The MIT Model

Professor Nancy Hopkins had been on the MIT faculty for more than 20 years when she needed more lab space to conduct her research on cell development in zebra fish. Her request for 200 square feet was denied. She then compared the size of her research space (1,500 square feet) with junior male faculty (2,000 square feet) and senior male faculty (6,000 square feet) and met with university administrators.

Ten months later, Hopkins won her 200 square foot space. However, increasingly aware that women faculty were accorded not only less space but also lower salaries, fewer assistants, and less time to do research, Hopkins wrote a letter to MIT President Charles Vest. All but one of the 15 tenured women in the science department signed Hopkins’ letter.

The President and Dean of Science took the letter seriously and assisted in the creation of an investigative committee to look into inequities between female and male faculty members. Two years later, the Committee produced a 150-page report. The report compared lab and office space, salaries, committee and departmental appointments, number of reseach assistants, hours of secretarial help, and other resources, benefits and working conditions. The report also documented that women dropped from 50% of MIT science undergraduates to 45% of Ph.D. students to 35% of post-doctoral students to less than 25% of science faculty.

MIT President Vest wrote a preface for the report and committed the university to ending sex-based inequities at the school. A Gender Equity Committee in Science and Engineering was established to review salary data, to make recommendations, and to monitor changes. Not only did the MIT report result in improvements for women faculty at MIT, it inspired women faculty to call for and administrators to make changes at other universities.

See MIT report and other materials

Learn more from Getting Even.

For more information on eliminating bias in college and university faculty, see Paychecks: A Guide to Conducting Salary-Equity Studies for Higher Education Faculty