I'd like to keep this google group up to date, so please tell any women you know who have recently
been tenured or started a tenured position in a doctoral math department about this google group.
For those who are new to the group, we are concerned with issues like increasing the numbers
of women in the very top departments, increasing the numbers of women winning prizes in mathematics
and obtaining invitations to speak at the ICM and other top meetings, and issues concerning
grants and funding. Although the group is restricted to those who are already tenured in doctoral
math departments, the posts made to this group are publicly visible and may possibly be used to
affect change.
I am organizing an AWM forum for next January's JMM on the Retention of Women Assistant Professors
in Mathematics. Here we will be focusing on women in doctoral mathematics departments as these
are the departments with the worst retention rates. Hopefully we will be able to build advise for those
pursuing tenure as well as for departments which would like to retain more of their women faculty. Anyone
interested in making suggestions can post ideas here on the womeninmath google group or can email
me personally.
I believe there has been much progress hiring women in the top math departments in recent years. I
visited MIT this Spring and the place has completely changed since the 1990's. However, departments
like my own continue with roughly the same number of women we've had for thirty years. Our total numbers
may have gone up because we retain our trail blazing women from 45 years ago, but the numbers of new
women being tenured is not increasing significantly. In my department the tenured women have PhD's in:
1964, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1996, 1999, and 2004. Only 3 out of 24 new faculty since 2007 are women, 2 of
them obtaining appointments this year. I am proud to say that one of our three new women professors is
a Distinguished Professor (Dolciani Professor). The discussion of promoting women into ranks of distinction
has come up on this google group and I was glad to see my department benefit from such a hire. But we need
to help more younger women succeed at doctoral institutions rather than just trading the top women from one
department to another.
Sincerely,
Christina