Georgetown may have gone co-ed in 1969, but our faculty still has more testosterone than an East German swimmer. Less than a quarter of the full professors at Georgetown are women. While that glaring disparity reflects a sad-but-true national trend in higher education, the University must do far more to attract qualified female applicants for professorships.
The University’s current policy and support system handicap untenured professors who decide to start a family. While this affects both mothers and fathers, it is an undeniable fact that women are biologically handed the greatest burden in parenthood and often end up with the lion’s share of the childrearing. The most conspicuous example of this disadvantage shows up with the “tenure clock.” Full-time professors have seven years from the date of their hire to apply for tenure—a permanent post in the department. Academia’s unspoken policy of publish or perish is already widely lambasted as oftentimes unreasonable. But it is especially cruel to professors who want to spend time on pursuits that are not research-related, like raising a family.
The University does have a “New Parent Leave Option,” which allows untenured professors to “stop” the clock temporarily. However, professors cannot simply step away from their work and pick it up again months later, right where they dropped it. This is especially true in the sciences, where time is needed to secure grants and set up laboratories. Moreover, those grants often carry expiration dates. The time lost can be unrecoverable.
The first step to fixing these problems is clear. The University administration must create a committee, with the help of faculty and students, to investigate the obstacles facing female professors—and the University should work to implement these recommendations. The New Parent Leave Option must allow professors more time to settle in with their new family and to catch up on their work before restarting the tenure clock. This policy should not simply apply to pregnant mothers and new fathers, but also to gay professors who wish to have children.
Furthermore, the University should expand its Hoya Kids daycare program. Currently, the children of many faculty members sit on a waitlist, sometimes for a full year. This is an indispensable accommodation for working parents. The university could also form a fund, with alumni money, to woo bright female professors to GU.
With added incentives like these, Georgetown could pull itself to the forefront of gender equity in higher education. A faculty that is 77.3 percent male is anything but just, especially at a university where the majority of students are women. We might be proud that our school dates back to 1789, but it’s time that we moved our gender policies into the present to reflect the workplace reality of 2006.
