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Student Leaders Report
Increase in Female
Graduate Students
Would Set Trend
The issue of faculty diversity and specifically the issue of women faculty is currently being looked into at the institute level. I would like to present another factor that should be looked at.
This has to do with the number (and more importantly) the percentage of female graduate students in the various departments. Currently, only 27% of the graduate school is made up of female graduate students. This includes Masters and Ph.D students. The actual number for Ph.Ds will be even lower. This 27% value has been fairly constant over the past few years.
A larger female graduate student population will provide a larger pool of candidates applying for faculty positions. While the number of women faculty at MIT is not solely dependent on the percentage of MIT's graduate students that are female, this will, however, provide the lead to other institutions to follow suit. This will eventually result in more competition from women candidates for faculty positions.
One argument that has been floating around is that there simply aren't enough women applying for faculty positions. So why not start by increasing the pool of female graduate students? Once MIT sets the trend, other schools will follow suit. Before long, there will be a larger pool of women candidates. What this will do is increase the competition provided by the women candidates and hence increase the chances of a woman faculty being hired.
There is no reason why there has to be a gender inequity at the graduate school. At the undergraduate level MIT has done well in maintaining gender balance. Let's extend the same principle to the graduate level.
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