University of California Continues to Discriminate in Hiring Women Faculty

University of California Continues to Discriminate in Hiring Women Faculty, According to New Report

5/19/2005 12:04:00 AM

To: News and Assignment editors

Contact: Prof. Martha West, 530-752-2322

DAVIS, Calif., May 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- According to a new report released today, the University of California (UC), the nation's largest public university system, continues to discriminate against women when it comes to the hiring of faculty.

Because of its ballooning student population and increasing number of faculty retirements, the UC system has been engaged in a hiring surge, yet the percentage of women faculty, despite a large pool of available PhD candidates, has remained flat, according to the new study.

The report, "Unprecedented Urgency: Gender Discrimination in Faculty Hiring at the University of California," points to the most recent hiring data as evidence that nearly all the campuses that comprise the UC system have failed to increase the percentage of women faculty hires above the 37 percent reached in 1993-94 academic year.

The report's authors, Martha S. West, Professor of Law; Gyöngy Laky, Professor of Textiles and Clothing; Kari Lokke, Professor of Comparative Literature; and Kyaw Tha Paw U, Professor of Atmospheric Science, all teach at UC Davis. This report was completed under the auspices of a grant from the Institute for Women's Leadership, Rutgers University, as part of its project, "Re-affirming Action: Designs for Diversity in Higher Education," with funding provided by the Ford Foundation.

"Our report is being published on the eve of the upcoming UC President's Summit on Faculty Diversity," said Professor West, "and it is our fervent hope that President Dynes and the campus chancellors throughout the UC system adopt the recommendations in this report."

"Women are earning PhDs in record numbers - particularly in the biological sciences," said West. "Given these numbers, we are concerned that the Larry Summers view of the world may still be standard operating procedure at UC when it comes to faculty hiring decisions. The urgent tone of our report reflects concern over a downturn in hiring women at a time of unprecedented increases in the numbers of faculty hired."

"As the report makes clear, it was only under pressure from State Senator Jackie Speier that UC finally released the hiring data for 2003-04 in January 2005. The data shows there was no improvement over the prior year; the percent of women remained the same -- 36 percent," said Professor West. "When over 45 percent of all PhDs in 2003 were awarded to women (51 percent to women among US citizens), it is appalling that one of the nation's premier universities continues to fall short in the hiring of women faculty."

"It is our hope that it will not take another round of embarrassing public hearings like those Senator Speier held in 2001, 2002, and 2003, to propel the university into action to end discriminatory hiring practices," said Professor Laky.

"We believe that our report's recommendations, if implemented, would lead to the hiring of more women faculty," said West. The recommendations include:

-- Disseminating widely the past year's hiring data and relevant PhD pool information by gender, race, and ethnicity.

-- Issuing a UC Presidential directive to expand the percentage of faculty hired at the entry level of assistant professor to 80 percent of new hires.

-- Setting up uniform procedures to monitor faculty searches.

-- Rewarding departments and department chairs who are making effective progress in diverse hiring.

-- Appointing more women to administrative leadership positions.

-- Reviewing the performance of Deans on hiring issues on an annual basis.

-- Providing stronger leadership to include more women in the university.

The report points out that the performance of some UC schools in hiring is better than others. For example, in 2003-2004, the women faculty hires at UC Berkeley were 48 percent of the total. At the same time, the women hires at UC Riverside were just 22 percent of the total. While every UC school, except UC Berkeley, had hiring percentages below the percentage of women PhDs, "it is important to find out why the percent of women hires at four schools - UCLA, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Riverside - was so low."

"UC should not be satisfied unless faculty hires contain at least 40 percent women, which would represent only a 4 percent increase over the 2003-04 hires. As long as the percentage of women hires remains significantly below women's proportion of the PhD pool, the data indicates that women continue to experience discrimination in the UC hiring process," concluded West.

On one measure -- the hiring of non-tenured assistant professors -- the report found some improvement. One of the recommendations that came out of the Speier committee hearings was to encourage UC departments to hire at the assistant professor level, rather than the tenured faculty level, because women are a larger proportion of the candidate pool at the entry level. According to the recent hiring data, there was improvement in the percentage of women among assistant professor hires, going from 38 percent women in 02-03 to 41 percent women in 03-04. This was still significantly below the percentage of women obtaining PhDs throughout the 1990s.

As Senator Speier said during 3 years of hearings in the state legislature, "We need less talk, less lip service, and more aggressive action attracting women. UC is underutilizing a valuable resource by not hiring more women. When women are shut out, it not only affects the type of research conducted, it also limits the questions pursued."

The full report is available on Professor West's web site under Publications at http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/ Faculty_info.asp?PROFNAME=MarthaSWest

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