Some professors say that despite the endless committees and task forces assigned to look into making Harvard and the academy a more friendly environment for women, the climate just doesn’t seem to change.

“You can have all sorts of policies, but if no one feels they can take advantage of these policies, they do no good,” Trower says.

Though Harvard has taken concrete steps towards recognizing its lack of female faculty, it is not at the forefront of this academic movement. There are notable steps that other institutions have taken that Harvard has not.

Other schools, such as MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, have taken the initiative to do faculty-wide surveys which have provided data that are shaping the current nationwide discussion on women in higher education. MIT has garnered national accolades for its frank and public examination of gender bias in its own halls.

In the 1980s, Harvard’s Faculty commissioned an outside analysis of professors’ salaries that, according to the Office for Academic Affairs, revealed no significant discrepencies between the salaries of women and men—though that data has not been made public.

Also, following the release of MIT’s data, Knowles requested an assessment of whether there were similar inequities in the distribution of internal awards, committee assignments, office and lab space or endowed chairs—but no major discrepencies were found. This data was also never made public.

Some feel Harvard should join other schools in taking a more public approach to the treatment of its lack of gender equity.

“What could help is what [MIT President] Chuck Vest did—to say, ‘We have a problem, and we’re going to be very open about our problem,’” says Trower, who is currently beginning a research project on obstacles that are discouraging today’s young scholars from entering the academy.

At Princeton, its dynamic duo of new administrators—President Shirley M. Tilghman and Provost Amy Gutmann ’71—have already highly publicized their plans to bring diversity to Princeton, a university that has traditionally had a rather homogenous faculty and student body.

Tilghman has long been vocal in her belief in the need for institutions of higher learning to recognize the particular challenges facing female professors.

In a 1993 New York Times editorial, she argued that the tenure process conflicts with women’s biological clock since most professors spend their 20s—the prime child-bearing years—working to earn tenure at a given institution. Thus, the culture forces young women faculty seeking tenure to often choose between family and career.

In an interview earlier this year, Tilghman said Princeton would likely review its tenure process in the next few years, possibly to lengthen the period before tenure review to better incorporate the varied needs of professors who want families.

“Princeton has a very short tenure clock—we review people for tenure after five years,” she said. “That raises the question ‘Does it disadvantage women more than men?’”

While Princeton has recently taken the lead on tackling gender bias, Harvard has not stood completely on the sidelines of the debate.

Former Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 represented the University at a conference held at MIT in February 2001, where he joined with the leaders of eight of the nation’s other top research universities in issuing a statement acknowledging the significant barriers still facing female professors in the natural sciences and engineering fields.