Office for Women's Affairs might close

While the Office for Women’s Affairs celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, it is also taking stock of its accomplishments and fighting to stay open.

Following Dean Yvette Alex-Assensoh’s decision to take a position at the University of Oregon, Interim Provost Lauren Robel recently sent an email to faculty and staff saying the University would be convening an advisory board to determine the future of offices for women on campus. In short, OWA might be closing its doors.

At OWA’s last faculty advisory board meeting, Alex-Assensoh led the board in a discussion about the office’s successes and its future.

Alex-Assensoh faced the women, ready to address their questions. “We’ll continue to do work until our doors are closed,” she said.

Someone asked what would happen to OWA’s summer orientation programs for incoming freshmen. Another asked why the University is even considering closing the office in the first place.

Right now, there aren’t many answers.

“What I am concerned about most is preserving the mission of the office and my team members,” Alex-Assensoh said.

When the OWA was founded in 1972, the same year as the passage of Title IX, women celebrated the creation of an office that would address gender inequalities and empower women on campus and in the community.

Forty years later, more women than men are enrolled at IU. Yet around the country, gender is still a polarizing political issue.

“Think about the current political climate,” Alex-Assensoh said. “Rush Limbaugh calls women ‘sluts’ on national radio, and women’s health care issues are still hotly debated. We need to not stand still but be vigilant for women in society.”

When OWA was created, many female faculty members couldn’t get hired as full-time professors and were fighting for salary equity. The office still deals with issues of discrimination on campus, but in the last four years, it’s also expanded to provide women with resources for leadership and advancement.

OWA frequently coordinates Lunch and Learn sessions that bring women together for conversations about finding a work/life balance, estate planning and caring for elderly parents. Alex-Assensoh said that, sometimes, the discussions from these sessions spawn something bigger.

Andi Gitelson, an academic advisor for the College of Arts and Sciences, was talking with other women at a session in 2009 about the need for an outlet for working moms on campus. IU Working Moms started meeting for monthly lunches around Bloomington as a safe place for moms to take a break from the stresses of work and life, and to share their stories and questions.

“When do you ever have time to do that as a full-time working parent?” Gitelson asked.

IUWM has expanded to 115 members thanks to OWA’s financial support. Its biggest accomplishment has been working with OWA to establish six lactation rooms across campus for working moms.

OWA also reaches out to students. The office advocated and funded the online sexual assault education program, Sexual Assault Edu, that’s now mandatory for all incoming freshmen, and they also sponsor the Women In Science Program for female students studying math, science and technology.

This year, OWA and WSP are partnering to sponsor a new science, technology and math-themed residence hall floor for 50 undergraduate women.

Alex-Assensoh said women think of OWA a place to have their concerns heard. OWA supports female faculty as they apply for tenure and promotions, and it handles unhealthy environments in their departments.

While OWA has had successes during the last 40 years, the women of OWA said there’s still a lot of work to be done. Alex-Assensoh noted female students comprise the majority of the student body, but fewer than 10 women have served as student body presidents, and sexual assault on campus is still commonplace.

Despite the questions about OWA’s future, Alex-Assensoh said the office has carried on with its usual programming.

“The team here hasn’t slowed down,” she said.

“Under this situation, you’d expect people to stop coming to work, but they’ve been real troopers.”

After the advisory board meeting ended, the women broke into separate groups to discuss different projects.

Board member Patricia Crouch, an office staff member for the psychology department, mentioned the message on a T-shirt she learned about at a Girls Inc. annual meeting, which read: “my brother helps me with math because I’m too pretty.”

Crouch said with the attacks on women’s issues in the news, it’s even more important for groups such as OWA to exist.

“My first reaction is that it’s implying that the concerns of women aren’t important enough to have their own office,” Crouch said. “Especially in the year of the 40th anniversary, that’s definitely sending a message that this doesn’t have importance.”