We Advocate Gender Equity"To end gender bias and achieve gender equity in the education, hiring, retention, promotion and compensation of women in the academic community within the University of California and other academic institutions."
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| Press Release of 10/30/05 |
WAGE is a system wide organization whose official mission, is "To end gender bias and achieve gender equity in the education, hiring, retention, promotion and compensation of women in the academic community within the University of California and other academic institutions."
While initially started around individuals at UCB and UCI who had tenure grievances and legal actions, WAGE has expanded to include all women and men whether or not affiliated with UC, committed to improving the status of UC academic women.
We wish to overcome the decades-old pattern of sex discrimination that has pervaded the entire UC system. WAGE is the first statewide organization not established by the university but devoted entirely to solving UC system wide problems.
At the core of WAGE are academic women, representing all campuses of the University of California, with current or recent gender discrimination cases. These women are professors, lecturers, librarians, researchers, clinical instructors and other non-senate academics. Taken as a group, their cases strikingly illustrate UCUs systemic problem with gender discrimination against academic women.
UC employment policies expressly prohibit discrimination by gender or by sexual orientation as well as sexual harassment; however, UC has a dismal record of dealing with even the most egregious violations of its own policies. While they may support cases involving other procedural errors, UC campus grievance committees rarely rule in favor of gender discrimination complaints. Campus sexual harassment officers are reluctant to take strong action against male academics who sexually harass their female colleagues. Campus affirmative action officers possess only advisory power and upper administrators regularly overrule them. These factors force women to take their cases into the courts for full hearings.
Dozens of UC discrimination cases have been passing through state and federal courts during the past few years. UC usually loses or settles out of court, but only after a protracted and extremely expensive weighted battle in which the academic woman and her attorney find themselves facing UCUs general counsel of 37 attorneys, supported by additional outside attorneys. UC, in effect, attempts to buy immunity from enforcing its own discrimination policies by dipping deeply into taxpayers pockets.
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