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From The Faculty Chair

Women and MIT:
Role of the Department Head

Jacquelyn C. Yanch

The trouble is the Institute provides the carrots, but it leaves discretion with individual departments.

Interviewee, Report of the School of Architecture and Planning, p. 55

Now that the President and Provost have openly and enthusiastically mandated the creation of an equitable and hospitable environment for women faculty at MIT, the bulk of the responsibility for changing the climate now rests with the 26 men and 5 women who head the Institute's departments/divisions/sections. These are the individuals who have the biggest influence on the kind of experience a woman has at MIT.

Clearly the department head has a major influence on the tangibles: the allocation of laboratory and office space, the teaching load, participation on committees, and annual salary raises. Data about the tangibles are fairly easily obtained and inequities are simple to rectify once uncovered. That's the easy part. The more difficult task is to address the intangibles that, added together, create the overall departmental environment. It is the department head's responsibility to make that environment one within which a woman feels her contributions are valued equally with those of her male colleagues; an environment where a woman feels that she is a full participant in the department, not an on-looker.

The startling quantitative and qualitative data presented in the Reports of the Committees on the Status of Women Faculty point to a situation for women that is the result of discrimination and biases held by decades of previous department heads. I believe, for the most part, that this discrimination was inadvertent and subconscious, and thus changing the overall environment is going to be a challenging task.

By action and example the department heads set the stage for their entire department. They must, by their actions, demonstrate to their entire faculty that support of women in the department is expected. Here are some examples of actions department heads can take that can make a difference.

Generation of a positive climate is primarily the responsibility of the department head. However, it is the responsibility of the deans and the provost to provide guidance to the department heads so that they can make the necessary changes to the climate for women faculty, and to monitor the situation to ensure that positive changes are, in fact, being made over time.

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