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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, particularly “Ivory Tower”: While the academy is still dominated by men, the number of women in the Ivory Tower is increasing rapidly. My comments: In other words, the number of women teachers and professors in universities and colleges are increasing rapidly, even though they’re still outnumbered by male teachers – and the gap remains big. The Ivory Tower is synonymous with schools and academies, where people deal with intellectual work rather than working hard just to be able to pay the bills in the real world. The question is, why “Ivory Tower”, literally a tower built with ivory (the hard white substance made from tusks of the elephant) gets to be associated with life as an academic? The short answer is, I guess, that ivory is white, pure, strong and precious. Shielded within such a tower or house, one is insulated from the harsh, tough and often cruel realities of the outside world. Within the warm and comfortable Ivory Tower, one reads, thinks, drinks tea or wine and, when he or she feels like it, writes a lecture on various topics, including one on how to run the world. That does sound like the good life of a rich, leisurely university professor, doesn’t it? Well, that is the short answer. The long answer to how and why the Ivory Tower became synonymous with academic life is, well, long, convoluted and kind of confusing, so I’m not delving into it. “The first mention of ivory towers”, suffice it to say, “is in the Bible, Song of Solomon 7:4 (King James Version): Thy neck is as a tower of ivory” (Phrases.org.uk). | 
