"Columbia Women's Liberation, Report from the Committee on Discrimination Against Women Faculty" Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Spring 1970, page 3

          Summary

Barnard College and
What It Imlirates

For full professors in the eight divisions that employ them, the actual
percentage is 5.2 per cent (2.8 per cent if Barnard is excluded). This compares
rather badly with the 15 per cent of doctorates that were earned by women
in this age group. The Barnard figure hardly compensates for the lack of
female representation in the other, better-paid divisions. Even at Barnard,
78 per cent of the full professors are men. In the 19505, women received
10 per cent of the doctorates awarded. Since in over half the divisions shown
on the chart, women are not represented at all at the Associate Professor
level, there is no need to belabor this disturbing lack.

In the lower ranks, women constitute a much higher proportion of the
total teaching staff than they do at the upper levels. Women received 11 per
cent of the Ph.D.s awarded between 1960-58. At some divisions of Columbia,
their numbers exceed this proportion at both Assistant Professor and Instructor
levels. However, this distribution begins ‘to reveal another aspect of the
university’s hiring practices. Overall, women are concentrated in the lower
ranks, and have been for several years. They are also to some degree
segregated by sex by being confined to Barnard College, General Studies and
the Graduate Faculties. Women constitute a majority of only one category-—
part-time employment (Preceptors, Assistants and Associates).

This data reflects two major tendencies. The greater the

proportion of women students, the greater the number of women faculty at

all ranks. Second, the higher the rank and the better the pay, the fewer

the number of women at that rank. While to some minds this arrangement
may have an appealing symmetry, we believe that it reflects and reinforces a
marked inequality of opportunity and compensation.

The role of Barnard College as an equalizer in the otherwise male~dominated
Columbia community is worth examining for other clues about the status of
women. Although 78 per cent of Barnard’s full professors are men, the number of
men and women employed in full-time teaching there is almost equal. Barnard

and Wellesley are the only Seven Sisters colleges to hire more women than men, 1

but at all these colleges except Wellesley, men control the full professorships and
the chairmanships.5 Even the one group of educational institutions founded to
give women college educations and access to professional careers do not, after
more than 50 years of activity, serve as models demonstrating to the rest of the
community the abilities of women to manage demanding careers in responsible
positions theoretically open to them.

All these women’s colleges lack the endowment of their male equivalents;
all of them have fewer facilities; all pay lower salaries to their faculty.
The differences between Barnard and Columbia salaries are well known,

‘Affairs and Business, the proportion of degrees earned by women is a more accurate
guide than the overall proportion of doctorates earned by women. The following
data for post-1949 degrees will give some idea of the proportion of Ph.D.s going to
women in these subjects.

1949-53 -1954-59 1961-6
Law ~ .02 .03 .04-
History .11 .12 .11
Political Science .08 .06 .08
Sociology .14 .14 .19
Economics .06 .04 .05
Business ' i .07 .03 1 .03

5 Token Learning: A Study 0/ Women’s Higher Education in America, Education
Committee of the National Organization for Women, New York Chapter (Kate
Millet, Chairman), 1968, pp. 37-40.