With a growing number of women students, and situated in the state that sees itself as America's most progressive, the California Institute of Technology would seem to be an ideal arena to nurture a research community free of gender warfare. But a study reported in this issue (see page 844) shows deep dissatisfaction among the one in ten of Caltech's faculty who are women. The women feel — and the facts suggest — that they have had an anomalously high chance of being spurned when leadership positions were filled; they feel discriminated against by administrators who dole out endowed chairs, which underwrite salaries; and they have now learned that they are paid less for equal work.

The intense atmosphere has led to backbiting. A senior woman faculty's reticence to fight for equal salaries was called "traitorous" by another woman professor. Women faculty who push for their rights were called "young hotheads" by senior faculty. And there is lingering bitterness among the senior and junior faculty women over battle tactics in the gender war. All this in a state where women have increasingly assumed leadership positions in the corporate and political world.

This past spring, Caltech elected the first woman 'chair' of the faculty. Last winter, the biology division saw its first woman faculty member receive an endowed chair, after some 70% of male biology faculty already had endowments. But the woman biologist's endowment came only after strong lobbying.

As a private university, the onus for improvement rests with Caltech's administration and board of trustees. Its president, David Baltimore, is lauded by a number of women faculty for his leadership and open-door policy of listening to all faculty. Ensuring that women have an equal voice in leadership and committees, bestowing endowments in a way that is demonstrably fair, and giving women equitable salaries would be three major steps forward.