With President Barbara Wilson leading the institution and a majority of colleges helmed by female deans, the University of Iowa was named a national leader in gender equality in a 2022 study by the Eos Foundation.
Iowa ranks fourth of 130 institutions, public and private, across the country.
The Women’s Power Gap Study, published in January, examines the top universities in the country and reports which schools are leading and which are lagging in respect to gender gaps. The study assessed institutional leadership and broke it down into four categories: Top leadership (president, provost, board chair), academic deans, president’s cabinet, and governing boards. Points were assigned based on representation in each category.
The UI’s 84.8 total points rank fourth overall and first of the Big Ten’s 14 institutions, behind only University of California-Santa Cruz, City University of New York–Graduate School, and University of New Hampshire.
But the UI’s history of placing women at the forefront is nothing new.
