Expand Duke's female faculty

According to a recent study reported on by The New York Times, male professors are more likely to be perceived as “brilliant,” whereas their female counterparts are cast negatively. The authors of the study used a new interactive website to examine 14 million reviews posted on Rate My Professors and to explore the difference between how male and female professors are reviewed. Although reviews on Rate My Professors may not constitute the best objective measure of students’ opinions of professors, the asymmetrical student response to professors correlated with gender is deeply troubling. Albeit an issue caused by myriad contributing factors, we focus today on one potential cause: the dearth of female professors at Duke.

According to a 2013 update on the faculty diversity initiative, only 27.1 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty in Fall 2012 were women. The numbers were significantly lower in science, technology, engineering and math—or STEM—fields: Only 18 percent of Pratt’s total faculty were women. Yet, the incontrovertible value and necessity of having female professors is paramount. They not only offer invaluable mentorship to all students, and especially women, but, also, serve as role models that encourage women to pursue a field of study academically and professionally.

Such mentorship is especially imperative in the STEM fields, where the ratio of male to female students begins relatively equal but then leans heavily male among upperclassmen. Increasing the number of female role models and mentors at the front of the classroom can perhaps help alleviate the broader dearth of women in STEM fields, in both the academic and the professional spheres.

Hiring more full-time female professors is a necessary step and invaluable benefit to all students. Yet, though the dearth of women as mentors and role models inside and outside the classroom is a poignant and immediately glaring problem, it is the symptom of a much deeper, broader social ill that begins much earlier. The dearth of female professors may dissuade women from pursuing majors in certain field, much less a career or PhD, thus creating a vicious cycle. Nonetheless, the solution of hiring more women—itself a process of looking beyond subconscious biases when selecting from a pool of applicants—does not tackle the primary issue of whether women are even applying for certain positions in the first place.

In this way, hiring is only the first, albeit crucial, step in a broader effort. Duke should not only emphasize efforts like bias prevention training but, also, invest more resources into, and expand, their pipeline programs. Such efforts seek not to tokenize women, but reaching out to talented PhD students and providing mentorship and programming can simultaneously raise the number of qualified female applicants that apply to Duke while also addressing the broader issue of women in academia. Indeed, these efforts should extend beyond students already set on the academy and, in turn, reach women through all levels of education.

Ultimately, expanding Duke’s female faculty is part of what should be Duke’s larger commitment to diversify its faculty—be it by gender, race, sexual orientation or socioeconomic background, among others. We look forward to seeing Duke continue to work toward improving faculty diversity, and encourage the University to establish a committee or initiative to improve campus inclusiveness.