Professors Discuss Hiring

Female faculty members from Harvard and other universities outlined their solutions to what they termed "the revolving door" problem of women in academia at a symposium yesterday.

The presentation featured Janet S. Hyde, professor of psychology and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Hyde, who also serves as ombudsperson for the her school's women faculty members, outlined Wisconsin's program to increase the number of tenured women faculty.

The talk, which was held at the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, also featured City of New York University Professor of Psychology Pamela T. Reid and Director of Women's Studies Program at McLean Hospital Judith Jordan.

Wisconsin began with the appointment of a task force to assess the status of tenured women faculty, according to Hyde. The task force examined each department's situation and formulated a philosophy on gender equity which forced individual departments to take responsibility for their hiring policies, she said.

The philosophy was that "true meritocracy really does mean gender equality," said Hyde.

An important issue in considering how to attract female faculty members, said Hyde, is familial concerns. Women must be assured that they will "be able to have a balance of family relations and work," she said.

Familial concerns require that universities include a number of incentives in the offer process, Hyde said, including on-site child care programs, parental leave guarantees and spouse hiring programs.

"Universities which do not have such programs will be at a disadvantage in competitive hiring," she said.

In addition, the presence of female faculty members on a university campus necessitates a sexual harassment and gender equity policy and a code of non-sexist language, Hyde said. Universities should also strive to balance committee assignments, she said, so that female faculty are not overburdened with committee work and kept from their teaching or research responsibilities.

Reid, who is also an author of articles on African-American women in academia, spoke next, calling the lack of female faculty members of color a "crisis situation."

Reid said that hiring women of color is a particular concern because many universities do not draw from their own graduate student pool or promote junior faculty members to senior positions. Instead, schools often look to senior faculty at other institutions to fill vacancies, leaving a relatively new generation of female academics with little chance to advance.

"Our academia is turning into a de facto apartheid system," she said.

Jordan, who is also a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, spoke last and told the members of the audience that progress could be made in hiring policies by a process of social change and the formation of support groups.

Members of the symposium audience, many of them female Harvard faculty members, said that while the University is different in many respects from Wisconsin and from other schools, they thought the presentation was important.

Professor of English Marjorie Garber said Harvard's program for maternal leave is "competitive with any university in the country" but the question of women of color is a particularly urgent one. There are currently no tenured Black women on the faculty.

Barbara E. Johnson, professor of English and comparative literature, said the University's policies on faculty hiring so far are well-designed but that the true test will come with their application.

"[Hyde's] presentation made me realize that Harvard is pretty good about these issues," said Johnson, who is also chair of the Women's Studies department. "This is a positive reflection on Harvard."