Women Pass 50-Year Mark at Div School

According to the Bible, Adam was the first to inhabit the Garden of Eden, but Eve arrived soon after. The Harvard Divinity School (HDS) took longer to achieve such gender integration, but is now celebrating 50 years of women at the school.

In 1955, 139 years after its founding, HDS allowed women to enroll at the school for the first time. Though the school lagged behind many of its peer institutions in allowing females to matriculate, HDS has since pioneered the study of women in religion.

The year-long celebration of this milestone includes a lecture series by female scholars, faculty research presentations on gender and religion, and a retrospective on women at the school at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library.

And the exhibit shows a changing landscape at the school. With a student body that is 52 percent female and a faculty that is 40 percent female, the gender composition of HDS is vastly different than in 1955 when only eight females matriculated.

But more attention should be focused on the role of women at the school, according to Janet Gyatso, Hershey professor of Buddhist studies and chair of the new Standing Committee for the Study of Women and Gender in Religion.

“The culture has changed. More and more women are feeling empowered, strong, and confident,” she says. “But that does not mean that all of the problems have gone away.”

A DIVINE HISTORY

Though women were not an official presence at the school until mid-century, women had always been a part of HDS, either as staff or family members.

In 1893, HDS alumni first petitioned the school to admit women, but co-education wasn’t a priority for then-University President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853. He opted for a plan that increased ethnic diversity among men instead.

Almost 100 years after some of its peer institutions and 23 years after Yale Divinity School, women were allowed to enter HDS as students in 1955.

At the time, The Crimson reported that HDS acting dean George H. Williams attributed the new admission policy to “an over-widening demand for women in the church.”

During the next 50 years, women became more of a presence at the school­—both numerically, as part of the student body, and as a point of inquiry in the study of religion.

In 1973, Jane I. Smith became one of the first women to join the HDS faculty. Smith says that she did not recognize the symbolic importance of her selection.

“I hadn’t honestly been aware of it,” says Smith, who is currently a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary. “This was the big new age of feminism. The appointment of women to the faculty was the response to this call.”

With feminism as a cultural buzzword in the early 1970s, HDS classrooms entered the cultural conflict.

Female students brought bells to class, Smith says. They would ring the bells if someone used male pronouns or used gender-specific language incorrectly.

But the physical presence of women on campus didn’t match their classroom clamor. During the 1970s, less than 20 percent of the student body was female.

In a 1971 Harvard Divinity Bulletin, one female student characterized the atmosphere at HDS as “so obviously...male.”

But even during a decade of often bitter gender conflict, Smith says she “found people eager to support me and what I was doing.”

But Smith, who was a member of the faculty until 1980 and then associate dean of HDS until 1986, says that she was still troubled by the lack of men willing to teach about gender and divinity.

FROM CLAMOR TO COMMITTEE

The 1970s weren’t just a decade of bell-ringing at HDS. The Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP), the first and only research-based program to focus on the study of women and religion, was started in 1973.

WSRP began as an opportunity to bring female scholars to HDS each year. Since its inception, more than a hundred researchers have studied under its auspices at HDS.

Aside from WSRP, HDS offers a doctoral degree for students that want to examine the intersection of religion and gender.

“Harvard is really one of the only programs in religion, gender, and culture,” says Stephanie L. May, a doctoral student at HDS.

May says that this program provides a crucial lens that is otherwise missing from theological instruction.

“So much of what has been done in religion has reflected often from the male point of view,” May says. “Most of the core traditional texts that we read...were written by men.”

Tovis E. Page, a doctoral candidate in the study of religion, says she chose Harvard because of its opportunities for women.

“Harvard certainly has a lot to offer in terms of religion and women studies,” she says.

The presence of women, gender, and religion programs shows that women are a significant force at the school.

“I’m particularly pleased that we have achieved probably the strongest assemblage of scholars working in the broad area of women and religion,” HDS Dean William A. Graham writes in an e-mail.

A Standing Committee for the Study of Women and Gender in Religion was created last spring to unify faculty who want a further focus on gender.

“I think [the committee] was created because there are a lot of resources for women’s studies, but we felt they were scattered,” says Gyatso.

To create a “sense of community,” the committee holds a forum three times a semester, in which faculty members give presentations on their work, Gyatso says.

PROPHECIES FOR THE FUTURE

Even though Graham says he is pleased by the progress the school has made in women’s studies, he says the school will continue to improve in this realm.

Some at HDS say that the school needs a culture change before the integration of gender and religion is complete.

“It still tends to be the case that feminist and gender studies have not permeated all faculty members,” says Sarah A. Coakley, Mallinckrodt professor of divinity.

Because gender-focused courses tend to be predominantly taught and attended by women, May says she finds herself in classes in which the man is the “oddball.”

But May says that changes need to be structural as well as cultural.

As a single mother, May says she finds evening classes at HDS unaccommodating.

But these concerns have not been ignored by the administration in Andover Hall.

“We are focused on this both in our faculty hiring and in our development efforts, including trying to build endowments for women’s studies,” Graham writes.