More than ten years on, great progress has been made at MIT, where two reports conducted in the late Nineties revealed a number of gender inequality issues among professors. The school has done just about everything that it can do to eliminate disparity. The stubborn remainders are more broadly “societal,” reflecting prejudices that persist even among the most talented Americans. Men are still prepared to make almost any sacrifice for their families other than actually caring for them.

Because it has now become all but the rule that every committee must include a woman, and there are still relatively few women on the faculty, female professors say they are losing up to half of their research time, as well as the outside consultancies that earn their male colleagues a lot of money.

While women on the tenure track 12 years ago feared that having a child would derail their careers, today’s generous policies have made families the norm: the university provides a yearlong pause in the tenure clock, and everyone gets a term-long leave after the arrival of a child. There is day care on campus and subsidies for child care while traveling on business.

Yet now women say they are uneasy with the frequent invitations to appear on campus panels to discuss their work-life balance. In interviews for the study, they expressed frustration that parenthood remained a women’s issue, rather than a family one.

As Professor Sive said, “Men are not expected to discuss how much sleep they get or what they give their kids for breakfast.”

Administrators say some men use family leave to do outside work, instead of to be their children’s primary care giver — creating more professional inequity.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 10:30 am.