What Percent of Undergraduate Liberal Arts Institutions Have Female Presidents

When Cornell Academy's new president takes office, in July, half of the Ivy League's colleges will exist led past women. Brown Academy's female leader is its second in a row.

Over the by several years, a range of other institutions, including public flagships, liberal-arts colleges, historically black institutions, and customs colleges take hired their first female person presidents. They include the University of Virginia, Middlebury College, Alabama State University, and Pueblo Customs College.

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When Cornell University's new president takes office, in July, half of the Ivy League'south colleges will be led by women. Dark-brown University's female leader is its second in a row.

Over the past several years, a range of other institutions, including public flagships, liberal-arts colleges, historically black institutions, and community colleges accept hired their first female presidents. They include the University of Virginia, Middlebury College, Alabama Country Academy, and Pueblo Customs Higher.

Despite the progress, including at some of the nation's about aristocracy institutions, women remain significantly underrepresented among college presidencies — and the numbers accept barely budged. Women make upwards about a quarter of college presidents nationwide, a share that has remained almost the same for at least a decade.

Women tend to make up greater shares of presidents at 2-year colleges than at 4-year institutions, according to the American Quango on Education. About 33 percent of community colleges have women every bit presidents, compared with 23 percent of bachelor'southward and main'due south-level institutions, and 22 percent of doctoral institutions.

The fact that colleges nonetheless note, in news releases and other communications, that they have hired the beginning female president in their long histories is a sign that hiring women every bit leaders has yet to become the norm, says Judith S. White, president and executive manager of College Education Resource Services, a nonprofit group that provides leadership training for women in college-education administration.

"At that place are lots of institutions where they're getting their first woman president," Ms. White says. "We've been at this stage a long time. How long is that going to exist the case?"

Cultural Shift

What would information technology take to quicken the stride of change?

The barriers, experts say, are both external and self-imposed. Gender stereotypes — sometimes held by male-dominated boards of trustees who don't recollect women are capable of running complex institutions or of managing family unit and piece of work commitments simultaneously — tin work against female candidates. Then tin can hiring practices, particularly when recruiting is done through informal, male-dominated networks.

Some women allow small deficits in skills, real or perceived, to make them unsure virtually their leadership abilities and whether a presidency is within their reach. Others choose not to pursue a presidency, seeing the task as all-consuming and as well stressful.

For change to happen, sometimes a cultural shift is needed. At Brown, the climate for women started to ameliorate four decades agone, because it had to. In 1975, Louise Lamphere, an assistant professor of anthropology in a department that was all-male when she was hired, filed a lawsuit charging the academy with sexual discrimination after she was denied tenure. The lawsuit described a larger pattern of sexual bigotry at Brown, where few women were on the faculty, tenured or not. In settling the arrange, which became a grade-activeness instance, Brownish formed a committee to overhaul how it hired professors, evaluated tenure applications, and promoted kinesthesia members. Information technology too monitored the establishment's progress toward increasing gender equity.

At the time, tenured female professors made upwards just 1.vi percent of Dark-brown's faculty. Since then that proportion has slowly increased: to just over nine percent in 1987-88, a little more than 13 percent in 1992-93, and only over 21 percent in the current bookish year.

As part of observing its 250th anniversary, Brown held a discussion this month with women who lead or take led some of the nation'southward top colleges.

"It might seem a niggling unusual for a university to be celebrating that they lost a lawsuit," said Christina H. Paxson, Brown's president, while moderating the discussion. But the settlement, she said, "was a victory for women at Brown."

Ms. Paxson, who took role in 2012, was the first woman to become tenured in Princeton University's department of economic science. She afterwards served as its chair and went on to become one of the first female deans of the university's Woodrow Wilson Schoolhouse of Public and International Affairs before leaving for Brown.

Ms. Lamphere, at present a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, is pleased that Chocolate-brown decided to re-examine the impact of her case. Such legal battles, she says, made it possible for women to not only get tenure merely also work their way up into the authoritative positions that fed into the wave of female presidents. Their numbers were few, with women making up only 10 percent of college presidents in 1986, according to the American Council on Education'south study.

Among those early on leaders is Nannerl O. Keohane, who became president of her alma mater, Wellesley College, in 1981. Ms. Keohane, who participated in the Brown word, was an associate professor of political science at Stanford University when she was offered the task at Wellesley. She went on to become the showtime female president of Knuckles University.

Ms. Keohane, now a visiting scholar at the Establish for Advanced Study, joined Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University, and Shirley One thousand. Tilghman, a former president of Princeton, to talk nearly their pathways to the presidency and why more than women aren't following their lead.

Family unit issues remain a big barrier for women all the manner through the pipeline, Ms. Tilghman said, because the academic work culture doesn't lucifer up with the flexibility that women say they need to accept care of children or aging parents, amidst other responsibilities.

"We haven't figured out how to become through those old expectations and those old cultural practices to make it possible for women to recollect most work and family unit as complementary," Ms. Tilghman said. "Until we effigy this out, I think nosotros're ever going to exist sort of running uphill."

The leaders talked about how, in some means, they had to change their habits to fit the demands of the presidency.

For Ms. Tilghman, a molecular biologist, that meant abandoning a cardinal role of her preparation as a scientist: the practice of gathering lots of information and analyzing it herself. As president, she had to acquire to consul and let others do that for her as she focused largely on decision-making.

"When you lot come into a presidency," Ms. Paxson told the audience, "you larn very quickly that everything you say and everything you communicate is observed and noted."

Ms. Keohane said her on-the-task learning curve was very likely steeper than most when she became president of Wellesley. When she was hired, she hadn't been a dean or a provost, positions from which many presidents, particularly women, come to a presidency. Even so, she said, "I didn't uncertainty that I could practice the job in my own way."

Because they are women, the panelists agreed, their leadership way comes under actress scrutiny.

"Women are read every bit much more ambitious. I remember y'all just have to be aware of that," said Ms. Faust. "You accept to be firm, yous have to exist clear, you lot have to non be aroused. And if someone says y'all're aroused, yous just have to live with that."

Having more female person leaders in college instruction is important, they said, in office considering it helps women come across themselves in that part. "For any 1 of us to have the ambition to be a president of a major university was unimaginable when we were kids," said Ms. Faust, a historian of the Civil War. "Petty girls can at present imagine themselves in all kinds of roles."

Michael Cohea, Dark-brown U.

"For whatever one of usa to take the ambition to be a president of a major university was unimaginable when we were kids," said Drew Gilpin Faust 
(2d from correct), president of Harvard, at a public discussion this month with Nannerl Keohane (left, formerly of Knuckles and Wellesley), 
Shirley Tilghman (formerly of Princeton), and Christina Paxson (Brown).

Roadblocks in Place

Sometimes women have encountered roadblocks that stem from men'due south stereotypical beliefs nigh the college presidency.

Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Quango on Education, says her tenure as leader of the University of North Carolina system from 1997 to 2006 gave her insight into what women seeking leadership positions are upwardly against.

Ms. Broad, the first woman to serve as president of the UNC system, says that when she first appointed a adult female every bit a campus chancellor, her selection met with some derision from a board member.

"He said, 'I thought we did that once already,' " Ms. Broad says.

External factors certainly play a role in whether a woman advances in academe. But so do women's own career decisions.

Some opt not to pursue the meridian job, in part because despite a president's level of influence to outsiders the job appears to have few redeeming qualities. The work seems relentless, requiring presidents to be on duty effectually the clock, juggling multiple interests, and largely neglecting their family and friends. Women who serve equally provosts, in item, may decide that their best career move is to stay put.

"They don't want to go presidents," says Ms. Broad. They think virtually why they entered the professoriate, and when they run into how the presidents spend their time — fund raising, attention to multiple constituencies on and off the campus — "information technology turns into 'Who has the better chore?,' " she says.

Some women who end up as presidents did not seek out the chore, or even the career opportunities that lead to it, only found themselves entertaining the prospect at someone else's urging. Those who aren't asked often don't consider applying.

When Karen S. Haynes was an acquaintance professor of social work at Indiana University, she decided she wanted to be the dean of a graduate school of social piece of work. She was hired for that position on the University of Houston'south chief campus in 1985, becoming the beginning female dean in the Houston system.

"I thought I would stay in the dean's position," she says. "I never wanted to be president."

But a call from the organisation chancellor in 1995 changed her mind. He asked her to serve as acting president of the Victoria campus. He said he needed a leader who could repair the broken trust between administrators and faculty members at that place.

"These are things I know how to ready," says Ms. Haynes, who credits her social-work background for training her in the social skills she has relied upon every bit president.

Her two-year stint equally interim leader became a permanent task that lasted for seven more years. Then she sought out her current presidency, at California State University at San Marcos, function of a 23-campus system that now has 6 female person presidents.

With two decades of presidential experience, Ms. Haynes strives to portray the job as a manageable one. She talks openly to women'due south leadership groups virtually the tactics she employs to keep her piece of work hours under control. "You have to recollect strategically," she says, which often boils downwards to determining "where does the face of the president really need to be?"

Every six weeks, Ms. Haynes, who is married with iii grown children, tries to block out a weekend when she won't nourish events. Vacations are of the unplugged variety, although her main of staff makes sure she gets the few emails and other messages that truly can't wait.

For women who want to be presidents there are hopeful signs, 1 of which is the likely wave of impending retirements among college presidents. The presidency, like the professoriate, is graying, which paves the style for women and minority hires that can diversify the field. The American Quango on Education's presidency study shows that three of five presidents are older than 60.

"Creating urgency is a large bargain," says Susan Madsen, a professor of management at Utah Valley University. "If the conversation dies down, we can't think change volition nonetheless happen. It most likely won't."

Women in presidencies bring a different perspective to groups dominated by men, and they ask unlike questions than their male counterparts — helpful traits in trouble-solving environments, Ms. Madsen says. A scarcity of female leaders in academe, she adds, also sends the wrong message to undergraduates, 56 pct of whom are women.

"Information technology'due south just critical that male person and female students and people on our campuses see that both men and women accept equal value," Ms. Madsen says.

That comes across more conspicuously, she says, when there's parity at the superlative.

Correction (three/16/2015, 12:32 p.k.): This article originally misstated who was the first female dean of Princeton'southward Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is Anne-Marie Slaughter, not Christina Paxson. The commodity has been updated to reflect this correction.

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes virtually the academic workplace, kinesthesia pay, and piece of work-life residual in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.

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