In January 2005, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested at a scholarly meeting attended by many accomplished women scientists that innate differences between the genders may be one reason that fewer women than men pursue careers in science and mathematics. At its spring 2005 meeting, the AAUP's Committee on Women in the Academic Profession drafted the following response to his widely publicized comments.
The ongoing debate over Lawrence Summers's January 14 remarks indicates how fraught a topic gender equity in the academy—and specifically in the sciences—continues to be. The Association's Committee on Women in the Academic Profession would like to take this opportunity to respond. While we agree with Dr. Summers that women continue to be underrepresented in these fields, we disagree with his uninformed speculation about why this is the case. Our response is based on a number of recent studies, including a 2002 report of the National Science Foundation titled Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, and the work of University of California, Berkeley, researchers Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden on academic careers and family formation.
The research shows that although there has been an increase in the number of women who hold graduate degrees in science and engineering, there are still significant institutional barriers to success for women scientists, including insufficient lab space, salaries that lag behind those of male colleagues, and the difficulty of balancing work and family. In our assessment, these and other roadblocks, including gender bias and discrimination, are the primary reasons for the underrepresentation of women in the sciences and engineering. Summers misses the point that bias plays a part in decisions with respect to women faculty—continuing discrimination, continuing lack of academic support, and continuing insensitivity to work and family conflicts.
The data from the AAUP's annual survey of faculty compensation and tenure status indicate that women in all disciplines are underrepresented at doctoral universities and are also less likely to achieve senior faculty status. Women also suffer from continuing disadvantages in salary; overall, full-time women faculty earn approximately 80 percent of what men earn. In addition, other data show that women are more likely to hold part-time or non-tenure-track faculty positions across all types of institutions.
Further, the AAUP's research indicates that work and family conflicts play a role in the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering—perhaps more so than in other disciplines. Women constitute fewer than 20 percent of science and engineering faculty in four-year colleges and universities (for more information, see the Web site of the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE program). As Mason and Goulden's research has shown, tenured women in science are less likely than other tenured women to have children, suggesting women in academic science perceive that they must choose either family or career. In November 2001, the AAUP adopted its Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work, which addresses the dilemma faced by junior faculty members whose years of probationary service coincide with a time in their lives during which they might become new parents. The AAUP statement contends that "the goal of every institution should be to create an academic community in which all members are treated equitably, families are supported, and family-care concerns are regarded as legitimate and important," and it suggests policies such as stopping the tenure clock and paid family leave that could be instituted to address the difficulty of balancing family and career.