Her name was Mrs. Lindblatt and she was a stellar kindergarten teacher. She was replaced by Mrs. Balsis in first grade, Mrs. Hinds, Ms. Boivin, Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Dexter and then in college, Professor John Granger, Professor Melvyn Freilicher, Professor Sarah Bynum and Professor Norman Bryson. Replace the names with those of your own K-12 teachers and college professors, and try to notice a pattern. Mrs. Lindblatt is part of a firm foundation of women, the K-12 demographic of teachers, who have yet to be fully represented in the halls of higher education. Their influence, while great, is limited.

According to a report sponsored by the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health, Eli Lilly and Co., the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the National Academies, women are still underrepresented in leadership positions at universities, with an implied bias against their advancement.

“Compared with men, women faculty members are generally paid less and promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions,” the report stated. “These discrepancies do not appear to be based on productivity, the significance of their work or any other performance measures.”

At UCSD, the statistics are no different. Women faculty members are well-represented in the areas of arts and humanities, but there is a disparity in the engineering and physical sciences departments. According to the Ladder-Rank Faculty Recruitment Activity Report for the 2005-06 hiring period, only 21 women accepted positions as faculty, comprising 33 percent of the hires. The engineering department had three women accept positions, or 30 percent, and physical sciences roped in one woman, for 13 percent. Arts and humanities led the draft with five women accepting positions, or 65 percent of the new wave of professors.

Professor Deborah Wingard, a professor at the UCSD Medical School and ex-chair of the Committee on the Status of Women, looks to her past for explanation of the gender gap.

“Historically, society has encouraged different behaviors in boys and girls,” Wingard said. “Girls have been steered towards humanities and boys have been steered towards the physical sciences. The problem is it starts really young. If you look at the high schools, you will see more boys than girls interested in science.”

For Wingard, visibility of female role models plays a key role in the recruitment of women faculty. Without a pioneer leading the way, many women may give up their dream of becoming a renowned chemist or biomedical engineer. “Part of the reason women and minorities don’t go into the sciences is they don’t see members like them,” she said. “As a young girl, I never considered something like firefighting. Women just weren’t firefighters back then.”

Firefighting aside, it is hard to imagine what UCSD could do to foster an environment where women pursue academic paths that have been traditionally discouraged. Despite the disparity in numbers, the attitude toward recruitment is one of positive change. Many prominent members of what could be dubbed the modern women’s movement at UCSD agree that change is occurring. “I think [the attitude towards women] is changing, and UCSD has been taking action against the lack of diversity on campus,” Wingard said.

Professor Linda Zangwill, co-chair of Women in Sciences and Engineering, concurs. “We are working hard to recruit and retain women faculty at UCSD,” Zangwill said.

In an e-mail, Emelyn dela Pena, director of the Women’s Center on campus, conveyed her pleasure at the action being taken.

“While we are still far from where we want to be in terms of gender equity in our faculty ranks, I’m very pleased to know that initiatives and policies are being put in place and campuses are being held accountable by the UC Office of the President,” she stated.

The action of which this trifecta of women’s rights speaks is a combination of committees and a procedural Best Hiring Practices, instituted by the university. There is the Committee on the Status of Women, Women in Science and Engineering and a faculty program at UCSD and its medical school. Both committees monitor and advise the university’s hiring practices and environment related to women. The faculty program pairs each incoming faculty member with a senior faculty member that mentors the neophyte professors in the ways of academic success and strengthens their ties to the department.

“We are working at the faculty level and at the student level,” Wingard said. “The program makes the senior faculty member aware of the problems facing women and minority faculty.”

The programs, though, will be hard-pressed to fight against inherent economic factors, according to the logic of professor Richard Carson, chair of the economics department. He cited four main factors that affect the professional success of women faculty.

First, children and childbearing affect the ability to publish, which is critical in receiving tenure. To combat this, universities extend the timeline for tenure by a year if a professor gives birth. The extension is good for women professors, but also lowers the rate at which women professors can be hired. Childbearing also causes some to leave the field.

Second, businesses and government agencies love hiring female assistant professors. The high demand makes many voluntarily opt out of academia.

Third, senior female professors receive fewer outside job offers; preventing them from increasing their salaries in bidding wars with other universities.

Fourth, female professors populate fields of study that have lower salaries in general, as the physical sciences earn more.

Carson also addressed the lack of women leaders.

“With respect to leadership positions, I don’t know of any evidence that suggests that this is really an issue — after one controls for the relatively small number of senior faculty women, particularly in some science and engineering fields,” he stated in an e-mail. “A standard complaint of many senior female faculty members I know is being asked to serve in too many leadership positions.”

While the programs and committees that have been instituted specifically target the lack of female role models in engineering and physical science fields, they have yet to address the systematic problems Carson cites.

As of now, UCSD has a plan to bolster numbers without necessarily affecting underlying economic factors. The only component agreed upon by all is the importance of diversity, as stated by the UC President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity in its May 2006 presentation: “Equality of opportunity will ensure that UC can fully utilize the intellectual resources embedded in our diversity and maintain our legitimacy as a public land grant university.”