Reply to Constantinople, Cornelius, and GrayAuthor(s): Joy RiceSource: Signs, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Spring, 1989), pp. 728-729Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174418 .

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Comment and Reply

Reply to Comsta,tinople, Cornelius, and Gray

JOY RICE

The information supplied by Vassar faculty about key women ad- ministrators and current percentages by rank of women faculty at Vassar looks encouraging until one compares these figures with other Seven Sisters colleges. In terms of administrative leadership, the current presidents and chief student affairs officers of all the Seven Sisters colleges are women, as are the directors of admission, except at Vassar College. The dean of the faculty or dean of the college, however, are positions filled as often by men as by women within these schools. In general, women constitute the majority of administrators in these select women's colleges. It is more instruc- tive, however, to look at patterns within faculty ranks by gender and school. Table 1 contrasts the percentage of women on the faculty at each rank for Wellesley, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Vassar (Radcliffe is not included since it has never had a separate faculty and all of its women students are taught by Har- vard faculty). Vassar College has the lowest percentage of women faculty at each rank, tying only with Smith in the percentage of women at the full professor level (27.5 percent). At the nontenured level, Vassar trails the other colleges, which employ women in one- half to nearly three-quarters of their assistant professor positions. The range of the percentage of women at the associate professor level is narrow among these schools, but increases at the full pro- fessor level; more than half of the full professors at Wellesley and Barnard are women.

The percentage of faculty across ranks who are women for Vassar (39.3 percent) is not significantly different from what it was at the inception of coeducation at Vassar in 1969-70 (38.2 percent). Thus

Table I PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN ON TENURE-TRACK FACULTY

Assistant Associate Full Total

Wellesley ....................................65 44 52 56.3 Barnard ..................................... 51 50 57 53.3 Mount Holyoke ............................... 56.6 53 36 47.2

Bryn Mawr ................................... 73 44.4 33 43 Smith ....................................... 59 46 27.5 42 Vassar ...................................... 46.2 42 27.5 39.3

SOURCE.-These figures were provided in September 1988 by representatives of the deans of the faculty at each college.

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1989, vol. 14, no. 3] ? 1989 by Joy Rice. All rights reserved.

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Spring 1989 / SIGNS

as Constantinople, Cornelius, and Gray note, the percentage of women on the faculty at Vassar has indeed remained stable, but it is lower than that of comparable Seven Sisters colleges and it has remained lower than it was before coeducation (43 percent). Some advocates of women's colleges might deplore these trends and at- tribute them to the effects of coeducation. From another perspec- tive, however, Vassar faculty might have little about which to be defensive since one could argue that a change to coeducation as a model should very well be reflected in a higher or more equal representation of males among the student body and faculty. It is understandable that some former all women's colleges would still like to think of themselves as providing special advantages to women students while simultaneously accruing the economic benefits of admitting men students. This "straddle the fence" posture is not an easy one to maintain. Nonetheless, there is probably a viable and marketable spot for the "women's college" that tries to offer prospective women students both the academic benefits of a larger proportion of women faculty and the social benefits of a sizable body of fellow male students.

On a final note, discussions of comparisons among these select schools should not blind the reader to the more important fact that, like most women's colleges, all of these schools employ consider- ably higher numbers of women faculty (from 42 to 56 percent of the total faculty) than do coeducational schools (from 20 to 25 per- cent); they thus provide a far more equitable situation than that found on most college campuses.

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