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Student Leaders Report
Faculty Gender
Inequality:
A Student Perspective
Over the past three decades, MIT has made great efforts to increase the number of female undergraduates at the Institute. While this has dramatically changed the face of student life, the makeup of the faculty has not followed this same pattern, and this continued inequity has direct consequences for undergraduate education. I am a female student in engineering. I am a member of one of the first classes with a near 50/50 gender balance. My class was the first, and so far only, class to put a woman on the MIT seal of our Brass Rat. Yet I have never been taught by a woman from my own field of interest. Instead, I have relied upon male faculty mentors to inform my decisions regarding career choices. Since men and women in engineering fields typically face different sets of challenges, I found myself without the guidance of women like myself.
More importantly, the gender makeup of the faculty helps determine how both male and female students perceive academic and professional disciplines. This makeup informs the academic/social environment and creates both areas of the Institute that are welcoming to women and also those that intimidate female students. Often, these intimidating areas lack many women faculty for women students to turn to for support.
Until Academia creates environments that encourage women students to pursue degrees or faculty positions in certain fields, change will not occur. Change can occur, but not without active intervention. I am encouraged that MIT has begun to take these important steps at the faculty level, and I hope that MIT will be able to sustain them. I believe that doing so will be an encouraging sign for women students and this could lead to great change in gender inequalities within MIT and within industry.
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