A significant step was taken by the School of Public Health last year when the faculty voted to allow tenure-track professors with significant family-care responsibilities to cut their time commitment by up to 50 percent for up to two years and still remain on the tenure track, Jones says.
"Now with more and more women on faculties, [people] are pushing for institutional change," she says.
Eisenberg said the National Institute of Health (NIH) is spearheading this trend with a new program that reacquaints women with the latest discoveries in their scientific fields after their leaves of absence.
"NIH has a program which they call a re-entry program," she says. "They offer women a one-year fellowship where they learn about the new discoveries in science that have occurred while they were taking a leave-of-absence."
Harvard vs. the Real World
Students have different opinions on whether women are making strides in the sciences.
"I think women have gained a lot of respect in the field of science, and I do not feel that any distinction is made between [the] performances of males and females," Jodie L. Pearl '01 says.
Park agrees, and says that she does not believe women are treated any differently in the sciences.
"I never identified myself as a woman in science," she says. "I don't see myself in a separate category."
But students say this might be due more to Harvard's liberal atmosphere than to any real-world advancements.
Kung says, "College campuses are extremely liberal, especially Harvard. The societal perception that women in science seems bizarre seems much more obscured [here]."
Gender Breakdown by Concentration
There is a disproportionate number of men to women in the math and science concentrations. Office of the Registrar