Though some departments have made more progress in this area than others, female faculty members say that women in all departments suffer from low numbers of female colleagues and the resulting problems--fewer role models for younger women scholars, a diminished voice in departmental decision-making and fewer proponents of women's concerns University-wide.

Georgi, who will work this year on the University's newest attempt to woo more women to the Harvard faculty, says that the lack of senior female faculty is a problem not unique to Harvard.

"The situation at Harvard is definitely worse than in most places, but for reasons that are not difficult to understand," he says.

"The number of people we could conceivably be interested in is small, which makes it less likely that the person in any underrepresented group is going to be available at the time you're looking for them," Georgi says. "It's just a matter of small numbers."

Georgi says that departments must keep this in mind when formulating programs to recruit new female faculty. He suggests that they compensate for the small numbers of available women by keeping searches for new faculty broad.

Margaret J. Geller, professor of astronomy and winner of a MacArthur genius grant, says that she suspects the University is not as determined to tenure more female faculty as it claims to be.

Geller is listed by the University as a full professor within the astronomy department, though she remains untenured.

Offered an endowed Mallinckrodt chair in 1997, she turned it down because the chair would not come with tenure. Had she accepted, she would have been the only one of nine Mallinckrodt professors without tenure.