California State Auditor/Bureau of State Audits Summary of Report Number
2000-131 - May 2001: University of California: Some Campuses and Academic
Departments Need
to Take Additional Steps to Resolve Gender Disparities Among Professors is
finished.
You can see the full report at:
http://www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa/pdfs/2000131.pdf.
Testimony from hearings conducted by the Commission on the
Advancement
of Women and Minorities in Academic Science and Engineering
Careers
(CAWMSET) is available at:
www.nsf.gov/od/cawmset/meetings/hearing-
991006/testimony.htm. WAGE members might be particularly
interested
in Pamela Hallock Muller´ s account of the disparity
between the salaries of
male and female full professors at the University of South
Florida.
Welcome to Newsletter #15by Mary Singleton
Co-coordinator
It´ s spring in the Bay Area, so naturally our minds
turn to thoughts of
the WAGE Spring Meeting. You will be pleased to know that
the meeting is
scheduled for March 17 on the UC Berkeley campus, which is
particularly
beautiful, this time of year. A walk from BART (downtown
Berkeley stop) up
the campus to Stephens Hall takes about 10 minutes. So
don´ t let the
limited parking in Berkeley keep you away!
We have not seen many of you for a year or more, so come on
out and
hear Charity Hirsch´ s account of life in Wisconsin,
and catch up on the
cases that WAGE is following. We will have a representative
from The
Sturdevant Law Firm in San Francisco talk to us about class-
action lawsuits
and when they are most appropriate. Sturdevant is one of the
firms handling
the case of Singleton et al. versus the Regents of the
University of California
(see
Case
Update).
By anybody´ s definition we are now well into the new
millennium. Who would have expected that the struggle for
women to gain
equality in the workplace would continue to be waged into
the 21st century?
Some of us who started our careers 50 years ago, or even 25
years ago, are
finding it both frustrating and unreal that the resistance
to
women´ s advancement in academe has been so slow.
Should we have
done something differently? What have we learned? Why so
slow, as Virginia
Valian asks the question?
The dilemma that I find most disturbing concerns the message
are we
sending our teenage girls when we encourage them to study
math and science
so they can expand their career options in this technical
society. March is the
month for many Expanding Your Horizons Conferences where
hundreds of
junior high and high school girls around the country will be
hearing this
message from women who are practicing professionals (see
www.expandingyourhorizons.org). But don´ t we owe
these young women more? If we are going to encourage them to
aspire to
professions where they will never be able to reach their
full potential or where
they encounter discrimination in hiring, salary and
promotion, don´ t we
have an obligation to do more?
This is why WAGE has such a critical role to play and why
every
member´ s involvement is so important. We need to see
these issues
resolved, and to do that we must keep pressure on the
institutions to make real
systemic change in the way they do business. I firmly
believe that the reason
we are still fighting these battles after more than 100
years of activism is
because collectively we tend to be too optimistic when we
see a small gain or
when we are told things are changing (see the accounts of
the meetings at MIT
and at Berkeley), only to realize later that we are losing
ground. The studies by
Marty West at UC Davis are an example of this very problem
(see the article
on
State Audit
).
Finally, I want to thank Marjorie Mosier for the superb job
she did
arranging for the WAGE Fall Meeting last December in Los
Angeles. Her
husband, David, was a great help, and I´ m sure
Marjorie would want us
to thank him as well. We had a productive time sharing cases
and strategizing
with the members from Southern California. We have
established some new
contacts on campuses in that area and look forward to
building a strong base
for supporting members and getting the WAGE message out to
potential new
members. Marjorie, thanks again for your years of support to
WAGE.
The Association for Women in Science has a bi-monthly
Washington Wire consisting
of news concerning women in science at:
www.awis.org/wire.html
. The January 31 Wire has several links to accounts of
the MIT meeting (
see Nine Universities
Address Sex
Inequity), including
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/gender.html. <
BR>
The Global Alliance (
www.globalalliancesmet.org) is committed to diversifying
the science
and technology workforce. Its Web site includes a link to
the Women in Engineering
Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN) indexed bibliography
on women in
science and engineering. The Global Alliance has a
bibliography of its own with
categories that include " faculty" and "
academe."
You can go to our
Newsletters.
Or search for a word here: