Administrators say family concerns are the most common reasons for a candidate not to accept tenure at Harvard.
In addition. Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has relaxed the clock for junior faculty to allow them to take more time off and spend more time on their research, McCarthy says.
"Dean [Knowles] has made more flexible the leave policy for junior faculty and has provided some funds for supplementing outside research money so [junior faculty] can take more leaves [to] work on their research," McCarthy says.
Although administrators say that Harvard is helping women with the junior faculty policy changes, some say the policy will have little effect on the number of female full professors because so few junior faculty receive tenure...
"It's ridiculous," Bolker says. "What Harvard has done for women has been to support junior faculty, but it's extremely rare for anyone to be promoted to tenure from within the University."
On average, 10 to 15 percent of the appointments in any year go to people currently teaching at Harvard, according to McCarthy.
"Harvard is not a tenure-track institution." Garber says, echoing the words of many administrators.
Looking Ahead
Despite the boycott of the capital campaign and the general anger of Radcliffe alumnae at the slow process, administrators say it is unlikely the coming years will see any dramatic upswing in the tenuring of women.
While last year's record-setting six appointments bode well for the future, President Neil L. Rudenstine says the process of increasing the percentage of senior professors who are women will be a slow one. Assuming that 20 positions opened this year and all were given to women, only 16 percent of Harvard's tenured faculty would be women.
"I think it's very hard for people outside an institution to understand what the realistic pace of changing the composition of a tenured faculty is," Rudenstine said this summer.
Even if the University tenured only women, "it would still look like slow motion to someone outside of the institution," the president says.