Women Faculty at Yale
Yale's ongoing commitment to excellence requires that we search broadly to identify those individuals with the greatest potential to advance knowledge and lead society. Achieving and maintaining diversity among students, faculty and staff are essential elements of that commitment. Accordingly, the University has maintained the long-standing goals of supporting women in academia and addressing issues of importance to women faculty, including, most significantly, the recruitment and retention of women on the faculty and in the administrative structure of the institution.
From 1969 when the study on Graduate Education for Women at Yale was undertaken, through the 1984 Crothers Committee on the Status of Women, which challenged the institution to meet specific goals in the recruitment of tenured women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, to the 2002 snapshot of Women and Yale University, the work of ad hoc committees has contributed toward a broader understanding of women in the academy. A listing of these committees and their reports can be found at http://www.yale.edu/wff/links.html#P0_0. Through the efforts of these committees and through a number of targeted initiatives, dedicated offices including the pioneering Office for Women in Medicine, and special resources, the University has worked successfully to increase the number of women in ranks and positions across the University and to make significant improvements in the environment for women at Yale.
An exciting and important moment in the evolution of the University's efforts to support and advance women was the formation in 2001 of the Women Faculty Forum. Concurrent with the discussions regarding the status of women faculty that were taking place at MIT and other institutions in the late 1990s and in conjunction with Yale's year-long Tercentennial celebration, a group of women faculty sponsored by the Yale administration presented a landmark conference entitled "Gender Matters: Women and Yale in Its Third Century". The resounding success of this gathering, along with the encouragement and financial support of the President and Provost, inspired the creation of the Women Faculty Forum, an organization led by senior women faculty and administrators and dedicated to fostering gender equity throughout the university, to promoting scholarship on gender and scholarship by and about women, and to facilitating networking on women's issues.
The Women Faculty Forum is involved in a broad range of activities including, among others, the co-sponsorship of formal conferences, such as the Fall 2003 "Celebrating Women in Science," marking the centennial of Madame Curie's first Nobel Prize; comprehensive studies of the status of women at Yale and in the profession more generally; and in the coordination of workshops, symposia, and lectures to address issues of particular concern to women in the academy. The Forum's leadership meets regularly with the Provost and President to discuss current issues and plan future initiatives.
The Women Faculty Forum's website provides a robust compendium of the activities and reports of the Women Faculty Forum, other related initiatives throughout the University, and articles of interest to the higher education community.
