A sexual harassment case at Yale’s School of Medicine has raised questions about issues of gender equality on campus. According to a Sat., Nov. 1 article in the New York Times, Michael Simons, a married former head of cardiology at the medical school, made inappropriate advances towards a young researcher, Annarita Di Lorenzo, who rejected his pursuit. The case came before the University Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, which ruled that Simons had sexually harassed her while also creating a hostile work environment for her husband, who also worked at the Yale School of Medicine. The UWC recommended that Simons be removed from his post as chair, but Provost Ben Polak weakened the punishment and suspended Simons for only 18 months.
Gender inequality isn’t new at Yale. The spiraling circles of numbers on the Women’s Table begin with dozens of zeroes—zero women enrolled in Yale College in 1701, zero in 1800, and zero in 1850. Next to 1873, finally, a small “13” indicates the first women to graduate from the School of Art. The first women would not be admitted to Yale Law School until 1918, Yale Medical School until 1919, and Yale College until 1969.
Today gender parity in enrollment has almost been achieved. According to the Fall 2013 Yale “Factsheet,” 385 men to 312 women were enrolled in the Law School, 238 to 208 in the Med School.
But these numbers aren’t everything—troubling questions linger for women at Yale’s law and medical schools.
The School of Medicine
On Nov., 3, two days after the Times’ article was printed, President Peter Salovey, GRD ’86, sent an email to the Yale community in which he addressed the scandal and announced the first meeting of a new group formed in late October—“the medical school’s Task Force on Gender Equity.” The task force will examine gender issues at the medical school. But it isn’t the first group to do so, and, according to Sterling Professor of Biophysics and Biochemistry Joan Steitz, a similar previous committee was ignored.
Linda Bockenstedt, a professor of rheumatology and associate dean of faculty development and diversity, will chair the Task Force. She declined to comment for this article.
Issues for women extend beyond this single harassment case and need to be addressed, female professors said. Laura Manuelidis, a professor and head or neuropathology at the Yale School of Medicine, wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Times. She wrote that while the Simons case is one of sexual harassment, “gender is the deeper issue.” Nina Stachenfeld, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the medical school, agreed that there were “disturbing” instances of gender-based discrimination. Steitz described the state of gender equality at the med school as “disappointing.”
The previous attempt to address these concerns was called the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine. SWIM was founded in 1979, and it has recently disbanded. Its website states that SWIM focused on raising “awareness of issues relevant to women faculty in medicine” and also advocated for issues including more recruitment and retention of women faculty and compensation equity. SWIM met annually with the Dean of the Medical School to address these issues.
But it didn’t go that well. “We met a lot of resistance from the administration,” Stachenfeld said. “It gets very exhausting.” They won smaller battles, like opening more childcare facilities and increasing security around dangerous parking facilities, but the numerous letters they drafted addressing equal employment went unheeded. “SWIM was disbanded because it got so discouraged making recommendations that didn’t get implemented,” Steitz said.
A big roadblock that SWIM members tried to address was the hiring of female faculty. Stachenfeld became a member of SWIM in 2010, primarily because she was concerned about hiring practices. “We felt like something somehow insidious happens,” Stachenfeld said. “We would see the ranks of women thinned out as we got into senior positions.”
The numbers back her up, according to Manuelidis’ letter to the Times: “Though Yale permits little transparency, only 20 percent of the senior medical faculty at Yale’s medical school are women and few of these, especially female doctors, have University tenure,” she wrote. She noted that the School of Medicine only has two female department heads, out of 29.
SWIM made little progress on the issue—or on the issue of pay equity, in part due to lack of administrative transparency.
“One of the former task forces was supposed to look at equity in salaries of women versus men,” Steitz said. After the faculty committee compiled the comprehensive report, it wasn’t released. “Since the report was never released, it is not clear how much inequity was revealed.”
So the question is whether the new Task Force will be treated differently than SWIM and other committees. In his email to the community, Salovey wrote that its charge was to “produce comprehensive recommendations for the medical school community,” and “define areas in which we can eliminate barriers to the advancement of women faculty.”
Because of past patterns of opacity and neglect, Steitz said she is skeptical of the efficacy of the proposed task force for gender equality. Still, there’s some hope due to national headlines in the Simons case.
“It is always true that mass media gets you a little more attention and potential for change,” Steitz said. “I can be hopeful that maybe change will come.”
The Law School
While the Yale Law School has remained out of the media’s critical eye , the environment is not without gender imbalances and inequalities for both students and faculty—in particular, classroom participation.
In 2002, Yale Law Women, a student-run organization formed to promote the advancement of female law students, conducted a survey analyzing the school’s gender dynamics. They focused primarily on classroom participation, using data collected through interviews and classroom monitoring. The results were sobering: only 36 percent of women to 60 percent of men felt comfortable approaching professors after class. Almost two thirds of students responded that they thought men participated more in class than women due to higher levels of confidence and assertiveness.
When Ruth Anne French-Hodson, LAW ‘12 and Frances Faircloth, LAW ‘12, joined YLW in 2011, they conducted a follow-up survey designed to analyze the changes in gender climate. “The assumption is that things are always on an upward swing,” said French-Hodson.“We thought we could measure some progress.
The group interviewed 54 faculty members, observed 113 class sessions, and conducted surveys on 62 percent of the student body. They tracked classroom participation and gauged student opinion throughout the year, publishing a comprehensive report of their findings entitled “Speak Up” in April of 2012.
“What we found was that overall, compared to 2002, women were 1.5 percent more likely to speak,” said French-Godson. Progress, yes—but barely.
Though participation is just one facet of student life at YLS, in-class engagement has direct implications on profes- sional success after graduate school. In 2011, in a study conducted within the top 50 law firms, 45 percent of associates were women, only 16 percent were partners, and only 12 percent were managing partners—as you rise in ranks, the number of women drop. “One hypothesis for why these disparities continue,” read their report, “is that women and men are having different experiences while in law school.”
Stephanie Krent, LAW ‘15, the current chair of YLW, told me that upon entering Yale Law School, she became very aware of gender in the classroom. “I always considered my- self the annoying person who raises their hand all the time,” she said of undergraduate years at Barnard. “Coming here is the first time I didn’t do that.” She said that the “Speak Up” report helped her define her sense of alienation.
“If people feel that their voice isn’t as important to the conversation, that has lasting effects later in meetings,” Faircloth said. “And a lot of what matters is relationships with professors—the way that starts is by participating in class, and also just going and meeting with them.”
Another issue stems from the disparity in numbers of male and female professors. During the 2011-2012 school year when the survey was completed, only 22 out of 104 YLS professors were women. Same-sex mentoring relationships are more common: “Male professors have said, ‘I feel comfortable taking male students out for a drink, but I don’t feel comfortable taking women for obvious reasons,’” Faircloth recounted. Because there are fewer women with whom to form connections, female students at the Law School sometimes find themselves at a disadvantage.
“It has become part of the mission of YLW to make sure the report doesn’t just sit on the shelf,” French-Hodson said. The current board of YLW have created handbills filled with recommendations borne from the study to place in classrooms and mailboxes and set up meetings with professors to discuss individual classroom participation data.
They are also taking steps to engage the administration in implementing change. “We shouldn’t wait 10 years for 50 students to devote their time in that way again. We need to put some of the pressure on the administration to be collecting data. To be proactive, not just reactive,” Krent said.
Krent said she hoped that conversation could lead to productive change, and it might, however small. After “Speak Up’s” publication, YLS held its first faculty meeting on pedagogy, where it discussed positive teaching practices and ways to improve gender equity in the classroom. It’s a step.
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There is an important distinction between the types of conversation occurring at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School. Student research around gender issues in the classroom are one thing; professorial recommendations on University hiring practices is another. The establishment of the Task Force at the School of Medicine brings the
conversation to a new level. It’s an action of sorts, and as Steitz said, the public debate about these issues might bring about real change. It’s too early to say: it could just be another empty gesture. At schools that train doctors and lawyers, fields still dominated by men, gender issues are particularly complex. The question going forward is how to translate discussions of “gender issues” into tangible solutions.
—Graphic by Alex Swanson, YH Staff