Title IXing Science, UT-Austin Style

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As Accuracy in Academia’s executive director Malcolm Kline outlined in a recent article, proponents of Title IX have adopted the feminization of engineering programs as one of their key goals.

Moreover, at a recent conference at St. Vincent College, Kline said that “At least one scholar even speaks openly of applying Title IX to scientific professions.” Gretchen Ritter of the University of Texas at Austin told a congressional committee in 2007 that “To support equal academic opportunities for these young women, we ought to use the leverage of federal education funding to mandate Title IX compliance within the faculty of our research universities.”

“Ritter serves as director of the Center for Women and Gender Studies at UT Austin,” Kline noted. Indeed, the Five to Ten-year plan proposed by the University of Texas at Austin’s “Gender Equity Task Force” (GETF) may have the same effect on its science program faculty as Title IX advocates promote among science students.

The final report of the GETF, released on October 27, finds that UT Austin significantly under-represents female full professors in chairmanships and salary, which in some cases may be as much as $9,028 less than male faculty, after controlling for experience and rank.

“Women lag significantly behind men in their promotion rates and in time to promotion [at UT Austin],” states the report. “Thirty-six percent of women hired as assistant professors in 1997 were promoted to associate professors by their 7th year at UT Austin, whereas 56% of such men were promoted. Even by year nine (which accounts for stopping the tenure clock), only 55% of the women were promoted, whereas 63% of the men were.”

“In general, the majority of men and women faculty at the University are satisfied with their current positions at the University,” although women are more likely to feel isolated academically and 14% of female faculty report having suffered from sexual harassment, according to the GETF report. The task force recommends that the University rectify these gender disparities by financially rewarding faculty who contribute to “intellectual diversity.” Structural changes to the University would include

• establishing a “provost’s opportunity fund…to provide supplemental funding for the hiring and retention of faculty who contribute to intellectual university,” namely, “10-15 faculty positions each year;”

• Establishing a “dual-career assistance office” within “the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement” which will “assist with hiring efforts;”

• an additional “semester of sabbatical leave for all T/TT faculty members every 6 years;”

• “funding for equity raises for fully professor women across campus” totaling as much as $1.5 million; and

• “six weeks of paid leave following the birth or adoption of a new child” for full-time faculty and some lecturers.

In terms of enforcement, “Gender equity should be part of the annual reviews for deans and department chairs,” states the GETF report. “The availability of supplemental resources for hiring and retention under the provost’s opportunity fund should be tied to a demonstrated commitment to the promotion of gender equity by deans and chairs. This change should be fully implemented by 2012. (emphasis added).”

The task force also recommends that UT Austin use a “neutral third party” to conduct exit interviews, assign mentors to new faculty, and “centrally record brief summaries of all tenure cases, including gender of candidate, department, CV, outcomes at department, college, and university level, and brief summaries voluntarily provided by candidate, chair, dean, and president.” In other words, university officials will record the gender of each new hire or promotion to check that each college is making progress toward these equity goals—and to enforce them.

There is little doubt that this policy would target UT Austin’s engineering and science programs, which traditionally have fewer female faculty members. In each step of the process, the GETF report notes that its initiatives should be implemented “particularly” among “schools and colleges in which women are underrepresented” on the tenure-track faculty.

According to the data released by the task force, the five departments with the lowest number of female full professors are

1. Geosciences
2. Engineering
3. Natural Sciences
4. Pharmacy
5. Architecture.

In terms of under-representing female associate and assistant professors, Natural Science, Engineering, and Geosciences departments again make it into the five most inequitable departments at the University. It is therefore likely that under this program, UT Austin would concentrate its efforts on providing “gender equity” for staff within the sciences.

The question is, will they do the same for male faculty members in Nursing, Education, and Social Work departments, which over-represent female faculty in each of these three measures.

Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.