is unrealistic at this point in time. It seems heavy handed to point at the MIT administration as being responsible for what is a much broader issue of gender disparity in engineering and science disciplines.

    — CDC    Dec 7, 02:32 PM    #

11. As someone who has been on both sides of the tenure review process, I think 2 points are important.

    1. I think we all agree that tenuring should not be a “by-the-numbers” process … so the decision is not completely objective.

    2. Given that the process is not completely objective, what do we tend to do for people on the border line? If the person is “like me”, we go thumbs up; if the person is not (and therefore appears riskier), we go thumbs down.

    — J Hagstrom    Dec 7, 03:00 PM    #

12. I’m not sure the data presented here are helpful to understanding the problem. It would be much more helpful if we also knew the numbers of men and women applying for tenure so that we could judge the gains (or losses) more accurately. It would also help us understand if the gap is at the tenure point or if it still lies within the hiring process.

    — Jeremy Goodman    Dec 10, 09:17 AM    #

13. It’s interesting to me that this discussion is framed as whether or not the decision to promote/tenure a probationary faculty member is discriminatory (as defined rather narrowly by case law). The promotion and tenure review is the culmination of six years of work. Success or failure in P&T does not occur only at the final decision point, and I do not believe outcomes may be explained solely by “merit.” Multiple factors affect the perceived accomplishment of probationary faculty members, including formal and informal service load, mentoring, equity in assignments, the presence of a community, etc. I think that when we broaden the conversation to include everything from the point of hire up to the point of decision, it is much easier to see potential for structural and cognitive bias to play a role in these outcomes.

    — anne    Dec 10, 05:32 PM    #

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