Report: MIT Makes Strides With Women Scientists

Report: MIT Makes Strides With Women Scientists: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has succeeded in boosting the number of women on its science and engineering faculties and in making the university a friendlier and more supportive place to work in the decade since a pair of scathing reports on the status of women at the school, yet more remains to be done, according to an internal report released Monday.

The school found that the number of women on the science and engineering faculties combined has increased from 46, or about 7 percent of the total in 1995, to 112, or about 17 percent in 2011. Pay and the distribution of other resources are more equitable, and more women are serving in senior administrative positions.

“I chaired the study 10 years ago for engineering and, if you had asked me then how much better I thought it could get for women faculty, I never would have thought that we would get this far in 10 years,” Lorna Gibson, professor of materials science and engineering and head of the School of Engineering study, said in a statement.

The report was a compilation of two separate surveys conducted with female faculty in the engineering and science schools. Both surveys had about a 90 percent voluntary participation rate.