A recent study by Valerie J. Kuck, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois, found that Cornell may not be up to par when it comes to female chemistry Ph.D.s’ success in landing tenure-track positions. According to Inside Higher Ed, in her study, Kuck alleges that zero female Ph.D. graduates and 13 male graduates between the years of 1994 to 2003 from Cornell landed faculty positions at a group of universities that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching labeled as having, “very high research activity.” This discrepancy between male and female success rates raises the question of how the entire University stacks up when it comes to faculty gender equity.

The 2009 Summary Update on the Progress Toward Equity and Inclusion — prepared by Beta Mannix, the former vice provost for equity and inclusion, with assistance from The Office of Institutional Research and Planning and from Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality — reports that the total percentage of women faculty at Cornell has grown from 20.3 percent of the total faculty to 26.4 percent of the faculty in the past 10 years. According to the report, in the 2008-2009 academic year, fewer than 34 percent of assistant professors were women, slightly over 35 percent of associate professors were women and 19.6 percent of full professors were women. The College of Engineering had the lowest percentage of female professors at 7.1 percent.

Prof. Beth Ahner, biological and environmental engineering, says the fact that the College of Engineering remains the lowest across campus does not surprise her. “Dean Fuchs has been proactive in trying to get and retain woman, but it has been challenging [due to Cornell’s somewhat isolated location].” Also, engineering has, until recently, been doing a good job at hiring in the same proportions as the hiring pool, she said.

According to the report, every college at Cornell besides the School of Hotel Administration has increased or maintained its number of women faculty over the past 10 years.

The Ivy Plus comparative data in the report examines Cornell’s progress in gender composition as compared to the other Ivy League schools and sister institutions, including MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago and Duke University. Over the last decade, just as Cornell has made progress, so have the other institutions in the Ivy Plus Comparison.

In fact, Cornell’s percentage increase in the number of full time women faculty from 1998-2008 — 38 percent — is below the Ivy Plus Group’s average of a 45.8 percent. Additionally, during the academic year of 2008-2009, 26 percent of Cornell’s full time faculty was women, a statistic that is also below the Ivy Plus average of 27.2 percent.

Prof. Kim Weeden, sociology, is co-principal investigator of CU-ADVANCE, a grant-funded program at Cornell dedicated to increasing the number of women faculty in the traditionally male dominated areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS). CU-ADVANCE is part of The National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Program. Weeden explains that while Cornell is very similar to these other institutions in that each wrestle with the changing demography of the professoriate, Cornell’s location provides it with unique challenges.

“Dual career issues are becoming increasingly salient in academia. The era of male professor and stay-at-home wife is over. [Now] women are more likely to be married to other professionals [who need jobs] and it becomes harder to recruit those people to Ithaca.”

Due to the current round of budget cuts, positions formally available for dual career couples may be cut. But Prof. Serena DeBeer George, chemistry and chemical biology, who recently came to Cornell, says that she has found the University to be very supportive of the two-body issue. “They have been very willing to help my husband,” she said.

As stated on their website, the ADVANCE program aims “to increase the recruitment, retention and promotion into leadership positions of women in engineering and the sciences, and to institutionalize best practices, policies and programs across colleges as they pertain to women faculty.”

Specifically, ADVANCE aims to achieve 20 percent women faculty in each science and engineering department within its five year grant. ADVANCE believes that “this level will move the representation of women from token status to a critical mass in each department, the environment that most determines faculty life.”

CU-ADVANCE’s longer-term objective is that a third of Cornell’s science and engineering faculty be women by 2015. To achieve their objectives, CU-ADVANCE has set forth four broad initiatives that include research initiation grants for women faculty members, studies on the promotion and retention of women in science and engineering departments, and the development and implementation of strategies for successfully recruiting women.

Weeden notes that CU-ADVANCE recognizes that this is not a game of quotas, and that departments always want to recruit the best faculty members that they can. “At the same time, red flags are raised if, year after year, a department always identifies a white male candidate as the best.”

Women currently compromise 19 percent of the faculty in STEM and 33 percent of the faculty in SBS. With CU-ADVANCE in the third year of its grant, Weeden explains that although over the past few years these percentages have been rising, they are still well below the gender distribution of new PhDs.

“In terms of numbers we are happy with the progress being made at the associate and full professor level,” Weeden said. “We have not made as many inroads at assistant professor levels because last year, due to the current financial situation, there were fewer assistant professor hires on campus. This [decrease in hiring overall] makes it harder to eventually reach CU-ADVANCE’s ultimate goal. [So now] the challenge will be to emphasize retention.”

“We have had really great support from the administration and from Provost Fuchs. We have been working closely with Provost Fuchs, who is the principal investigator of our grant, to think about how Cornell can change the way it does business in the long haul so that we can continue to make progress toward gender parity,” she added.

Prof. Barbara Baird, chemistry and chemical biology, has been at Cornell since 1980 and prior to then, was a graduate student in that department. “This has been a good home for me. The department has been very supportive of addressing my needs and being progressive in their thinking.”

Baird echoed CU-ADVANCE’S desire to continually seek out outstanding woman candidates for Cornell positions. “For a number of years we have tried to increase the percentage of women faculty members in the department and I am pleased to report that even though we have struggled at times with recruiting outstanding women faculty, we have been very successful in our graduate and undergraduate programs having a high percentage of women.”

Other issues arise once women are on faculty, including possible gender inequities in terms of rank and salary. University wide, according to The 2009 Summary Update on the Progress Toward Equity and Inclusion, “women are not more likely to be found in the lower ranks.”

Current data also show that only 10 percent of full professors in science and engineering and 23 percent of full professors in the social and behavioral sciences are women, compared to 19 percent of all STEM faculty and 33 percent of all SBS faculty. Weeden attributes this lower number of full professors to the fact that cohorts of assistant and associate professors hired in years past were far less gender balanced than they are now. “Recent cohorts of assistant professors in STEM and SBS have been more gender balanced, and they are just now being promoted to Associate.”

Additionally, women make up a larger percentage of the non-tenure track faculty than they do the tenure track faculty, 35 percent in STEM AND 47 percent in SBS. But Weeden asserts that this is not symptomatic of a larger problem.

She said that studies of Cornell faculty that track the same professors over time show that, “there doesn’t seem to be a large or systematic gender gap in the likelihood of being promoted to associate with tenure or to full professor.” However, the same data show that it takes women a bit longer on average to be promoted to the rank of full professor, which affects their reputations in the field, lifetime earnings and opportunities to be considered for leadership positions.

Studies of faculty salaries, which the administration conducts annually, show that women faculty members earn less than men on average, but these differences disappear once rank and department are adjusted for. “Women are less likely to be full professors and more likely to be in disciplines and departments where average salaries are lower.”

Cornell’s commitment to diversity can be traced back to Ezra Cornell’s statement to “found an institution where any person could find instruction in any study.” Today, according to their website, Cornell’s commitment to diversity includes trying to ensure that, “the composition of the Cornell community and leadership reflects the composition of the broader society, to ensure that the Cornell Community supports individuals from all gender groups and to ensure that individuals from all backgrounds and genders receive their full potential.”

Overall, Weeden does believe that Cornell has made a lot of progress. “Overt forms of discrimination against women have largely disappeared. Cornell has its heart in the right place. The administration has its heart in the right place.”