Maribeth Murray is unique in her union's tenure and promotion committee.

At UAF, around 40 percent of faculty are women. But on the seven member university-wide tenure and promotion committee for the United Academics union, Murray is the only woman.

Men and women in the faculty are almost equally as likely at UAF to be on the tenure track, according to a 2005 study by the Faculty Senate. But while 70 percent of men reported holding tenure, only 39 percent of women did. And only tenured faculty can be on the committees that review tenure files.

"We're a small percentage that can participate," Murray said.

For faculty, tenure is an important status to reach because of the freedom and status it endows. It also carries around a 10 percent pay bump for assistant professors getting promoted to associate. But social researchers say the lack of women on tenure and promotion committees hurts their odds at getting tenure.

"The data are not just anecdotal; there is empirical evidence," said Sine Anahita, an assistant professor of sociology and member of the Faculty Senate's Committee on the Status of Women.

Faculty who are hired as assistant professors can apply for tenure any time, but they are required to apply by their seventh year. Men typically achieve tenure in five years, the senate's study says. For women, though, it usually takes seven.

The gender gap isn't just a UAF phenomena. Nationally, women held only 31 percent of tenured faculty positions in 2005-06, according to the American Association of University Professors. Men made up 69 percent.

The tenure committee membership gap at UAF is expected to narrow a little next year. Due to a lack of nominations, the committee is expected to shrink from seven to six members. Faculty on Friday formally nominated one new woman to the committee to join Murray, said Sheri Layral, the office manager for the Governance Office.

Having more women on the university-wide tenure and promotion committee could help more women make tenure, Anahita said. But since faculty have to reach a certain rank, and hence tenure, to sit on the committee, women are less likely at UAF to be able to be members, she said. Anahita called it a "vicious cycle."

"It's not that there's these evil men that are saying women can't be on it," she said. "It's a structural problem."

When faculty apply for tenure, their file goes before a group of peers, usually full-time tenured faculty in their department or college. The dean of the college will review the file and then send it along to one of two university-wide committees, depending on the union the person belongs to. After that, the provost and then the chancellor get a vote.

At UAF, faculty undergo three reviews, a pre-tenure review in their fourth year, a tenure and promotion review when they apply for tenure, and a post-tenure review every three years after getting tenure. University-wide committees like the one Murray sits on oversee each review. Like the tenure and promotion committee, the other two committees have gender gaps. Two out of seven pre-tenure review committee members are women. Only one member on the post-tenure review body is female.

UAF has committed to have at least one woman on every review committee, said Hild Peters, the university's academic and faculty services manager. But the university has struggled to find people from either gender to volunteer for them, she said. The tenure committee next year will drop from seven to six members, and the pre- and post-tenure review bodies will drop to five.

"For whatever reason, we're not able to get the volunteers," Peters said.

According to the agreement with United Academics, the committee could be three to seven members, appointed by the provost from a list of six to 12 faculty. Provost Paul Reichardt said he defers to the faculty to create the list. The next provost could conceivably change this formula to promote gender diversity, he said. However, he doubted that would happen.

"It could, but by now we have enough history with this that it won't change unless there's a real problem," he said.

Other problems exist. With fewer women than men in the faculty, the demands for mixed gender representation on committees has placed pressure on female faculty to wear multiple hats at the same time, Murray said.

For example, Murray, who was elected by faculty to the tenure committee in 2006, also heads the Anthropology Department and sits on the dean search commitee for the College of Liberal Arts and a campus committee on global change.

As a result, women who volunteer for the committees have less time they could use for research or other endeavors, she said.

"Obviously you're going to be asking more from less," Murray said.

Reichardt agreed that the university sometimes places overwhelming time demands on women.

"If you don't have the same number of women to men, then the women are tapped disproportionately more," he said.

In the future, those trends could reverse, Reichardt said. Hiring pools increasingly are balanced among genders, he said. As tenured faculty, largely men, retire, the ratio of male-to-female tenured faculty will likely close.

But Anahita said the way the system currently works, equity probably would take 100 years. New hires can't eliminate gender bias in society, she said.

"That's what needs to change in order to have real equity in promotion and tenure," she said.

The struggle to attain gender equality in tenure at UAF is also hitting roadblocks faced by the faculty as a whole. From 2001 to 2005, the percentage of full-time faculty ineligible for tenure climbed from 26 percent to 33 percent, according to a 2006 interim accreditation report.

Tenured faculty fell from 47 percent to 43 percent, the report says.

This year, tenure and promotion applications exploded. UAF reviewed 54 applications this year, about twice as many as normal, she said. They take up a full file cabinet in Signer's Hall. Of those applications, 24 are for tenure.

Since the tenure committee consists of faculty from multiple disciplines, Murray said the seven members are usually hesitant to get too involved in judging faculty beyond the specific eligibility criteria. But she added the committee should have more women.

"My experience at the university-wide level is the files are reviewed fairly," she said. "I don't think it's a problem, but I don't think it is a good thing there's an imbalance."