The good news from panelists is that women are visible in greater numbers in many areas of study and have helped redefine legitimate areas and methods of research.

The bad news is that change has come slowly, haltingly and with a good deal of resistance.

In addition, the panelists noted, that which is defined as "masculine," whether it is the study of engineering or administrative jobs in female-dominated fields, continues to be associated with higher salaries, more research funding and barriers to female participation.

"We are defined by the very institutions we are committed to change-traditional, mainstream institutions suffused with white, middle-class values defended by a cadre of male academicians," said Lilliam Malavé, associate professor of learning and instruction.

In addition to the panel discussion, the event celebrating the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender included plenty of good cheer, food and a poster session featuring 35 current research projects by UB women in fields ranging from nursing and sociology to educational psychology and classics.

One of these offered a peek at a multimedia adventure game developed by Mary Flanagan, assistant professor of media study, featuring "Josie True," a pre-adolescent, who leads her pal, Wade, and her on-line cohort in an intrigue across time and space as they rescue Josie's inventor-teacher, Ms. Trombone.

Carrie Tirado-Bramen, assistant professor of English, began the panel discussion with an historical overview of her field. She noted that although women are broadly defined as culture-carriers linked to literature and the arts, the field of literary studies traditionally has "masculinized" itself by authorizing the participation of women as subjects of male literary discussion or as teachers of works authored by men, while deriding their role as legitimate literary critics or university literary scholars.

"Male literary scholars have traditionally defined themselves as 'against women,' lest they and the discipline itself be 'effeminized,' which would stigmatize them as less than rigorous," Tirado-Bramen noted. She added that traditionally, it was men, not women, who decided who could teach high-school English (women) and who could be literary experts (men).

"It has only been during the last 25 years," she said, "that the involvement of women, people of color and ethnic minority groups has revitalized the study of literature by challenging its assumptions, expanding its canon and provoking the exploration and reinterpretation of the literary and cultural landscape."

Susan V. McLeer, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry, discussed the changing face of the medical field now that women are entering medical school in very large numbers. McLeer, one of only four women in the U.S. to head university departments of psychiatry, said that in 1997, women constituted 42 percent of the total enrollment in U.S. medical schools, considerably more than the 5 percent they made up when she entered the field.

McLeer pointed out, however, that women usually are involved in primary-care specialties and still are discouraged from entering higher-paying, high-status, male-dominated surgical specialties.

She noted that although 26 percent of the members of American medical-school faculties are women, only 10 percent of those women are full professors.

Marjorie White, professor of nursing, recounted the advantages and disadvantages for women in a field in which they constitute 88 percent of the profession. She said that nurses have not developed the awareness and sensitivity regarding gender issues of women in other fields and have been socialized into traditional gender-role identities of "girls," particularly in terms of subservience to the patriarch.

She also pointed out that the men who enter nursing tend to be in administrative positions, but command higher salaries regardless of their jobs.

Laura Winsky Mattei, assistant professor of political science, introduced herself as a member of a "mostly male department" in a "mostly male profession." She said that at 42 percent of undergraduate enrollments, men continue to constitute the larger segment of the student population in the field. She said that while there is not a "huge salary discrepancy on lower levels" only 12 percent of research projects by women political scientists are funded, compared to 27 percent of those submitted by men.