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Two Follow-up Reports on MIT and UC

In 1999, MIT released a report on the status of its female faculty that received much attention. In the spring of 2001, presidents of nine universities (including UCB) met and promised to share annual reports on salaries, resources, and hiring, and to include gender as a category in these analyses (see Spring 2001 Newsletter). Spring 2001 also saw the release of the California State Auditor´s report concerning gender disparity in faculty hiring.

Recently, reports on progress at MIT and UC have been released. These provide an interesting contrast. In the Fall 2000 Newsletter, Charity Hirsch asked, " MIT and UC: What´s the difference?" Her answer identified two factors: Administrators and faculty women. An MIT administrator acknowledged the facts, UC administrators have consistently denied them. MIT faculty women (at least those with tenure) complained as a group. At that time UC faculty women had not acted as a group.

The current report from MIT identifies administrators and faculty women who are willing to work together for change as "crucial factors" in the progress that has been made at that institution. In the UC system the formation of CAFE is perhaps a sign of forthcoming collective action on the part of UC faculty women. But have UC administrators shown signs of change? Last year´s report suggests the answer is no.

MIT
The 1999 MIT report concerned the climate for female faculty in the School of Science. In March of this year, reports on the status of female faculty members throughout MIT were released. An Overview and the reports for each school are available at: http://web.mit.edu/faculty/reports/provost.html.

The reports reveal that faculty women of the different MIT Schools face similar issues: marginalization, small numbers of female faculty members in their departments, and greater difficulty in balancing work and family. Identification of these problems has prompted corrective actions.

The following are excerpts from the 11-page Overview:
     Many women faculty have been amazed by the progress and changes in their 
     own professional lives at MIT. If one were to ask what was the most important 
     factor in change to date, it would have to be the Reports that documented 
     the problems and led to the engagement of administrators in solving them. 
     This could not have occurred without two key components: 
     a significant number of tenured women faculty who worked closely 
     together and were willing to commit an enormous amount of their 
     time to this issue, and a higher administration that, given the knowledge 
     of the problems the women faculty provided, made a long term commitment 
     to work with the women faculty to address the issuesŠ. (p.10)

     As we have seen with salaries and with the numbers of women faculty, 
     once the concrete data are available, committed administrators can make 
     a difference. But lasting equity cannot depend only on the good will of 
     department heads and deans. So, despite the important progress MIT has made, 
     there are still underlying causes that have not been uncovered. 
     There still is very little awareness at MIT, or elsewhere, of the gendered 
     nature of academic rules: how criteria of evaluation, timing expectations, 
     conventions of authorship‹to name a few‹help men more than women. 
     Nor is there awareness that reputations are constructed, and cumulate 
     from slight advantages that favor men, and slight inequities that 
     disadvantage women. Lasting equity requires rethinking these institutional 
     rules, which evolved for a different demographic group, in order to ensure 
     that they do not systematically disadvantage women, or men in dual career 
     partnerships. MIT has successfully used the experience of the women faculty 
     in the School of Science to ensure that women in all the schools are 
     treated fairly, and that everyone understands the rules. What still 
     needs doing, and what eventually will be necessary in order to achieve 
     lasting gender equity, is to question and rethink the nature of the 
     rules themselves (pp.10­11).
UC
The 12-page report on implementation of the State Auditor´s recommendations concerning gender disparity in UC faculty hiring is available at www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa/pdfs/2000131b.pdf. (Both the Auditor´s report and the report on implementation are dated May 2001.) The Auditor´s report on hiring had 13 findings and corresponding recommendations. The report on implementation summarizes the actions taken by UC in response to each of these recommendations. Eight of the 13 summaries contain variations on "However, UC did not provide an action plan that specifically addressed this recommendation." In particular, Finding #13 was the recommendation that UC should periodically report on its progress in correcting gender disparity issues. The report on implementation describes UC´s response to this finding as follows: "UC Action: Unknown. UC did not provide an action plan that specifically addressed this recommendation."

This year the percentage of women hired has increased and women have been appointed to administrative positions. But what will happen next year? The continued absence of structures to ensure equity is not encouraging.

-wage@wage.org-