The Women's and Gender Studies program recently published a report card on women at Brandeis that indicates there has been an increase in the percentage of female faculty members in the last 40 years.

However, when it comes to the percentage of women receiving honorary degrees, holding senior administrative positions and serving on the Board of Trustees, several faculty in the Women's and Gender Studies program say the University falls short.

"We were concerned about how monolithic the senior administration is," said Prof. Wendy Cadge (SOC) in an interview with the Justice. She continued to say that it is important "to have a leadership structure that represents who we are as a university in terms of gender and race and sexual orientation and gender identity and a range of other things."

The percentage of full-time female faculty has increased over the past 40 years, rising from 14 percent in the 1972 to 1973 academic year to 42 percent in the 2012 to 2013 academic year.

Only 20 percent of the honorary degree recipients since 1972 have been women, and women only make up 23 percent of the Board of Trustees, according to the report.

While the Justice was unable to find data about the national average of females receiving honorary degrees, Cadge pointed to a 2010 study published in the Chronicle of Higher Education that cited the national average of women on boards of trustees to be around 30 percent, indicating that Brandeis is below the national average.

The senior administration has also been historically male-dominated. Since 1972, only one of five University presidents was female. Of the seven senior administration positions that the report card examines, only two are currently held by women: the senior vice president for communications and the senior vice president of institutional advancement. However, the University's website identifies a 12-person senior management team, which includes deans as well as senior vice presidents. Five out of the 12 of these individuals are women.
"I think that there needs to be some commitment to seeing that it's a problem," said Cadge. "I think some kind of public statement from them that affirms that would take us a long way and then a process of following it up when it's time to hire."
Cadge, who authored the report along with other WGS faculty, said the particularly low representation of women among honorary degree recipients spurred the creation of the report card.

In an interview with the Justice, Cadge said that last spring that she and some of the WGS faculty members were concerned that only one out of six honorary degree recipients were women. "We think that there are more than 20 percent of Brandeis alums and supporters and people worthy of honorary degrees that are women. ... So, we think there is a clear call for change there," Cadge said, referring to the percentage of women who have received honorary degrees since 1972.
Cadge also said that out of the five honorary degrees awarded each year, there has never been a year in which the majority of recipients have been women. This can also be seen on the Board of Trustees' website in a list of all past recipients.
Senior Vice President for Communication Ellen de Graffenreid, who is a staff member on the Board's honorary degree committee, said the Board has organized a "dashboard" to continuously monitor the diversity of honorary degree nominees in order to help them reach their goals of more diversity among the candidates.

"The Board is very cognizant of the need to have diversity in those chosen for honorary degrees," she wrote in an email to the Justice.

Prof. Bulbul Chakraborty (PHYS), a former faculty liaison to the Board of Trustees, agreed that encouraging the community to nominate more diverse candidates would help solve the disparity.

Chakraborty, who was the first female tenured faculty member in the Physics department, said in an interview with the Justice that she believes that the people who have been responsible for nominating recipients in the past "nominated in a self selected way that is more biased towards men." However, she said that she thinks "we can fix that by making the community broadly aware that they can nominate."

The 28 percent increase in the number of female faculty members over the past 40 years was a pleasant surprise to those involved with the report card. "I expected there to be some increase, but I didn't realize how dramatic it would be," said Prof. Susan Lanser (ENG) in an interview with the Justice. She clarified, however, that "we are still not at parity."

Lanser speculated that a large reason the ratio was not closer to 50-50 was due to "historical hiring.

"More women have come in to the academy in the last 30 years but also we had a pretty male-dominated faculty, and it takes a while for that to turn over and change," Lanser said.

Despite this growth, there is still a discrepancy between the percentages of female faculty members on the tenure track and those not on the tenure track.

In fall 2012, of the full-time faculty on the tenure track, only 36 percent were women, whereas of the full-time faculty not on the tenure track, 56 percent were women.

According to the 2006 American Association of University Professors report, 11 percent of full-time tenure track faculty members were women, while almost 19 percent of full-time, non-tenure track faculty was women.

Cadge said she recognized this discrepancy when compiling the report. "There are still mostly men who are senior faculty, and still mostly women in lower status positions like lecturers and contract faculty," said Cadge. "We have questions as to whether there are enough women sort of in the pipeline," she explained.

The report card also recorded the percentage of women composing the Board of Trustees. The University's Board is comprised of 23 percent women, while Cadge told the Justice that the national average at private universities is about 30 percent. While Cadge said the low national average is problematic unto itself, at Brandeis "we were surprised to see that we are quite a bit below that average," said Cadge.

The professors interviewed said that the report card is just the beginning, and that the administration and those hiring new faculty should consider this and future reports in composing their departments.

"I think one thing that they shouldn't do is to take this as evidence that they have succeeded and not do anything more," said Chakraborty.

Prof. Faith Smith (AAAS) wrote in an email to the Justice that the report "is an excellent jolt to our community: hard facts sometimes have the effect of cutting through hot air or 'good intentions.'"

Cadge said that she hopes to make this report a regular publication every few years as a way to keep tabs on the success of the school, and Lanser said that she did not think it should stop at gender equality.

Lanser said that she hopes that a report is published on racial diversity as well and said that she hopes to see Brandeis "hold ourselves accountable to the standards we profess and to the university's founding values, so that everyone has a place at the table."

-Andrew Wingens contributed reporting