Sexism in Academia?

[Soxy]

From today's Trib This is hardly just Notre Dame's problem...

 

Poll sees Notre Dame sexism

Faculty hiring, treatment at issue

 

By Robert Becker

Tribune higher education reporter

Published December 5, 2004

 

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Ten years after an accrediting agency chided the University of Notre Dame for being "reactive rather than proactive" in adding women to its overwhelmingly male faculty, charges of sexism have prompted a new round of self-examination.

 

The 1994 visit by the North Central Association spurred the university to add scores of women to its faculty in the decade that followed, as well as installing women as deans of the law and business schools.

 

A new survey coordinated by two senior faculty members in the College of Arts and Letters has revived the debate at this Midwest bastion of football, Catholicism and scholarship.

 

Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Joan Aldous, both full professors, released to the administration a survey this fall that finds the issue at Notre Dame these days isn't so much the number of women on the university's faculty--although it remains lower than at some peer institutions--as much as the way women are treated.

 

The survey, completed by 193 of the 367 women faculty members and graduate students in Notre Dame's library and College of Arts and Letters, reports that 63 percent of the respondents agree that "sexism at Notre Dame keeps it from attracting some of the very best female faculty."

 

Meanwhile 61.4 percent of those answering the survey agree that "male faculty at Notre Dame seem not to value my intellectual contributions as much as they value the contributions from males."

 

"I love Notre Dame--it's an awesome place," Shrader-Frechette said. But she said sexism and a perception of sexism have created problems when she is recruiting women graduate students. "This is such a silly thing to hold it back."

 

University administrators say their track record tells another story.

 

Provost Nathan Hatch said the school has achieved near parity in tenure rates for men and women faculty members, hired several women as top administrators and moved aggressively on complaints of harassment, giving recalcitrant faculty members the boot.

 

"I think we're making improvements, and I think it's an issue we'll continue to address," Hatch said in a recent interview. "I don't deny there are issues; I'm not saying all is well here."

 

Not all women faculty members embrace the findings of the survey, either.

 

"I would say the administration seems genuinely committed to advancing women at Notre Dame," said Jennifer Herdt, an associate professor of theology, who joined the faculty in 1999. "They would like to recruit those women. They would like to keep those women."

 

In many ways, Notre Dame's battle over gender equity mirrors that of other top research institutions. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the University of California system, universities have pondered ways to improve the lot of women faculty members.

 

Though women earn just under half of all doctoral degrees, they account for only about 21 percent of all full professors and 27 percent of faculty members with tenure, according to national figures.

 

Fight for respect goes on

 

Though it's no longer front-page news when a woman becomes a university president, the battle in the academic trenches for promotions and respect continues.

 

"There have been studies done in a number of research institutions that show that women have not over the years been treated with the same degree of consideration as men," said Claire van Ummersen, a former college president and now head of the Office of Women in Education at the American Council on Education. "Higher education was designed for people to go into cells and study, and that's not the modern-day life that people live."

 

Critics say academia has been slow to accommodate fully its women scholars, leaving them fretting about the impact of childbearing on their careers.

 

"We still have a male model left over from the 20th Century and no one has really confronted it," said Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley.

 

A 2001 report by the California state auditor revealed a "significant disparity" in the University of California system between the number of women faculty members hired and the pool of women holding doctoral degrees. Female professors also had lower starting salaries than men did.

 

MIT has been one of the major schools to confront head-on the issue of gender equity. A committee set out to explore why the number of women faculty members in the six departments of the School of Science had not increased for at least 10 years--only 15 women were tenured versus 194 men.

 

Lotte Bailyn, a professor in MIT's Sloan School of Management, said women faculty members have less positive work experiences "across the board."

 

"It's a very masculine-based world, and women don't feel as comfortable and don't seem by both men and women colleagues as fitting in as well."

 

At Notre Dame, those common struggles have been compounded by the history and culture of a school that didn't admit women until 1972.

 

When Sonia Goltz taught at Notre Dame's business school from 1987 to 1996, there were no tenured women on the faculty.

 

"When I was there, it was a revolving door--hire them, then deny them reappointment or tenure," said Goltz, now a tenured faculty member at Michigan Tech.

 

Goltz and another women on the faculty filed suit in 1992 against Notre Dame, alleging they had been discriminated against.

 

"They claimed our records weren't good enough," said Goltz, who ultimately lost her case. "But there was no real attempt to mentor or coach or do research with the female faculty. We were just kind of left by ourselves."

 

Notre Dame officials declined to comment on Goltz's case but point out that since 1997 seven women have received tenure at the business school.

 

Carolyn Woo, who became the business school dean in 1997, said the university has supported her and her effort to expand the gender base of the college.

 

"We are very diligent in looking for women candidates," said Woo, who was recruited from Purdue University. "It's part of the college agenda. Everybody shares in this objective."

 

In the school's own internal self-study, officials acknowledge that Notre Dame "continues to lag at associate and full professor ranks" compared with women faculty members at other top research universities.

 

"The overall gap has narrowed slightly," the study states.

 

Though Notre Dame has increased the number of women it has hired over the last 10 years, most of the hires came at the junior levels, with the school hiring only 19 senior women faculty members in the last five years.

 

Women account for 10 percent of Notre Dame's full professors--as opposed to 16 percent at other top 20 institutions--according to university data.

 

Confronting obstacles

 

Notre Dame's Provost Hatch said his office has worked actively to change the culture of a university.

 

He said that in the last eight years he changed the leadership of two departments--anthropology and civil engineering--that had atmospheres hostile to women.

 

Aldous, the Kenan professor of sociology and co-coordinator of the survey, said Notre Dame's administration remains "50 years behind the times."

 

"I just want the best people--regardless of gender or ethnicity--to receive opportunities to lead and to be promoted and to have research grants and all the rest of it," Aldous said. "And that just isn't the case."