Monday, September 29, 1997
Trudging towards tenure
Historical barriers, discrimination and lag-time of change still
contribute to lower percentage
of women faculty members
By Cindy Choi
Daily Bruin Contributor
Employment prospects for faculty have changed drastically since
Maria-Goeppert Mayer worked as an unpaid "volunteer" instructor at
the University of Chicago. In 1963, three years after UC San Diego
gave her tenure, she won the Nobel prize in physics.
But women faculty at UCLA might wonder if the academic climate
has changed enough.
The tenuring of women since the 1970s has put a dent in the
faculty gender gap, but their numbers still lag. At UCLA, one in
five tenured professors are women and three in 10 untenured
professors are women. The composition of the faculty does not
reflect that today women earn 40 percent of doctorate degrees.
Gender disparity is blamed on historical barriers to women, the
lag-time of change in a profession that does not recognize a
retirement age, and the existence of discrimination.
Women’s full access to higher education came fairly recently. In
the United States, the mid-19th century brought the establishment
of womens’ colleges. Universities that have existed for hundreds of
years did not admit women until the 20th century.
"In the present there remains a legacy from the past," said Nina
Byers, a retired professor emeritus of physics at UCLA. "Women
weren’t even allowed in the same class as men, let alone be hired
as professors."
"There are still problems," added Byers. "Women do not get
encouragement to take themselves seriously as intellectuals."
According to Byers, the price that some women pay is self-doubt.
"The main uncertainty that women feel is not whether we will be
accepted but whether we are capable. It’s very wide-spread, more
serious and inhibiting than external sexism."
UCLA’s physics department appointed Byers as its first woman
professor in 1961. Despite some objections to her appointment, she
said the department met her reasonable yet bold demands: "equal pay
for equal work."
But being the "first" hardly suffices as an accolade, she said.
"It says something about the physics department, not about me," she
adds.
The lag-time of change in the make-up of the faculty persists.
The rising number of women with doctorates has not translated into
an immediate and visible increase of hire numbers.
Demographically, aging white males comprise the faculties of
American universities. Because women got a late start on their
professional education, they are, as a whole, a younger group – yet
another factor for the lower rankings of academic status.
The greater the prestige of the university, the gloomier the
figures are for women faculty. Some Ivy League faculties are around
90 percent male, while less prestigous schools and junior colleges
have the highest faculty gender balance.
Women are more likely to be part-time or lecturers as opposed to
being tenured professors, according to Anthony Lising Antonio, a
research analyst for the Higher Education Research Institute, and
are more likely to cluster in two-year rather than four-year
colleges.
And there is also the issue of research. Helen Astin, a UCLA
professor of education who has examined faculty gender issues for
more than 30 years, recognized that women do not publish as much
research as men, a potential factor in women’s opportunities to
ascend the ranks.
Women receive fewer grants and advise fewer graduate students,
said Astin, factors which influence professors’ clout and, in part,
their salary.
"Men are more than twice as likely as women to have published
five or more book chapters, nearly three times more likely to have
published over 10 journal articles, and eight times more likely to
have published more than 50 journal articles," according to HERI’s
1995-96 faculty survey.
Although the gender disparity of faculty salaries is smaller
than that of most occupations, women faculty earn 80 percent of
salaries earned by men, said Antonio. In most other occupations,
women make 70 percent of what men make.
Based on the report by HERI, comparing faculty of the same rank,
women still make only 88 percent to 94 percent of men’s salary.
Faculty rankings, however, are only one determinant of salary.
Antonio offers another explanation for the pay gap: the hard
sciences, fields in which men strongly dominate, have a higher
salary bracket than the humanities and the social sciences.
Women are also more likely to remain in the lower ranks for
longer periods of time, said Astin. High numbers of assistant
professors are women. "There’s less initial discrimination and more
later on."
Astin suggests one reason for this: men may be better
negociators than women. They may feel more self-assured in asking
for promotions earlier and be more persistent. Also women may be
more sensitive to positive or negative reinforcement, she said.
Gender discrimination may also explain the lower rankings and
the stagnating rate of promotion, said Astin.
And it is not unheard of at UCLA. Carole Pateman, former UCLA
professor of political science, finally resigned after years of
being repeatedly denied promotion. "I was far better known in my
field than a lot of men. My work was a great deal better than the
men who were being given those promotions. So I don’t think it was
merit. To a certain extent, I protested and then I just left."
Pateman gave up the fight because the problem was larger than
she could tackle, she said. Her colleagues supported her but they
were not the members of the promotion committees.
Top positions require more than merit, added Pateman. The
aspiring professor must be tenacious and not easily be
discouraged.
Gender bias, whether overt or inadvertent, may give a male
faculty member within a male-dominated surrounding a slight edge
over a woman in the same circumstance, according to Pateman.
"You encounter (discrimination) in individuals, and its not
inadvertent," said Ruth Bloch, associate professor of history. But
more importantly, she stressed the efforts of the men in the
department who agitated for more women professors.
The experiences of women vary on an individual level and from
field to field. Bloch recalled the support she received when she
joined the history faculty 10 years ago. The department already had
three women faculty. The American section of history, her area of
specialization, was dominated by women.
Gender unfairness is less of an issue on the laboratory floor
than in hiring, Byers said. "Scientists are pretty goal-oriented.
Physics is a collaborative enterprise," she said. "Who has done it
is less significant than what was done."
Although the passing of Proposition 209 prohibits the university
from considering gender in hiring, Vice Chancellor Raymond Paredes
emphasized the importance of diversifying the applicant pool by the
process of recruitment.
The vice chancellor’s office distributes statistics to the
departments indicating underrepresentation of women. It advises
departments to take a diverse pool of faculty applicants in the
hiring process.
Monitoring the ethnic and gender composition of the faculty
allows the office to investigate inquiries into discrimination if
they should arise, said Paredes.
"Fifteen years ago at UCLA, 10 percent of faculty were women,"
said Paredes. "Now that number is more than 20 percent. We’ve
doubled that number in a relatively brief amount of time and we are
making steady gains. But we have to concentrate on areas where
women are severely underrepresented such as math, sciences and
engineering."
The benefits of having a greater gender balance in the faculty
affect the world of intellectual research, aspiring women
professors and students.
"Social justice requires it. No social class should be
discriminated against." said Richard Brown, UCLA professor of
public health. Women’s contributions bring intellectual diversity
to the field and offer role models for female students, he
said.
"I had thought about being a professor. To see so many women
doing it in history encourages me. Women professors as a whole are
encouraging" stated Jennifer James, a second-year undeclared
student.
The lack of women in certain fields reitifies the assumption
that women do not excel in math and sciences, said James.
Frank Lam, a fourth-year pre-business and economics student
attributes the few number of women professors he encountered to his
former major, computer science.
"It didn’t strike me as being odd that there were hardly any
women professors.
Most of the people in my classes were men and only a few were
women. That reflects the faculty." said Lam.
But Byers has hope. "Gender discrimination will disappear faster
and faster as more women become members of promotion and grant
giving committees. As more women enter academic fields, faster,
things will change for the good."