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The Status of Women in Modern Language Departments: A Report of the Modern Language Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Florence Howe ,
Laura Morlock  and
Richard Berk
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Extract

In the spring and summer of 1970 the Commission on the Status of Women of the Modern Language Association conducted a comprehensive, nationwide survey on the position of women in English and modern foreign language departments. We collected information on types of appointments, ranks, teaching patterns, and salary levels of men and women faculty members and the proportion of women among graduate enrollments and recent degrees awarded. In addition, the Commission asked for information about nepotism regulations and practices of departments in the Association. This report presents some results of the survey.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , May 1971 , pp. 459 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

Notes

1 This number was reduced later to 991 because 16 departments, most of which consisted of one or two faculty members, had disbanded by June 1970.

2 The research findings in this report are summaries of tables, many of which have been omitted for reasons of economy. All tables are available from the authors upon request.

3 In a nationwide study of the graduate school plans of 33,982 college seniors, James A. Davis found that women were 69% of those planning graduate work in languages and 65% of those planning graduate work in English. Davis found that men and women planning graduate work in both areas had about equal abilities as measured by grade-point averages and the prestige of undergraduate colleges they had attended. Women in both areas were a little more likely than men to be in the top fifth of their classes. See Great Aspirations (Chicago: Aldine, 1964), pp. 154–59.

4 Ann Fischer and Peggy Golde have calculated that an average number of 28.45 doctorates per year was awarded to women in English in the pre-World War ii years, and 32.45 doctorates to women in other modern languages. Only in education were there more degrees awarded to women. In the postwar years, women in English have received an average of 55.31 doctorates annually compared to 44.38 in other modern languages. Only in education and psychology have there been more women doctorates. See “The Position of Women in Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, 70 (April 1968), 337–43.

5 Jessie Bernard, Academic Women (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1964).

6 For sex differences in academic ranks in all fields combined, see the following: National Education Association, “Salaries in Higher Education, 1965-1966,” Research Report 1966-R (Feb. 1966); Lindsey R. Harmon, Careers of Ph.D.'s: Academic vs. Nonacademic, Career Patterns Report No. 2, National Academy of Sciences (Washington, D.C., 1968); and Bernard, Academic Women, p. 180. For differences within specific fields see: Alice Rossi, “Status of Women in Graduate Departments of Sociology, 1968–1969,” American Sociologist, 5 (Feb. 1970), 1–11; Victoria Schuck, “Women in Political Science: Some Preliminary Observations,” PS, 2 (Fall 1969), 642–53; Alan E. Bayer and Helen S. Astin, “Sex Differences in Academic Rank and Salary Among Science Doctorates in Teaching,” Journal of Human Resources, 3 (Spring 1968), 191–200; and Thomas W. Wilcox, The National Survey of Undergraduate Programs in English, unpubl. manuscript made available by the MLA, 1969.

7 For studies reporting salary differences between men and women faculty members, see the following: National Education Association, “Salaries in Higher Education, 1965–1966”; Bernard, Academic Women; Rita James Simon, Shirley Merritt Clark, and Kathleen Galway, “The Woman Ph.D.,” Social Problems, 15 (Fall 1967), 221–36; Bayer and Astin, “Sex Differences in Academic Rank and Salary Among Science Doctorates in Teaching”; Judith Cates, “Psychology's Manpower: Report on the 1968 National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel,” American Psychologist, 25 (1970), 254–63; and Committee on the National Science Foundation Report on the Economics Profession, “The Structure of Economists' Employment and Salaries,” American Economic Review, 55 (1965), 59–67.

8 Laura Morlock is a Research Staff Assistant in Social Relations at the Johns Hopkins Univ. ; Richard Berk is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northwestern Univ.; Florence Howe is Assistant Professor of English at Goucher Coll. The Commission on Women consists of Howard Anderson, Katherine Ellis, Mary Anne Ferguson, Elaine Hedges, Florence Howe, Chairwoman, Carol Ohmann, and Roberta Salper. The Commission and the authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the editorial and other assistance of Paul Lauter, and the aid of Alice S. Rossi in the study's design.