By Lexi Jenkins
The past few years have seen some big moments for gender equity at law schools nationwide. In 2016, women outnumbered men at accredited law schools for the first time. At HLS specifically, women made up 50 percent of the student body for the first time with the class of 2017. In the HLS class of 2019, women outnumber men, and more women than men from this class were selected as editors for the Harvard Law Review this past year. But despite progress among the student body, gender disparities persist in a very visible and influential way at HLS: male faculty members still vastly outnumber female faculty members.
HLS currently lists 365 faculty members in the faculty director. Of the 365, only 35 percent are women, compared to 66 percent men. HLS divides its faulty up into three categories: “Full Time Faculty,” “Visiting Professors,” and “Lecturers.” The disparity is worst among Full Time Faculty, of which 28 percent are women and 72 percent are men. The picture becomes even more stark within this category; only 22 percent of women hold the prestigious title “Professor of Law,” compared to 78 percent of men. That means that only 19 women hold full professorships, compared to 66 men.
The Visiting Professors and Lecturers categories include slightly higher proportions of women than does the Full Time Faculty category. Of both Visiting Professors and Lecturers, 38 percent are women and 62 percent are men. Within the Lecturers subcategory of Climenko Fellows, there are three women and ten men. (To the program’s credit, Susan Tobin is the Managing Director of the Climenko Fellowship and also serves the same role as a Climenko Fellow for one 1L section, but she is listed as a Lecturer on Law in the Faculty Directory, so she has been included in that category instead for this analysis.) The disparity among Climenkos is particularly concerning. Climenko Fellows are typically a younger group than other faculty members and are appointed for two-year terms, so in theory, gender parity should be achievable.
No readily apparent reason for the continued disparities exists. Setting aside the gender breakdown over time of the student body of other law schools, women have made up over 35 percent of students at HLS since as far back at 1985. Since that time, the proportion of women at HLS has continued to grow, reaching parity in 2017. (In the class of 2020, the percentage of women dipped back slightly below parity, to 48 percent).
Of course, an equal proportion of women did not necessarily go into academics from 1985 onward. This could be a potential explanation for the continued disparity among Professors of Law. However, the same explanation cannot be used to explain away all of the disparities amongst Assistant Professors of Law, Visiting Professors, and Lecturers, especially Climenko Fellows.
There is, however, some hope. In 2013, the Harvard Crimson reported that the HLS Faculty was only 20 percent female. At that time, it was among the most severe gender imbalances of approximately 200 law schools nationwide. Since then, WLA’s Shatter the Ceiling Committee has worked to address this issue. In the past five years, the proportion of women on the faculty has risen 15 percentage points, to the current level of 35 percent.
But even though the number of women on the faculty has risen, it is still too low. The faculty of HLS must reflect the diversity of the student body and, indeed, of the world. And the need for diversity is not limited to gender. Racial diversity, gender identity diversity, and diversity in regards to sexual orientation on the faculty were outside the scope of this author’s analysis. However, equal representation on the faculty of all identities is extremely important and is too often neglected by the administration.
We need more research on the diversity of the HLS faculty. We also need a firm commitment from the administration to address inequalities. In 2013, Martha Minow affirmed the importance of working to close gender gaps on the faculty and pledged to work to do so. Now we need the same commitment from John Manning. Gender disparities can, and should, end during his tenure as dean.
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