Status of UB women: Still lagging, but improving

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

A report comparing their status with that of their counterparts at other Research I universities has shown what many women faculty members at UB already know-UB lags far behind when it comes to representation of women in the faculty and salaries for female faculty members.

"UB is far below the norm of peer research universities in both hiring and salary equity" and is not "among the national leaders in addressing issues of gender inequity," according to the report, prepared by three faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences who in November attended a national conference on women in research universities held at Harvard University and Radcliffe College.

The report was prepared by Charles L. Stinger, senior associate dean and professor of history; Deborah K. Walters, associate dean for undergraduate studies and assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and Carol M. Zemel, professor and chair in the Department of Art History.

It notes that "UB falls well below the norm in terms of the percentage of full professors and associate professors who are female. Of the 83 Research I universities, only 13 have lower percentages of female full professors, and only 24 have lower percentage of female associate professors.

"In terms of women faculty's salary, UB's performance is even worse."

When it comes to salary, the report adds, only 14 of the 83 schools pay female full professors a smaller percentage of the salaries of their male colleagues than UB does, and only seven pay women associate professors a smaller percentage of their male colleagues' salaries than UB.

It notes that Research I universities as a group lag behind other U.S. colleges and universities in terms of female representation in faculty ranks. While women earn 47 percent of doctoral degrees earned by U.S. citizens, only about 40 percent of faculty members are female. At Research I universities, the percentage is at about 25 percent.

Salary and representation within the faculty and in faculty and administration leadership roles rise to the top when women faculty members list problems that need to be addressed to improve their status at UB. Other problems they cite range from denial by male administrators and colleagues that women at UB face significant and ongoing discrimination, to sexual harassment of students and junior faculty and the university's failure to have in a place a policy on sexual harassment. They also claim, some in very strong terms, that women are publicly mocked, ignored, discounted and retaliated against when they call these matters to official attention. In short, they stress, the "hostile environment for women" described in the 1997 report of the President's Task Force on Women at UB continues unabated.

Bernice Noble, professor of microbiology who co-chaired the task force, said gender-specific faculty salary inequities at the university "are due not only to sex or race discrimination, but to discrete practices related to academic specializations, variances in the financial support for certain disciplines over time.

"We recognize this and the difficulty of resolving it, but it can be no coincidence that UB women nearly always get the short end of the stick when it comes to money," she added.

Noble also cited the low percentage of women faculty members; the low percentage of women full professors, the under-representation of female students at UB (45 percent compared to a recruitment pool that is 55 percent women) and the absence of any serious effort to recruit women students to UB, particularly in the sciences.

There also is a noticeable dearth of women in administrative office, she said. "The higher you go in the UB hierarchy, the fewer women you will see and that's just a bald fact." On the academic side, noted Jean Dickson, president of UUP's Buffalo Chapter, UB's women chairs can be counted on three hands and the women deans on two fingers.

Noble added: "For a university to be women-friendly, it needs to have a critical mass of women involved in university business at all levels. Women, like men, want to be around others who share their perspective and can support new ways to resolve old problems.

"It benefits all of us very much," she said. "Men have a great deal to learn from their female colleagues, whether they realize it or not. To ignore that fact in this day and age puts us way behind the eight ball in terms of creative initiatives and recruiting and keeping top flight female faculty and students."

Law Professor Lucinda Finley agrees. "It is certainly the case," she said, "that specifically sexist patterns in hiring, pay and promotion are very much institutionalized at UB. That means that those who don't suffer the consequences usually fail to see the patterns themselves and often don't want to hear about it at all from those who do see them.

"It's difficult for men to understand the problems posed by practices that may benefit them," Finley added. "They are real problems for women, however, and many suffer serious consequences as a result. Ultimately many women, the ones who could easily be chairs and deans, but unrecognized here, leave and go on to distinguished careers elsewhere.

"Others look at the numbers and say they won't come here to teach, do research or to complete their graduate education," she noted. "They're not blind to what goes on here. UB is losing a lot by not bringing more women into its faculty and administration."

Noble stresses that the picture is not entirely negative. "We have certainly been satisfied with administration follow-up to some of the task force recommendations, and we must give credit where credit is due," she said. "President Greiner and former Provost Thomas Headrick have, I think, attempted to resolve some of more egregious and obvious problems were raised in the report."

She praises efforts by the administration to address salary inequities, the opening of a day-care center on the North Campus and the establishment of the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG).

One recommendation that was not followed up on was the convening by the president of an association of full professors to serve as an advisement group.

"Despite several post-report requests, President Greiner did not convene the group. So it convened itself, which is a very rare thing," she noted.

The group is called the Association for Women Full Professors (AWFP) and is headed by Margaret Acara, professor of pharmacology and toxicology.

Noble said she thinks that the fact that the president did not convene the association has its plus side because as a result, AWFP is entirely self-directed.

"We have been influential already,' Noble said. "As a result of continued heckling from our members, I think the administration has been more responsive to having women on important search committees, which means that female candidates may be taken more seriously."

Another association for women faculty members that has been formed is composed of the nine women chairs in College of Arts and Sciences-the highest number of female arts-and-sciences chairs in UB's history-who support and educate one another as peer mentors and bring issues to the fore that might otherwise go undiscussed. The group calls itself "Women in the Kingdom of the Chairs," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the dearth of female chairs and deans at UB.

This numbers problem, said Susan Cole, chair of the Classics Department, and Barbara Tedlock, chair of the Anthropology Department, has more to do with gender-based role assignments than to either the number or qualifications of women faculty at UB.

Women faculty leaders are particularly pleased with efforts to promote and publicize women's scholarship by IREWG, co-directed by Acara and Isabel Marcus, professor of law, has sponsored a number of important lectures and residencies. This semester it presented the first IREWG Distinguished Faculty Lecture by Elizabeth Grosz, professor of comparative literature and Julian Park Chair in Humanities, and sponsored a week-long residency by the distinguished Canadian multimedia artist Vera Frenkel. Last semester, it held a "Women at the End of the 20th Century: Problems and Solutions" lecture series and organized the third annual international film festival, "About Women," the only international women-oriented film festival in New York State.

On April 16, IREWG will present its second annual Celebration of Women's Scholarship Across Disciplines in Harriman Hall on the South Campus. It will include poster exhibits of research in many fields and cross-disciplinary talks by several of UB's women professors.

IREWG also has proven to be a catalyst for connecting women faculty and staff and for linking researchers-both women and men-from many disciplines with one another and with sources of funding. The institute affiliates with academic women's groups across campus and throughout the country with which it shares information and resources.

IREWG is a major sponsor of the new mentoring program for junior women faculty members being conducted by AWFP.

"The institute is a major sponsor of the AWFP mentoring project for women junior faculty," Acara noted. "We're looking into possible academic support for female faculty and students in the sciences, including, perhaps a dormitory for women's science students and an institute for women in science. This is a very exciting time for us and I think we're moving with great energy to support and expand opportunities for women at UB."

The AWFP mentoring project is headed by Mary Bisson, professor of biology, and Susan Laychock, professor of pharmacology and toxicology.

Bisson said she believes women need more mentoring than men do. Women faculty members concur, saying they need as much help as they can to crack UB's "glass ceiling."

"Mentoring opportunities are fewer for women at UB than for men," Bisson said, "If most of her colleagues are men, issues that are important-even crucial-to a woman's success may never arise or may be discounted. Child care, differential hiring, salaries and promotion, sexual harassment, verbal abuse are among them and it can make things quite difficult, very stressful.

The mentoring project expects to propose its first program to the AWFP within the next month. It will consist of talking panels, to be conducted during the 1999-2000 academic year, on such subjects as getting tenure, getting full professorship, teaching, and committee responsibilities.

Women faculty members said a disturbing issue that sets UB apart from the herd is that it is one of few universities of its size to have no policy in place regarding sexual harassment.

Finley said the situation is appalling, since in the absence of even a written policy, much less its enforcement, the university would be held legally liable for such behavior. The language of sexual harassment and "consensual relationship" policies adopted years ago by universities across the U.S. are generally not gender-specific. They are adopted to discourage predatory sexual behavior, a tool by which one person attempts to coerce behavior from another, using leverage based in the unequal power relationship between them.

The largely male Faculty Senate Executive Committee has argued for more than a year over both the need and wisdom of adopting a policy toward intimate relationships, consensual or not, between students and faculty.

"The nature of the arguments made against such policies," says Noble, "indicates, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, an absolute denial by some that this is a problem at UB.

"This is a stand that infuriates the many women here who have suffered this behavior and," she added, "whether they themselves are directly involved or not, have seen its detrimental effects on students, faculty and staff, and on department and classroom morale.

"A policy to repudiate sexual harassment or to discourage 'consensual" faculty-student intimacy is not an attack on the male faculty and staff," Noble noted. "It is an effort to protect both males and females from the consequences of behavior that is going on now and here, and that is broadly acknowledged to often be troublesome for the institution and can have very serious consequences for the participants."