The natural sciences is an example of a field with traditionally low female representation—and it has been making concerted efforts to ensure that female faculty stay on track to become full-fledged professors.

While only 12 percent of the natural science senior faculty Hokestra entered is comprised of women, her ascension to the top of the tenure ladder shows that female academics—once marginalized—are now beginning to balance the gender skew.

Women comprise almost a third of the junior faculty in the natural sciences—a promising figure that stands to increase the number of female senior faculty members in the future.

Indeed, Hoekstra says that the department of organismic and evolutionary biology has brought in six female junior faculty members in recent years, all the while emphasizing the tenure track system and the gradual integration into a welcoming community of academics at Harvard.

In addition to FAS-wide mentoring services, OEB offers programs encouraging a sense of community—programs that Hoekstra contrasts to what, before the mentorship programs, might have felt more like a “glorified post-docs” that prepare their resumes for positions elsewhere.

Hoekstra acknowledges that hiring reductions may hamper the changes the University wishes to institute in its faculty, but she holds out hope for an eventual new face of the faculty.

“Certainly it will bring in fewer young people,” she says. “But the hope is that all changes, right?”

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Elyssa A.L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.