In the face of widespread faculty criticism of the number of tenure offers made to female faculty, University President Lawrence H. Summers pledged at yesterday’s Faculty meeting that last year’s “unacceptable” figures would not be repeated.

“We have already matched last year’s rather sorry total,” Summers said.

He and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) William C. Kirby did not commit to any new procedural changes aimed at tenuring more women, but did say Harvard would look into changes like increasing the availability of day care that would make it easier for women before the tenure review process began.

“Our results in appointing senior women are unacceptable,” said Kirby. “Last year should have been and will very quickly become an anomaly.”

Of the 32 tenure offers made last year, only four of them—or 13 percent—went to women. These numbers have declined successively every year since 36 percent of all offers went to women in 2000-2001, the last year that Neil L. Rudenstine served as University president.

Professors who spoke at yesterday’s meeting expressed near-unanimous approval for measures aimed at increasing tenures of women.

Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar said that while female students are present at Harvard in numbers comparable to their population in society, “women and minorities begin to vanish” when it comes to professorial positions.

While initial tenure recommendations are made by individual departments, Tatar referenced yesterday a plan announced earlier this fall through which the four divisional deans will make sure that departments are considering women and minorities throughout the hiring stages.

“There will be some reviewing” of tenure searches, Tatar said.

Jones Professor of American Stud

ies Lizabeth Cohen, a member of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, said that Harvard must make a systematic effort to remedy the tenure problem.

“We have to own up to it, we have to come up with remedies, and we have to stick with it,” Cohen said.

Cohen said that the standing committee has recommended the restoration of the post of associate dean for affirmative action as a means to promote gender and racial diversity among the faculty.

Ann W. Rowland, assistant professor of English and American literature and language, said Harvard should focus on hiring nontenured female professors out of graduate school.

“If you are wondering where the women are, [they] are in our graduate schools. They are our students,” she said, adding that Harvard should focus on the “hiring and then also the training of [junior] faculty.”