Duke, Princeton initiate campus gender equity reforms.

Women presidents now lead prestigious private male bastions at Duke University NC and Princeton University NJ. It's no coincidence that both schools recently released gender equity studies recommending far reaching changes to improve the climate for women on campus.

Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane launched the Women's Initiative in May 2002 to understand and address the needs of women undergraduate, graduate and professional students, faculty and staff. She unveiled its report in September 2003.

Princeton participated in a meeting at MIT in January 2001 about the status of women faculty in science and engineering. That fall the new president, Shirley Tilghman, named a task force to investigate the situation at Princeton. Their report and recommendations came in May 2003.

Duke women students: thin and well dressed

Clad in baggy pants, heavier than average and oriented toward social action, undergraduate Kelly Quirk manages the student radio station. She feels she doesn't fit the norms she perceives: "The Duke ideal is white, athletic, thin, straight and well-dressed. And if you don't fit into that mold, you feel as though you are on the outside."

She's seen friends hide their sexual orientation for fear of harassment. The student newspaper reinforces the pressure to conform. "Watching the way the Duke community responds--including particular articles and columnists--to women activists on this campus has caused me not to want to be the vocal one on more controversial issues," she said, according to the report.

Women and men rarely get to know each other over dinner and a show, undergraduate Brook Palmer said. Instead they meet at off-campus fraternity parties and hook up for sex. "Women can get stranded off campus without a friend or a safe ride home," she reported.