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Is Anti-Family Anti-woman?
By Charity Hirsch
We all know that rules against women being admitted as students equally with men
are discriminatory, and no institution is so naive as to openly acknowledge such
discrimination. But does a rule against admitting applicants who are not working full
time outside the home, who are likely to be women raising their kids, discriminate
against women?
That is the question raised by a case brought by Katherine Zimmerman against the
Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
Faculty women have experienced discrimination for insufficient research
productivity during their childbearing years. Some institutions "stop the
clock" a semester for each child's birth or use some such formula in an
attempt to compensate for the problem.
The Haas Business School seems not to care to be seen as family friendly. It was
announced at an information session that not many mothers were in the evening MBA
program, the part time program for full time workers. Zimmerman was told she was
ineligible for that MBA program because she wasn't working 40 hours a week in
a paid job outside the home (she is a home-based computer consultant) and told to
try the daytime, full time, MBA program.
She applied to the daytime MBA program twice but was rejected because her
credentials were "not as strong as other applicants'." (Her GMAT
scores were in the 94 percentile.) She was told informally that her lack of "full
time" employment made her less competitive. A letter saying that being a
mother was not reason to be accepted in the program was sent her.
So she applied to the evening, part time MBA program, and was rejected‹without
being given a reason.
Now she's suing.
It's an interesting question. If you are a public institution, supported by
public money, what obligation do you have to educate the public, not just an elite (all
too frequently white and male)? Must you train Latin American lawyers or African
American doctors? (Studies show they are more likely to work for the Latin American
and African American communities whose taxes support the University.) Must you
train parents equally with non-parenting adults? Maybe proposition 209 says
"No, you owe nothing to these communities." Can it be that women have no
right to a business education if they take care of their children and run the business
from their home to do so?
I wonder what the Court's answer will be.
Editor's note: Zimmerman's case has recently been adopted by the
American Association of University Women's Legal Advocacy Fund.
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