Faculty still fighting gender gap

In a meeting with fellow IU department chairs, Suzanna Walters finds herself in an all-too-familiar situation. With the vast majority of seats surrounding the conference table filled by men, she is quickly reminded of the minority status she holds as a high-ranking female faculty member. \nShe said she's used to it by now, but that doesn't mean she's content with the current status quo. \n"When I go into these meetings, there's still just a handful of women," said Walters, chair of the IU Department of Gender Studies. "Looking at upper-level administration, it's still filled with men, and you have this clustering of women faculty in the lower levels of administration at IU and all over the country. In many ways, it's still an old white boys club." \nThough women comprise about 52 percent of the student population at IU-Bloomington, according to the IU Factbook for the 2005-06 term, women account for slightly more than 35 percent of full-time administrators, faculty, visiting faculty and lecturers on campus. An even greater gender disparity can be seen in the number of full-time tenured faculty. Out of the 720 full-time tenured professors working for the University in 2004, 156 (or nearly 22 percent) were women, according to a report on the status of women faculty by the Office of Affirmative Action at IU. \n"This problem is not specific to IU, but IU is reflective of the inequalities in higher education that you see all across the country," said Julie Knost, University director of the Office of Affirmative Action. "In fact, we probably do fairly well relative to some institutions because we have made steady progress with women faculty in the last 15 years, but we need to do better." \nA set of simple explanations and solutions cannot be assigned to these issues, Knost said, because a number of complex factors play into the problem as universities struggle to level the gender playing field. Before being able to prescribe an effective antidote, officials must both be aware of the problem and have a desire to change it, she said. \n"When you look at the women professors at IU, the problem is that a lot of them are at the junior level and not at the tenure level," said Alberto Torchinsky, associate vice chancellor of strategic hiring and support at IU. \nThe demanding six-year tenure process requires faculty members to not only hold an advanced degree, but also to go beyond their classroom obligations and do extensive research in their field, publish books or journal articles and travel to meetings and lectures around the country. After completing this process and being approved by their desired academic department, a faculty member is awarded the status of full-time professor. However, women are less likely than men to make it this far, Knost said. \n"Every step of the way you go up, (women faculty) numbers drop," she said. "Women are less likely to get a master's degree than men and even less likely to get a Ph.D. They are less likely to seek out the top positions in higher education. They are more likely to drop out along the way than men for a variety of reasons." \nThough complicated family issues and pay discrepancies might explain lagging female advancement in the upper echelon of faculty, experts, such as Knost, also note flaws in the hiring process and lack of good support systems. She and others contend, however, that these issues can and must be worked through.\n"It takes more than good faith to rectify this situation. It takes resources. It takes the state government saying a university cannot have such gender and racial disparity in its faculty. It takes everyone seeing this as a problem," Walters said. "I don't think there's a lack of good faith. I have great respect for this University and know there is great faith. But good faith without resources isn't going to go very far"