Women in the Sciences

In its report issued in May, the University’s Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering dramatically highlighted the "leaky pipeline" at work in academic science: its data, shown below, demonstrate that plenty of undergraduate women study the natural sciences at Harvard, and women now outnumber men in Medical School and School of Public Health doctoral enrollments. But the tenured professoriate is overwhelmingly male. As hiring increases in the sciences, the gender composition shown here may begin to change, especially if the University succeeds in its announced strategy of appointing more professors from its junior-faculty ranks, where women are more equally represented today. But that, in turn, depends in part on whether conditions for work and research improve for the tenure-track faculty.