This is a man's world

Author: HALLIE FOX and ROB KING

There is a history of disparity between the number and treatment of male and female professors. Unfortunately this trend persists to the current day. And whether or not you want to believe it, sexism exists at Middlebury. Although the student population is evenly split, the same ratio does not continue into the faculty. Today, Middlebury faculty is only 35 percent female. This is not acceptable.

Clara Blanche Knapp entered unknown territory when she became the first full professor at Middlebury in 1929 - 129 years after the College was founded and 46 years after the first female students enrolled. Not surprisingly, she was professor of home economics. The faculty at this time was 19 percent female. Progress after this landmark was slow. It was not until 51 years later that the second female full professor, Majori Lamberti, was hired. It had taken almost two centuries for Middlebury to hire two female full professors yet Professor Lamberti was still positive. "When women enter very responsible positions in the power structure, it is really a mark that they have arrived…I admire women who hold these positions and break the glass ceiling."

Today, despite gains women have made in the labor force, Middlebury faculty still lags behind in gender parity. Overall, growth has been slow. As of late it has stagnated for the last decade. Peaking at 36 percent in 2001-02, the percentage of women in the faculty has ranged from 32 percent in 1996 to 35 percent last year. Nationally, women constitute 38 percent of faculty, but only 23 percent of full professors. If we continue at this rate, it will take another 40-47 years to reach gender equality in the faculty. For the women in the faculty, problems persist. It wasn't until 1999 that the college installed a parental leave policy and we are yet to have a female president. In 1930, President Moody, commenting on women faculty said, "What I should deplore most of all would be a tendency to introduce by women teachers a development of a certain kind of feminism which we see at Mount Holyoke, which I think is the most unhappy of the larger women's colleges. Of the two evils, I would rather have men taught by women than women taught by a woman." Moody's rhetoric reflected a belief that women were not capable of achieving the same intellectual heights as men. Instead, he believed they would radicalize the classroom with their 'non-traditional' attitudes. Unfortunately, the sentiment of his remarks is still visible. We have come to a point where women are encouraged to pursue their education to the highest levels, but once they have, it seems they are not readily welcomed to use it. In the field of higher education, men are clearly the dominant force. Larry Sommers made this clear in 2005 when he suggested that biology, discrimination, and choice deter women from an academic career. Prominent women academics from across the country discussed these issues recently at Middlebury's symposium on Women in Higher Education. While there was a consensus that the gender-gap in higher education is decreasing, the symposium emphasized the need to continue the fight. Just because there are some hopeful numbers does not mean that the problem will continue to right itself. We need to care about and fight for this issue. It has been 206 years since Middlebury was founded. How many more years will it be before men and women are equally represented? Middlebury is representative of a national trend that sees women increasingly climbing the ranks of academia but not reaching the top. Ideas change when women enter positions of power. We are not suggesting women can do a better job than men, just that they can do a different job. The pursuit of knowledge is largely about absorbing and considering every perspective of an issue; and a feminine outlook can provide an important and unique perspective that is too often ignored in the halls of ivy.