Four Of The World’s Five Best Universities Will Have Women Leaders
Four of the the world’s five highest-ranked universities will be led by a woman by the end of the summer.
This is the highest-ever level of representation of women leaders at elite universities, a high watermark worth celebrating ahead of International Women’s Day on Wednesday.
The appointments of Claudine Gay at Harvard and Deborah Prentice at Cambridge – who both take up their posts in July – mean four of the top five universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings will be led by women.
Gay and Prentice join Irene Tracey at Oxford and Sally Kornbluth at MIT in leading top-five institutions, leaving Stanford’s Marc Tessier-Lavigne as the only man among their number.
And they are in the vanguard of change that now sees almost a quarter – 48 – of the top 200 ranked universities led by a woman.
But the overall figure disguises the fact that progress is uneven: almost half of the countries represented in the top 200 do not have any women leading their top institutions.
“It’s amazing to see that four of the top five universities in the world will shortly be led by women,” said Rosa Ellis, rankings editor for Times Higher Education. “They will be an inspiration to their staff, students and other universities around the world.”
“While progress is happening, universities, which are the world’s beacons of learning, knowledge and human progress need to do much more to advance women’s roles not just at the top of universities but in every position and in all of its outputs.”