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Vassar Case Shows Parallels with UC Cases
A recent court case, in which the woman scientist "won," has
many elements of similarity with the cases of UC women in WAGE. This
case involved Vassar College, until recently a women's college. Those
of us with cases, or active in support of women with cases, have seen
how gender bias permeates our culture. Even a school with a long
tradition of supporting women can discriminate against women.
In the Vassar case, the court found the College had
discriminated against a woman scientist because she was married, with
children, and older than others; she took ten years off to care for
her children and herself when she was ill. The scientist, biologist
Cynthia Fisher, was denied promotion to tenure in 1985 and "won" her
case only this year. The judge agreed with Fisher that she should
have been promoted, that she had been paid less than her peers, and
ordered Vassar to give her back her job, and to pay her back wages,
retirement, and social security. Vassar has now appealed the ruling.
According to The Scientist, "the college's attorney says the decision
hurts academia because 'the judge has established herself as a super
tenure reviewer.'"
A common note between Fisher's case and WAGE membersU cases
was her difficulty in finding a lawyer to take the case. Women in
Higher Education quotes Fisher: "'In January of 1987, we called every
civil rights law firm in New York City, and they all refused us,
saying we'd drown in paperwork and never win.'. . . Finally in 1989,
Eleanor J. Piel, who works with a single secretary receptionist,
agreed to take the case. Piel had already been involved with two
civil rights in academe cases. She worked with plaintiff Edna Sobel
on Sobel vs. Yeshiva University, a class action suit in which 100
doctors sued for equal pay. Piel also represented Heidi Weissmann,
who received a $900,000 settlement for discrimination and retaliation
from Yeshiva." UC women have found it very hard to find lawyers to
take their cases and have found that lawyers with political
commitment are more successful.
The reaction of Vassar, in appealing the result of a case
lost in court, is similar to that of UC. Women are pressured to
accept settlement by UC's promise to appeal a plaintiffUs court
victory. Given UC's deep pockets (the taxpayers') and the infinite
life of an institution, appealing is a very serious threat. One hopes
that Vassar, depending more than UC upon alumnae for funds, will
accept the decision of the court and try to develop a fair method to
resolve such cases in the future, just as we wish of UC.
Another parallel is that at the time Fisher was denied tenure
no married woman had received tenure at Vassar in the hard sciences
in the past thirty years. Since Fisher began her case, Vassar has
hired or promoted four married women scientists, all with children,
to tenure. These women scientists responded to the "success" of
Fisher's suit by circulating a letter saying they have found the
college to be a supportive environment. The Scientist says:
"Schwartz [one of the letter writers] speculates that Fisher's
predicament stems not from her family status, but from her decision
to stay home" [when she and her children were ill].
This use of women to attack women is a familiar "divide and
conquer" technique, sometimes organized by the discriminating
institution but frequently initiated by the women or minorities who
have been accepted into the institution. Gwen RowePLee of UCSF
(settled with UC in '94) is an African American who was attacked by
another African American woman in her department at UC. The
departmental backlash against Jenny Harrison has featured an attack
by the sole woman previously tenured in the department.
Another reaction we have seen, in our cases and others, is
an understandable attack on "affirmative action" by those women who
have been accepted into the inner circle. Scientists may be
especially inclined to ignore history and attribute their individual
success to their personal intelligence and hard work and ignore the
political aspects the efforts of the women who went before and made
it possible for others to succeed in a man's field. These women know
they are qualified and they "made it." It is easy for them, as for
these Vassar women, to accept the argument that anyone who hasnUt
made it is, therefore, unqualified, and that women who are appointed
under affirmative action are by definition unqualified.
In the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Joan
Birman of Columbia University says of the beginning of the women's
math organization: "I was there, I was beginning my career, and
frankly, I was embarrassed by the tactics of some of my unpleasantly
aggressive women colleagues. I did not want and I was absolutely
certain that I did not need their help. A natural (and very arrogant)
corollary was that if they had to resort to such unattractive
behavior it had to be because, if one took a good hard look, one
would see that they did not have the goods. That was in 1973. With
the wisdom of hindsight I am now forced to admit that things were not
as they seemed, and that the women mathematicians who participated in
confrontational politics in those days did a real service for the
rest of us, probably at considerable pain to themselves."
It is especially sad and ironic that the women who owe their
appointments to Fisher's nine year fight with Vassar are the ones to
attack her ironic but not unusual. One of the purposes of WAGE is to
join academic women together to support each other. Those of us who
have achieved tenure, or learned lessons from the fight to do so,
want to use our experience to help other women prosper in academia.
Sources: articles in Newsweek, May 30, 1994; Notices of the American
Mathematical Society, March 1994; The Scientist, July 25, 1994; and
Women in Higher Education, July, 1994.
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