Welcome to Newsletter 20

 

by Mary Singleton

Co-coordinator

 

I am pleased to be able to write that the University of California has reached a settlement in Singleton et al. v. Regents of the University of California. (See Case Updates for details.) The settlement has been approved by the Board of Regents and the Court; details of the distribution of the funds will be finalized in the next few weeks.

      I am particularly pleased that virtually every woman working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will receive a 1% raise. Although this may not sound like a significant amount on an individual basis, it speaks volumes about the extent of the problem. In my opinion, the Lab has acknowledged that salary inequities are widespread and significant throughout the organization.

      It took five years to come to this point and the commitment of plaintiffs' attorneys was absolutely amazing to see. Not only did they bankroll all the costs, but they made it their top priority for five years. Fortunately, they will be reimbursed for their costs, but that does not in any way detract from the heroic effort they put forth. I want to personally thank Jim Sturdevant, Gary Gwilliam, Mark Johnson, and Vicky Ni for their support and encouragement all along the way. Please note that four firms were involved in this case before it was completed. Thanks to their outstanding work, this case did not take the sort of personal toll on the plaintiffs that we have heard about in many cases. These firms have set a very high standard of care and commitment to their clients.

      It is interesting to note that two women at Los Alamos National Lab announced in early December that they have asked the Federal Court in New Mexico to certify a similar class action suit against LANL on behalf of its women employees. I wish them the best of luck. Happy New Year to all.

 

UC Faculty Hires

 

     Preliminary statistics on new University of California faculty hires have been posted at www.ucop.edu/acadadv/datamgmt/welcome.html. The news this year is better, women are 39% of overall ladder-rank appointments. (Last year's percent was 36%.) Moreover, this is the highest percent reported in the past 20 years!

      Women were 44% of those hired in non-tenured tenure-track positions. Hence a large percent of women will come up for tenure in several years. Will they receive it?

Web Sites of Interest

 

The American Association of University Professors Web site has a section on women in higher education at http://www.aaup.org/Issues/WomeninHE/ . This includes AAUP policy statements and articles from the AAUP journal Academe on pay equity, work/family, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and Title IX as well as reports and a guide for identifying salary inequities.

 

An annotated list of Web sites of interest to women in science (particularly biology) or academe is available at http://pingu.salk.edu/~forsburg/bio.html. Categories include organizations, reports, chilly climate, personal life.

 

Workplace Mobbing Australia: http://members.dodo.net.au/~shallcross/