Opening Remarks
Mary Ellen Smyth
President, AAUW Educational Foundation
Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I am Mary Ellen Smyth, President of the AAUW Educational Foundation. Thank you all for joining us today for the release of our newest report in collaboration with the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia. The AAUW Educational Foundation has a long tradition of supporting gender equity research in the K-12 and higher education arenas. Tenure Denied continues this tradition by challenging us all to take a closer look at the nature and impact of sex discrimination in academia.
Today, we have a panel of speakers who will share more about the Tenure Denied report, its findings and its implications. Elena Silva, director of research, will share some of the background of the report.
Leslie Annexstein, director of the Legal Advocacy Fund, has the pleasure of introducing two of the plaintiffs featured in the report, Dr. Ricky Hirschhorn and Dr. Rona Fields. Finally, Michele Wetherald, President of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, will conclude by sharing some of the recommendations from our report.
I would like to thank all of the many people who contributed to this report. In particular, I would like to take this opportunity to thank AAUW of Pennsylvania, which provided generous funding for this project in celebration of their 75th anniversary, and acknowledge AAUW-PA President Karen Rowe. Also, on behalf of AAUW, I would like to acknowledge and thank all of the plaintiffs whose cases are shared in this publication. Your stories inspire us to find the courage to speak out against gender discrimination, and to continue our struggle for equitable policies and practices in higher education.
To talk about some of the specifics of the report, I now turn to Elena Silva.
Overview of Tenure Denied
Elena Silva, PhD.
Director of Research, AAUW Educational Foundation
The research for Tenure Denied began over two years ago with an examination of cases supported by AAUW’s Legal Advocacy Fund. This archive of cases presented a unique opportunity to examine sex discrimination in the tenure process, providing numerous case examples of biased behavior and decision-making at this highest level of academic achievement and employment.
The original research for this report was conducted by Dr. Pamela Haag. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Catherine Hill, who contributed significantly to the development of the final manuscript.
While women have made many gains in higher education, gender equity is a prevailing problem at the tenure and tenure-track levels. Women are severely underrepresented among these highest ranks- they hold lower-ranking positions, earn less, and are less likely to have tenure. Overall, less than one-third of tenured faculty at four-year institutions—27%—are women.
Does sex discrimination play a role in these numbers? As this report demonstrates, both overt and subtle forms of sex discrimination influence the culture and structure of academia. Sex discrimination is not a thing of the past and, in fact, appears to be more difficult and more costly than ever to for justice to prevail?
Drawing from 19 separate cases, Tenure Denied begins by describing common types of sex discrimination in the tenure process. This chapter describes a range of cases, including cases in which tenure procedures are violated or manipulated; cases of differential standards and arbitrary comparisons between female and male faculty; cases of pregnancy discrimination and the unspoken assumption that women cannot effectively serve as both mothers and scholars; and cases of outright hostility toward female faculty and bias against the field of women’s studies.
Tenure Denied then moves into a description of typical university responses, from quick and quiet settlements and dismissals to claims of academic freedom and the need for confidentiality. The next chapter describes how complicated it has become for a plaintiff to actually demonstrate and prove this type of discrimination in a court of law, followed by a chapter that describes—through the voices of the female plaintiffs—the heavy professional and personal costs, as well as the often intangible rewards, of pursuing these lawsuits. The report concludes with recommendations for female academics and institutions of higher education.
Our aim is to not only to reveal the enduring problem of sex discrimination at what is arguably the highest level of academia, but also to illustrate how costly sex discrimination can be to plaintiffs and to institutions of higher education.
We place a tremendous amount of faith in our institutions of higher education to educate our society’s young people. The dearth of women in the highest ranks, coupled with their predominance in the lowest ranks—sends a strong message to upcoming generations. The presence of gender bias and discrimination aggravates any attempts to level this playing field. This alone is a compelling reason to look carefully and critically at our colleges and universities, and to promote more transparent, standardized and equitable policies and practices.
Introduction of Plaintiffs
Leslie Annexstein
Director, AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund
Since 1981, LAF has supported dozens of sex discrimination in tenure denial cases. We are currently supporting four cases alleging sex discrimination in the denial of tenure, and two additional cases we supported settled within the last two months. As Tenure Denied conveys, these are difficult cases, involving complicated facts within the complex tenure system at each university. But antidiscrimination law applies to higher education, just as it does to other workplaces, and sex discrimination in the tenure process is against the law.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, national origin and religion in the workplace. It was not actually until amendments were made to the Act in 1972 that the law began to protect university faculty from discrimination. As Elena has mentioned, and the report further discusses, women faculty have faced different types of sex discrimination in their bid for tenure and the Legal Advocacy Fund continues to receive applications for support for these cases. For example, we are currently supporting a case filed by a chemistry professor against a college in Wisconsin where she has alleged that she was wrongfully denied tenure on the basis of her sex and because she had told college administrators that she was pregnant. She had been recommended for tenure by the department chair and by the college’s tenure and promotion committee. In another case, we are supporting a plaintiff who was denied tenure by a university in southern California. She has alleged that as a black woman, she was subjected to different standards and a hostile work environment. In this case, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in its investigation that she had been discrimination against on the basis of her sex and race combined. Indeed, the Legal Advocacy Fund has seen an increase in cases alleging sex discrimination as well as other forms of discrimination such as race, age, and disability.
As these examples demonstrate, the allegations of sex discrimination made by women denied tenure are serious. While litigation should be a last resort, it is often the only means left to academic women to right the wrong they have experienced. The courageous women who turn to the courts to pursue their rights do not do so lightly.
Today, we are fortunate to have with us two former plaintiffs who received support from the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, and whose stories are included in Tenure Denied. First, we will hear Dr. Ricky Hirschhorn, who sued the University of Kentucky for sex discrimination when she was denied tenure. Then, we will hear from Dr. Rona Fields, who filed a sex discrimination case against Clark University.
Ricky Hirschhorn, Ph.D., Professor of Biology
Former Plaintiff featured in Tenure Denied
In the fall of 1990, I was denied tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Thomas Hunt Morgan School of Biological Sciences at the University of Kentucky after having been there for six years. I taught every semester at the undergraduate and graduate level, applied for and received federal funding for my research program, collaborated with other faculty members, published scholarly research articles in high quality journals, successfully mentored masters and doctoral-level graduate students, served on an over-whelming number of graduate student thesis committees and served my department and the institution in a multitude of ways. My yearly evaluations had not only been above the departmental average every year, they had also been improving. Yet in the fall of 1990, I was not supported by my departmental colleagues and this decision was then affirmed at the next level of review, by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, effectively ending the process leaving me with a terminal contract.
At that time the department had about 30 faculty members, with 23 tenured men and one tenured woman. The one woman was the only woman that had ever been tenured in the history of the department. After my concerns of possible gender discrimination were ignored by the institutional affirmative action officer and after a negative decision in an internal grievance process that only reviewed for procedural mistakes and did not review for possible discrimination or mistakes of substance, I discussed my situation with a civil rights attorney. In January of 1992, I started a new job in a small teaching college in Maryland, and my family joined me there in the summer.
In July of 1992, I filed suit against the university and the Thomas Hunt Morgan School of Biological Sciences. The next several years were filled with legal filings, arguments and meanderings that included moving the case from federal to state court, discovery, depositions in Kentucky, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts, a summary judgment hearing, and more. The bills were piling up, but in March of 1995 the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund provided their first financial support, which helped me continue my legal battle. Three years after filing the original action the judge was convinced that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a jury trial on my allegation of gender discrimination in my tenure denial.
Gender discrimination in the 1990s and now, in the 21st century, is not the “in-your face” kind of blatant discrimination that we fought in the 1960s. The kind of discrimination that I faced was a subtle yet insidious discrimination of disparate treatment. Disparate treatment has been characterized by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education as behaviors including condescension, role stereotyping, prejudicial comments, denial of authority, invisibility, double standards, tokenism, exclusion, hostility, and backlash. In my case, I believed that I had been held to a standard that was higher than the standard applied to male colleagues in my department. I had produced the same number of articles as my male colleagues, brought in more outside funding than many of male colleagues, and received positive performance evaluations that led me to believe that I was on the road to tenure. Despite this, after a week long jury trial, with almost 20 witnesses, I lost my trial. So three years after the original filing and almost five years after the negative review by the department, following a week long trial in a non-air conditioned courtroom in Lexington Kentucky, 10 members of a jury of 12 decided in less than two hours in favor of the University of Kentucky.
My appeal to the appellate court, which also received financial assistance from the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, was filed in the spring of 1996, and in January of 1997 the appellate court affirmed the lower courts decision. Rather than petitioning the Kentucky Supreme Court for a rehearing in the Court of Appeals, I accepted a miniscule payment from the university, which ended my legal battle.
So, why did I challenge the decision of a huge university? Win or lose it was the right thing for me to do. No institution of learning, in Kentucky or anywhere, has the right to discriminate, yet discriminatory activities continue unless they are aggressively challenged. I could not allow the University of Kentucky to deny me tenure and promotion, effectively terminating my position and essentially ending my career as a research scientist without a fight. I just could not walk away. It was not about the money. It was about the necessity for change at an institution and the possibility that by challenging their decision the university and its administrators would have to take a hard look at themselves and their policies. I learned a great deal during the process, especially about the power of the little person questioning the authority of the corporate power. I learned a new definition of “justice.” I learned about inner strength. And I would do it again in an instant, win or lose, because it’s the right thing to do.
I will be forever grateful for the financial support of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, but even more for their emotional support. I also could not have fought my legal battle without the incredible support of my family and the dedication and hard work of my attorney and his staff.
Rona Fields, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, George Washington University
Former Plaintiff featured in Tenure Denied
Tenure denied can last for a lifetime and deny generations of students’ knowledge and inspiration. Tenure denied also denies society at large access to important research, teaching and imagination. The AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund has had a significant role in the evolution of equity for women faculty in higher education. My own case is an example of tenure denied and the difficulties under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
I was hired at Clark University in Massachusetts as an associate professor in the sociology department. I came into an all male department in a university in which I was one of 13 women out of 243 faculty members. Clark University promised me an opportunity to pursue my research, teach fewer courses than I had taught in my previous position, and most important, attain tenure upon the publication of my first book the following year. Because of these promises I moved my four children and household from California.
None of these promises were fulfilled. I was their token woman and faced a hostile work environment. I was assigned to teach more than all of my male colleagues put together and for less pay than lower ranking male faculty. There was also no support either financial or clerical for my research. Nonetheless, I wrote up my research into the book needed to attain tenure. It was published by an academic press one year later. When I rebuked the sexual advances of a senior male professor, he told me that this was “no way to get tenure.” Finally when I was awarded an amnesty international fellowship to pursue my work on torture at the institute for peace research in Oslo (Norway), the university denied me permission to accept the award and take unpaid leave. Ultimately, my bid for tenure was denied.
As one of the first professors of women’s studies and faced with a situation that was totally opposite of what I had expected and been promised, it was important that I challenge the gender bias. I filed a complaint with the Massachusetts wage and hour commission and the Massachusetts commission against discrimination. Investigators confirmed my suspicions about inequities in pay, promotion, hiring and work. I then filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity commission. It was nearly five years before I received a response finding probable cause on five counts of sex discrimination—conditions of hiring, conditions of work, conditions of pay, conditions of promotion, and sexual harassment.
I filed a lawsuit under Title VII in federal court, which began a legal odyssey in the court system that lasted 20 years. Initially, I won—the federal district court found that the sociology department “was generally permeated with sexual discrimination.” However, during subsequent appeals, I won the right to a new trial, I lost, and the Supreme Court accepted the case for review but decided to hear the quid pro quo issue on another case.
So what did I take away from this lengthy and harrowing legal battle? I came away from it with what I call the “three r’s” for gender equity in higher education: retention, retaliation and representation .
The first “r” is retention. Colleges and universities must be committed to retaining women faculty and supporting their professional growth. The second “r” is retaliation. Colleges and universities must ensure that women faculty who believe they have been discriminated against and complain, are not then subject to retaliation as they move through the tenure process. The third ‘r” is representation. It is critical for women to have competent representation to navigate the legal system if they decide to proceed with a lawsuit. Backing from a strong, powerful organization as an ally, like the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund, can help sustain the strength of a woman who finds herself in this disadvantaged position.
Further, despite the fact that I’ve never held a tenure-track academic position again, I’ve continued to publish books, chapters, monographs, and articles, and to pursue my research on a subject on which I am recognized internationally as an expert—terrorism. In fact my latest book, Martyrdom: The Psychology, Theology and Politics of Self Sacrifice, distinguishes the psychology and development of suicide bombers and guerilla fighters, terrorists and torturers—a topic which is critical in today’s world. While I have experienced some success in another area, unfortunately tenure was permanently denied to me and I am no longer a professor…and no longer on the tenure career track. I am senior research fellow in the Center for Cyber Security Research and Policy Planning at George Washington University where I am working on hi-tech implementation and applications for my findings and an extension of my research. I hope to continue to have a positive impact with the important research that I have pioneered for 38 years. Thank you .
Recommendations
Michele Warholic Wetherald
President, AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund
Good morning. And thank you again for being with us today.
I am Michele Wetherald, the President of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund. You have already learned a little bit about the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund and what we do through the statements you just heard. The AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund provides support to individuals challenging sex discrimination in higher education. Since 1981, we have provided over $1 million to over 90 cases. In addition to this financial support, the individuals receive technical assistance from our staff and moral support from AAUW members. The Legal Advocacy Fund also maintains a nationwide network of approximately 300 attorneys and experts who consult with individuals facing discriminatory practices on their campuses.
Women who have alleged sex discrimination in their denial of tenure have been a significant part of the cases we have supported over the years. The release of this publication allows us to tell some of those stories, but also provides an opportunity for the Legal Advocacy Fund and the Educational Foundation to make some proactive recommendations to the higher education community. Those recommendations can be found in chapter six of the publication, and I would like to share a few of them with you now.
First, there are proactive things that colleges and universities can do. In general, the tenure process should be consistent and clearly articulated because procedural lapses invite allegations of discrimination. School policies should comply with antidiscrimination laws; faculty and administrators must be educated to ensure that they understand and comply with those policies; and written evaluations with explicit performance measures to address the candidate’s progress in research, service, and teaching should be required.
Second, for women in academia, before accepting a job offer you should ask for written information about the university’s promotion and tenure policy and ask the department chair and other tenured faculty in your department what service, teaching, and scholarship will be needed for tenure and how your record will be weighed. While on the job, you should keep your antenna up for the culture and politics of your department and institution; understand your rights as an employee under federal and state law; and immediately document and report any perceived discrimination. If a lawsuit becomes necessary, you should seek experienced legal counsel and be realistic about the financial and emotional costs of litigation, as well as the possible remedies.
These recommendations are intended to provide a guidepost for better policies and practices in the tenure process at our colleges and universities. The voices of plaintiffs, such as Ricky and Rona, provide the context for the need for change and continued progress for women in higher education. This remains at the heart of the mission of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund and the promotion of equity for all women and girls is at the heart of AAUW as a whole—because as the Tenure Denied report also demonstrates—equity is still an issue. Thank you.
Questions and Answers
Moderated by Mary Ellen Smyth
(the q&a below is taken from the press briefing transcript)
Q: I’m Gloria Thomas, I’m from the American Council in Education’s Office of Women, and I’m working on a project where we are looking at faculty careers from the beginning to the end and looking at how we can make some cultural changes so that women and all faculty can succeed and balance their lives and their families and their careers. And one thing that we are focusing on are cultural changes in academia, and just in looking at some of the policy recommendations for programs and things I didn’t see any suggestions for cultural changes, which is certainly one of the things needed. Academia was developed and designed for men with wives at home to handle family life, but now women are trying to do it all. And what are some of the recommendations that you might have in terms of changing the culture of academia?
Silva: I’ll just respond to that. It is something that we did discuss quite a bit as we developed this report and struggled with it. I mean, it’s an excellent, excellent point and an excellent question. I think making cultural changes, as we know, is at the heart of change, right, because you can change policies and we can make laws and still they are broken, and that really is a problem that we see. I mean, in part, the reason that this is organized the way it is, which is taking a case or cases through the process of a lawsuit from beginning to end, is looking at how the legal process is sometimes useful and it sometimes really burdens them and gets in the way. So I think at the heart of this, what we see is that the policies and the laws are not enough and we do in fact need cultural change, and that is what this points to.
I think some of the recommendations are attempting to get at this cultural change by, for instance, suggesting that female academics keep their eye out for the culture of the institution, right. I mean, those are sort of difficult. A lot of the quotes and the messages that we got from plaintiffs were about just that, about, okay, let’s be realistic. What is really going on here? Like, that is great that you need to have things written down, but the bottom line is that people are still treating me this way or there is still this undercurrent that I’m somehow different, whether it be sex or race or disability – all of those issues at once in some cases.
We still grapple with it. I mean, I don’t have a clear answer on that because we are still discussing, how do you make cultural change, not only in higher ed, but we see similar things in K-12 when it comes to sexual harassment. How do you change the culture of an institution of an organization? It’s difficult and I don’t have a clear answer, but it is on our radar and it is something that we would love to talk to you more about. It is something that we are considering in research how exactly to investigate that. How do you examine the culture and how do you evaluate how change is made in the culture? So I mean, I would love to talk with you further about it.
Annexstein: Just to add to that, you know, as a lawyer what I always say is the law is only as good as its implementation, and if we implement it vigorously and seriously, that can help for some cultural change. If at an institution of higher education, the strong message is out there that this is not acceptable behavior, eventually it will permeate, but the individual – the entire college community has to be held accountable for their actions.
Q: I’m Ruth Flower and I’m with the American Association of University Professors. It seems like we should have a little working group here, we are all so – (inaudible) – work and family issues, and a large part of that is looking at access to tenure itself. The tenure has become this little cone-shaped thing you have to pass through. The tenure bar is much higher than it was long ago, and we are trying to change the culture at least about tenure, looking at things like tenure part time, for example, or a portion of your career spent as a tenure part-time person, stopping the tenure clock while the biological clock catches up – things like this that sort of change the cultural beliefs about how tenure has to be exactly the way it was designed for the men and have the women – (inaudible) – during the lunches. (Laughter.)
I wanted to ask a question, though – (off mike) – which is one of the things we run into on cases a lot that is very frustrating is gag orders so that we can’t tell stories like this. When do you run into that and I’m sure – (off mike). I just wondered if you would comment on that.
Annexstein: Yes, and in fact, I mean, if you even look through the cases that we have in here as well as – please feel free to look at our website any time because we do keep the stories of all the cases we have supported over the years on the website – you will see that typically, many of the cases -- when they settle, there are confidential settlement agreements that are entered into and so women are often not able to share with us, let alone anybody else, what happened. With these stories, the real focus is on the process of what happened to them, and there were a lot of public documents that we were able to glean information from, and so that is what we relied heavily on.
But I agree with you that it is difficult to see the absolute finite end result because of the gag orders that happen around settlements, and that can be frustrating to all of us who want to hear the stories. On the other hand, you know, I want to acknowledge up front that that is often the best thing for that individual woman to settle her case and agree not to talk about the specifics of it or specific monetary amounts, and we have to acknowledge and respect it for that individual that it does end up being the best situation.
Q: Jamie Freed from the Santa Barbara News-Press. I have two questions, probably for Dr. Silva. The first one – are there any major research universities that are doing a great job in getting women into tenure, and the second is, is there a disparity between the hard sciences and the liberal arts that you have found?
Silva: Sure, I mean, I’ll take the second question first because it seems easier. (Laughter.) In terms of these cases, we were looking at an archive of cases from the – (inaudible) – and we intentionally did not differentiate between the hard sciences and liberal arts. And part of the reason we did that is because we wanted to show that this is actually happening everywhere, that it’s happening across the board. And if you were able to look at the entire archives of all of our cases, you would see that this is occurring in almost every field. So this is not something that is happening in women’s studies, this is not something that is happening even in education, which would be, again, a traditionally female field of study.
It’s happening everywhere, and I think that – I mean, Dr. Hirschhorn’s case as one example – certainly the biological sciences, while women have made gains in those areas, it’s still a science. And I think it’s – biochemistry is one of the areas of her study, and there aren’t very many women in biochemistry. I mean, I would defer to her to talk about her case, but it’s certainly – we are going to see more of the problem in areas where you have fewer women, one might argue. However, when you look at our actual archives of cases, you see it’s across the board. So what does that say to us? I mean, I spend a lot of time talking with women and talking about women who are in science, technology, engineering – these areas where women are represented – and, you know, what that suggests is that these are the areas that we need to focus on. Well, in fact, when it comes to sex discrimination, to the undercurrent that I referred to earlier, it’s not just there. It’s pervasive throughout.
In terms of research university, they are doing a great job. I hate to say that our focus was really on these universities and the issues that they say – or the attempts they were making at change, and not necessarily at the university that had best practices. So we looked at a lot of studies across the board that showed – a lot of studies that were at specific universities where a university was looking at itself – taking a hard look at itself. Generally, those studies were brought on by female faculty or female administrators that really wanted to examine the issue, and they didn’t really make it beyond that university. So while there are specific cases of universities that have taken a look at themselves, whether or not the university as an institution is actually looking at itself and making change, it appears to me at least that it’s this smaller group of women or women’s deans, administrators and faculty that are pushing that. And that is not enough.
Institution-wide – there are some examples of institutions that are developing gender – I can’t think of what it’s called – gender equity task forces and the like. It remains to be seen whether or not that is going to result in lasting change. So it would be really difficult to me to point to a university that is the example to hold up. But, you know, it’s something that we are contained to look at and we – I mean, we would very much like to find those universities as models that we would present to the world – something that – you know, a way to combat this problem.
Q: Scott Wentworth – Waterloo (Iowa) Courier. Something for Dr. Silva, and I guess the attorneys as well. You mentioned earlier, or you briefly touched on the different types of discrimination, or the way it manifests itself during the tenure evaluations. Could you elaborate a little more on the different ways or types of discrimination that you have seen in your case studies?
Silva: Sure. I gave you sort of a sense when I was speaking of the range, but I can be a little bit more specific about those individual types that I talked about. One of the major issues that we addressed in this publication and that women face is the issue of collegiality, the sense that faculty can be judged based on whether or not they are collegial. That -- as you can imagine, that is somewhat arbitrary and certainly cloudy area. It’s very difficult, obviously, to assess whether or not someone is collegial. I think that what we point out, or what we say, in the report is that it’s a little like a Rorschach test, that depending on who is looking at it, someone may be very collegial or not so collegial. And what is happening when we see departments that are primarily male, or for that matter, primarily white men, we are seeing women, women of color, men of color coming up to the ranks, reaching a place where they may have a very different experience and a very different way of sort of becoming a professor and becoming a tenured professor.
They are being judged by people who are not necessarily like them and so issues of collegiality absolutely matter and they absolutely make a difference. You can actually be judged based on whether or not you are considered collegial by your peers. If your peers are not like you, that is very difficult, particularly when we have stereotypes about women that women who are strong and women who have strong voices and women who speak up are not necessarily seen as collegial, that in fact we should be more nurturing instead, and that is the way we should be. And so if we are not that way, we are being uncollegial. That is one example that we see in quite a few cases.
Another example is the issue of pregnancy and motherhood discrimination that come up. We also see cases in which women are, again, based on stereotypes in part, whether or not a woman even is a mother is not inside of the issue because all women, in fact, are potential mothers so they are viewed as such, and therefore viewed as unable to balance both the rigors of a research institution and also motherhood or caretaking. Pregnancy obviously brings up a very specific sort of finite period of time in which a woman may or may not be confronted with what is said in here – a biological clock colliding with a tenure clock and the issue that Ruth Flower brought up that in fact, it is a serious issue how tenures are set the way it is right now. And to change that would absolutely open up a lot of opportunities for women and for others to be able to actually obtain tenure and also live a life outside of that.
Annexstein: There are two examples that I would like to give you in addition to that. One is the idea of retaliation against women who advocate for women’s issues and women’s causes on campus, and that is certainly something that we have seen in the cases that we have supported, that women who speak out either for other female professors or female students on campus often experience a backlash if they try to move through their career. And then another very important issue in this process is this idea of trying to find a similarly situated male to compare yourself to because ultimately in many universities, that is what it comes down to – how do you as a woman stack up to this man who we are considering for tenure now or who we recently provided tenure to. And many women who have brought sex discrimination cases have absolutely asserted that they have been held to a much higher standard in the review of their work at their university.
Q: My name is Carolyn Baine, I am currently the director of research and development for a documentary series, “Women of Power.” In an earlier career path, I was a tenured associate professor in theater and I also participated in a sex discrimination suit – a class action suit – but did go on to get tenured, so it is possible. (Laughter.) However, it does raise for me the question of tenure itself. And I just wondered, today, considering the financial implications that all the universities are having to wrestle with and they are looking at layoffs, does tenure make sense anymore? I mean, is it really a basis for maintaining employment because it is a luxury that certainly no corporation affords anyone. So I just wonder if you are working on any areas looking at the advantages of really doing away with tenure? (Laughter.)
Silva: Yes, I think that it’s interesting. We started to have an exchange about this with the American Association of University Professors, and Ruth Flower is here from that organization, about this issue because what we were really looking at is what women face right now considering the constraints of tenure. Considering what tenure is right now, we were looking at what they face within that and how they face it. But that – so we didn’t really go there. You know, we weren’t really going to the place of suggesting what tenure should be or if tenure should be. So I don’t know if you have something that you want to add to that, Ruth.
Flower: The tenure that has become something that it shouldn’t have been. From our founding statement back in 1915 that sort of declared tenure as the standard, it was supposed to be for protection against unreasonable termination of your employment for anything other than cost. So it’s sort of like civil service employment. It’s not just, you know, job for life, you are guaranteed to always be able to exactly what you want to do, and I know that on a number of campuses, there are a lot of people who hold tenure, and there may be some among ourselves, who believe that that is what tenure is, that you can do whatever you feel like. And that is not what it is and it’s not what it can be, but – (inaudible) – and I think we will need protection against the political ramifications when you are teaching something like women’s studies that is – (off mike) – or you offend the child of a legislator in your class, which happens a lot – things that really should not fall off of your head in your career. So the thing that there is an importance in having that protection, but it does not need to be with all the bells and whistles and cultural baggage that it has got right now. So we are starting to chip away at that marble façade and bring it back to what it really ought to be.
Q: Yes. In the – (inaudible) – you point out that about half, or slightly more than half, of the lecturers and teachers at universities are women but then only a third of the tenured assistant or full professors are women – I’m sorry, associate professors. And do you attribute this entire disparity to discrimination or are there other factors that contribute to the gap?
Silva: Well, I mean, certainly, I don’t think we would ever say that discrimination is the entire reason for this disparity but it is one – it’s certainly one reason why there is a disparity, and the numbers that we point out and that you have just repeated show that there is certainly not a pipeline problem, that there are certainly women who are there who are in those lower ranks on the faculty who want to be there, want this to be their career. And so absolutely, holistically, we should be looking at all the barriers that they may face and discrimination is certainly one of the those barriers, and there may be many, many others as well. But because of this issue of discrimination, and frankly because of some of the issues that the previous person raised about the tightening job market and fewer positions available, there has really been a demand that we ensure that there is an equal playing field so that all of the people who want to achieve this in their career have a door open to them to do so.
It’s one of the reasons in part that we included these tables in the back because there are tables in the back that show the percentage of women and men who – by race, ethnicity incidentally – who have their doctoral degrees – who have earned their doctoral degrees – who then are faculty, and then the different ranks of faculty. Part of the reason we are showing that is to show that in fact there are women, right, who are getting their doctoral degrees. It’s not a matter of, let’s just wait and eventually women will catch up. It may be part of that, but that’s really not the central issue. Catherine, I saw that you wanted to say something.
Catherine Hill (AAUW Research Associate) : Yeah, I was just going to reiterate that one of the interesting findings there is that it’s not really a pipeline problem in very many fields anymore. And even within some of the fields we wouldn’t have expected to see that, like biological sciences, we are seeing an enormous increase in the number of women and minorities who are going into those sciences and who have those credentials. But what we are finding is though they have the credentials and they are getting some of the jobs, that something is happening along the way to the top. So that is what we are looking at.
Q: And when women leak out of the pipeline, not only are we not getting tenured, but because it’s hard to balance family responsibilities and a tenure track position, they opt out of tenure track jobs and maybe go on a non-tenure track or take anything that they can do to balance their lives and to make a career for themselves. So some of it self-selecting out because of the culture of that scene.
Silva: Absolutely. Right. And I think selecting out of the profession all together is a very important point because we are seeing more and more women who are actually opting out of academia all together. I mean, they finish their PhDs and they are like, oh, bye, I’m going to the business world. I’m going someplace else, anyplace else, but not here because of what they experience. They see the culture. I mean, they witness it. As you go through a doctoral program, you see it, and there are a lot of women who are in fact opting out before they even get to a place when they are on the tenure track.
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