In the late 1980’s and 1990, concern was growing about the paucity of female tenured and tenure-track faculty members in chemistry departments at research universities. In 1999 the scientific community was rocked by the findings of the “Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)”, which showed that women in the STEM fields at MIT were not doing as well as their male colleagues in many areas. In addition to showing that over the years few women had been hired, the report stated that female faculty members had lower salaries than the males, had been assigned less laboratory space, were appointed less often to influential positions, and were less frequently nominated for national awards or other forms of recognition. The validity of the study’s conclusions was widely debated both in academic circles and in the general public.<br/>In 2001, Charles Vest, the then president of MIT, invited the university presidents, chancellors, and provosts from nine highly regarded research institutions to attend a meeting where the findings of the MIT report would be discussed. In addition, he extended the invitation to all the female faculty members at the nine universities. After much discussion, the meeting concluded with the university administrators agreeing that women were encountering barriers in the sciences, more data was needed, and collectively they would work to address the situation.<br/>This talk focuses on the progress made during the years 2001-2016 by the chemistry departments at those nine institutions in hiring/promoting female tenured and tenure-track faculty members. Research on the difficulties women face in academe will also be discussed.

Review of the hiring and promotion of female faculty members at nine prestigeous chemistry departments

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.