Tilghman’s suggestion of a longer tenure clock—one that would give professors more time to both raise a family and complete the amount of research and scholarship necessary to earn tenure—is one potential solution.

Trower and Chait offer some others, including the creation of tenure for part-time professors and the development of a certification system whereby professors are certified along the tenure track as they complete certain requirements—for example, certification for teaching quality and certification for the completion of a certain amount of research.

Another characteristic that researchers such as Trower and Chait have identified with women that may hurt their chances at tenure is a tendency toward collaborative work.

“The new generation of scholars [male and female] is saying, ‘Shouldn’t tenure and the academy be centered more about solving problems?’” Trower says.

Unfortunately, teamwork rarely guarantees tenure, as individual publications are typically more respected than group works.

Another quality of the new generation of scholars, Trower says, is their tendency toward interdisciplinary fields.

“It’s when we cross disciplinary lines that things get interesting,” Trower explains.

It is difficult enough to gain distinction in one department within Harvard’s Faculty—or any equivalent institution—much less two.

Similarly, for young scholars doing groundbreaking work in emerging fields, it can be difficult to earn tenure in institutions where more traditional fields tend to dominate.

For example, the Harvard chemistry department’s strength is in organic chemistry, which is one of the oldest subdivisions of the field, says Linda H. Doerrer, an assistant professor of chemistry at Barnard College who speaks on the issue of gender bias in the sciences.

The department’s traditional focus might explain why it has only one female tenured professor.

Furthermore, some professors say that the process by which candidates are reviewed for tenure can in itself be biased. When a candidate is reviewed, his or her colleagues are solicited for comment about the quality of his or her work. But because of the lack of diversity within the academy, those colleagues are often white males.

“Such a system also tends to ask other white males who the ‘best’ scholars are out there, and all they can think of is people like themselves—the ‘reflecting pool’ phenomenon,” Trower writes in an e-mail.

Some strides have been made in recent years within Harvard’s FAS to improve the benefits provided to junior faculty members.

Kenan Professor of English Marjorie Garber, chair of the Faculty’s Standing Committee on the Status of Women, meets regularly with female faculty members to discuss the quality of their personal and academic lives—and to see if there’s anything Harvard can do to better accommodate their professional needs.