State Schools Better For Women Than Ivy League Colleges

Ivy League colleges are promoting fewer women to the highest academic rank of professor than their state school equivalents, according to data from Gender Fair. Despite having a collective endowment of more than $200 billion, many Ivy League Colleges have a lower percentage of women as tenured professors than the national average of 32%.

Newsweek and Gender Fair recently partnered to release the 2026 ranking of America's Best Colleges for Women.

Ivy League colleges is the name for eight elite, private universities located in the Northeastern United States: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

Most Ivy League colleges have been co-educational since the 1970s, but schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown have far fewer women than men in their highest academic ranks. When it comes to full professors, just 29.6% of Harvard's most senior academics are women, with Yale and Princeton having similar rates at 30.3% and 27.5%, respectively.

"Personally, I was shocked by the data," Chief Executive of Gender Fair Amy Willard-Cross told Newsweek. "Prestige schools lack gender balance in their academic staff despite women having an equal number of PhDs as of the early 2000s. When women pay equal tuition, but see scant women's leadership in the classroom-what message does that send?

Her organization’s data suggests that some state school systems, such as CUNY, have significantly higher rates of women making full professor: at the City University of New York Hostos Community College for example, 55.6% of full professors are women.

"There is an inverse relationship here," continued Willard-Cross. "Community colleges or local public institutions tend to have much higher levels of women (and non-white) professors than the prestige private schools-excluding women's colleges."

According to the Chancellor of CUNY, Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, achieving a gender balance requires commitment. "At the City University of New York, diversity isn’t just a goal; it’s our reality," he told Newsweek. "CUNY has spent nearly two centuries championing high-impact programs and resources that drive true gender equity and inclusion. We're proud to see these efforts recognized and look forward to ensuring future generations of women at CUNY have the tools they need to succeed."

While Ivy League schools top many traditional university rankings, Gender Fair's college rating system assesses schools on a range of measures including pay equity, parental policies, safety and opportunity. "I hope our ratings encourage prospective students, alumnae and alumni who are allies, to ask questions and demand better of these schools before writing tuition or donation checks." said Willard-Cross.

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This story was originally published June 29, 2026 at 3:47 AM.