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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2010 · yaledailynews.com
PREGAME COVER
HIGH HEELS, HIGHER (ED) WALLS // BY CORA LEWIS AND DANNY SERNA li Yale and John Harvard maintained strict “NO GIRLS ALLOWED” policies since the time their storied institutions were founded over three decades ago up until the latter half of the 20th century. Forty years after the gals first bust into the old boys club, great prog-
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ress has been made toward gender equity — but, as now-infamous Old Campus chants indicate, much work remains to remove traces of institutional sexism at each school. Although some maintain that Yale is superior to Harvard in ever imaginable respect, the two colleges are undeniably very similar institutions, and the lives of women at each college naturally
// MONA CAO
have much in common, ever since co-education hit the Ivy League. Last week, we two intrepid reporters suppressed our hostility toward our frenemies to the North and boarded a midnight train to Cambridge. We dove headfirst, like sea wolves, into the uncharted waters of Georgian architecture and Final Clubs and set out to determine what elements distinguish the experience of a Harvard girl from that of a young woman who studies at Yale. While statistics alternately show progress and hurdles still to be overcome, such as the number of women professors on track for tenure and the number of female undergrads in leadership positions, the social culture at each college remains gendered, students report. Read on for the legacies of Radcliffe
women, the support structures available at both schools and the scoop on parties in the all-male clubhouses of Cambridge. WEEKEND investigates.
A BALANCING ACT
For all their differences, Harvard and Yale share one thing: gender imbalance. Student government, administrative make-up, and tenure-track faculty still have a way to go toward gaining equal representation of the sexes. For the Crimson and the Old Blue, undergraduate populations are both split relatively evenly between the genders. Women hold a slight majority in Harvard College (3,279 men to 3,371 women); at Yale, they’re a minority by single digits (2,624 men to 2,618 women in the fall of 2009).
The first time female students outnumbered male students at Yale was in 1999; at Harvard, fall 2007. These numbers represent an irrefutable accomplishment, but they are also a departure from national statistics. A January report from the American Council of Education showed that nationwide, women account for between 56 and 58 percent of undergraduates, putting these two Ivies below the national average. Among administration and faculty, the scales are much more lopsided. Eighty percent of Yale’s senior faculty are men; at Harvard, 74 percent of ladder faculty are. The Yale Corporation, Yale’s highest governing body, counts only four women as part of its 15-man committee. And Harvard’s primary governing body (the Presi-
WE RECOMMEND RADCLIFFE COLLEGE
The shoes on my feet (I’ve bought it) / The clothes I’m wearing (I’ve bought it) / The rock I’m rockin’(‘Cause I depend on me).