The move to equality for women inside the ivy walls of academia is gaining momentum.
“Our graduate and professional school enrollments are growing to the point where nearly half of all incoming law and business students are women, and the number of women college professors, though low, is growing–and more women than men now earn undergraduate and master’s degrees,” according to Julianne Malveaux, who has a doctorate in economics.
“In addition, women now earn 42 percent of the doctorate degrees granted in the United States,” said Malveaux, co-author with Deborah Perry of “Unfinished Business: A Democrat and A Republican Take on the 10 Most Important Issues Women Face” (Perigee, $24.95).
All that is good news, because education is an important steppingstone to equality in the workplace. But there’s one additional step academia has to take–and soon: granting tenure to women professors.
“Tenure is important, because it means the university you teach at cannot fire you except for very good cause,” said Joan C. Williams, professor of law at American University in Washington and executive director of the Program on Gender, Work & Family, an advocacy and research institute based at the law school. “When I got tenure in 1986, I said, `Now I’m free.’ It meant I had total academic freedom and could start having a baby.”
According to Williams, who got her law degree in 1980, “the percentage of women professors with tenure is not keeping pace with that of men. Women’s rate of tenure as full-time faculty in the U.S. was 46 percent in 1992, unchanged from 1975. But the rate for men, which rose sharply, was 72 percent in 1995.”
A more recent figure: In 2000, women held only 29 percent of all tenured academic posts.
Qualifying for tenure, Williams said, is a formal program that may take from seven to 11 years.
“But the nitty-gritty is that child-bearing years overlap with tenure track years, when you’re typically in your 20s and 30s,” she said. “The average age for getting tenure is 35, and the male–and traditional–pattern is to work very hard, with no career interruptions.”
Williams, who is married to James X. Dempsey, a public interest lawyer, has two children, ages 16 and 13.
When Williams was on her tenure track, she worked 12 hours a day until she had tenure. “But when I had children, I came home religiously at 5:30 p.m. every day. I could because I was tenured,” she said.
Motherhood and tenure tracks as they now exist don’t have a good fit:
“Ninety-two percent of U.S. mothers ages 25 to 44–the tenure track years–work less than 50 hours a week year-round,” said Williams, author of “Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It” (Oxford, $14.95). “That wipes most women out of the tenure track.”
Some universities have instituted temporary stoppage of the tenure clock, which usually involves taking one year off the track. But, as Williams points out, “it takes more than one year to raise a child.”
And that’s why she and Robert Drago, professor of labor and women’s studies at Penn State University in College Park, Pa., have devised a part-time tenure proposal that is more realistic.
“If the average academic works 60 hours a week, which is not uncommon, someone on a half-time tenure track could cut the hours in half, receive half pay but still do the work that will get her tenure, although in twice the usual time,” Williams said.
No schools offer the plan, she said, “but they will have to if they want to achieve gender equity. Half the talent is female, and that half is walking out the door, and that’s very expensive.”
Businesses with partnerships also would benefit from a part-time track, she said. “It’s already being done in accounting firms and being done well.”
The tenured professor has this suggestion. “You have to change work structures designed around men to make them workable for women.”
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Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in Sunday Business and Wednesday’s Working sections. She is the author of “Winning the Job Game: The New Rules for Finding and Keeping the Job You Want” (Wiley, $16.95). Send e-mail to [email protected].