CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- Female faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for years were systematically shortchanged in areas ranging from promotions and salaries to office space and access to research money, according to a report issued by the school.
The report, five years in the making, found that female professors at MIT's School of Science suffered unintentional discrimination. But it also lauded administrators for taking several measures to address inequities once they were revealed."I believe that in no case was this discrimination conscious or deliberate," Science School Dean Robert Birgeneau said in the report. "Indeed, it was usually totally unconscious and unknowing.
"Nevertheless, the effects were real."
Questions about discrimination were first raised in 1994 after DNA researcher Nancy Hopkins was told that a course she spent five years developing was being discontinued.
Hopkins, along with two female colleagues, started a poll of tenured women in the School of Science -- one of five at MIT -- and found that female faculty had less office space and lower salaries than their male counterparts. There also were no female department heads, and while MIT granted raises to men who had job offers elsewhere, the school often just let the women leave.
Birgeneau investigated the claims, and worked to correct the problems.
Since then, MIT has raised women's salaries an average of 20 percent to equal the salaries of male faculty members; increased research money and space for women; awarded them key committee seats; and increased the pensions of a handful of retired women to what they would have been paid if the salary iniquities had not existed.
The report, released on MIT's Web site this week and first reported on by The Boston Globe, also urges the establishment of committees in the other four schools at MIT and a similar effort involving minorities.