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Women in Academe:
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
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VII. Recommendations To Enhance Women's Success in Academia
The issues are complex and the need is great. We stand at a time in history when women represent a significant proportion of faculty in psychology and where real institutional change in academic institutions has the potential to become reality. Good will is not sufficient to produce such change, however, proactive efforts are required.
To facilitate such efforts, we offer a package of recommendations aimed at maintaining progress and preventing and ameliorating inequities. The recommendations stem from the data reviewed here and presented in Tables 1-21, the literature reviewed on successes and obstacles for women in their academic roles, and the collective perspectives of the task force members as members of the academy representing varying institutions and academic positions (e.g., faculty, department chair, dean, vice president, and provost). The recommendations are extensive and should be addressed at multiple levels.
Few of our recommendations are intended
for women as individuals, for it is our position that the institution must change,
and those in positions of power must implement those changes. However, young
academics must enter into academia with a clear understanding of the culture
and the unwritten "rules." Surviving
and Thriving in Academia: A Guide for Women and Ethnic Minorities
(APA CWP & CEMRRAT, 1998), a publication of CWP and the Commission on Ethnic
Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology (CEMRRAT), includes
excellent suggestions on career planning and successful navigation of academia.
The guide discusses options on types of academic institutions, evaluating these
choices, the application and interview process, and, very importantly, negotiating
for salary and additional benefits (research monies, graduate assistants, equipment,
etc.). Finally, the guide discusses strategies for women and people of color
for surviving and thriving emotionally in an often chilly or hostile climate.
The strategies include support systems, mentors, stress reduction, reality testing,
and legal rights.
The many recommendations that have been developed for increasing the participation
of women in the sciences continue to apply to women of color in psychology (e.g.,
Davis, Ginorio, Hollenshead, Lazarus, Rayman, & Associates, 1996). APA's
CEMRRAT has developed a comprehensive plan for addressing ethnic minority issues,
that the Task Force on Women in Academe fully supports (APA CEMRRAT, 1997).
Its final report and materials developed under its auspices can be found on
the Web under Public Interest Directorate activities at http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/visions/contents.html.
As we have already stated, while the guide is directed toward faculty, authors
of the guide and this task force believe it is ultimately the responsibility
of departments, institutions, and APA to ensure that women and people of color
are treated equitably. Achieving equity will require change in the overall academic
environment.
The first set of recommendations is organized into eight categories: climate,
compensation, accountability, teaching, research, service, training, and ethnic
minority issues. Most are directed toward departments and the institutions in
which women faculty in psychology work. An additional set of recommendations
is for APA, to gather information that will inform us about places in which
women work, as well as to play a prominent national role in shaping policies
that will ensure equity for women working in academe. We believe that implementing
these recommendations will maximize the full use of the available human capital,
thus benefiting not only women faculty, but their universities and the discipline
as well.
Academic institutions must recognize that it is the academic culture that is
the problem, not women themselves, and develop institutional policies and programs
that promote equity and discourage stereotyping and discrimination. The overarching
goal is to create an inclusive environment that is conducive to productivity
and advancement for all faculty. To achieve this goal all parties must take
a role in changing the academic institution; this includes men and women, faculty
and administrators, students and alumni. Where possible, we have delineated
the party or parties we believe most responsible for change.
The academy should work together for change in the following areas:
Enhancing the Academic Climate
Institutional leaders: Presidents and provosts
Establish procedures to explicitly monitor the academic environment, including equity in participation, compensation, and resources, course assignments, and faculty perceptions of equity over their careers.
Seek out women for leadership and administrative positions, particularly ones that affect personnel (including salary, tenure, promotion, and search committees), budget, and space decisions.
Provide lines of communication between senior women faculty and administration.
Develop strategies for mutual use of power rather than its hierarchical use.
Provide effective ongoing education on gender equity and sexual harassment that ALL faculty are required to attend.
Institute family friendly policies, including on-site child care and paid parental and family leave policies for child and elder care; these should include a minimum of 12 weeks of leave after childbirth.
Institutionalize flexible-time, part-time, and job-sharing opportunities and establish mechanisms to facilitate switching from full- to part-time status and back again. These should be paralleled by reward and promotion structures.
Develop mechanisms to enable people to combine academic careers and clinical practice.
Proactively develop institutional structures to support dual career recruitment. This includes incentives for outside departments to hire partners and the establishment of networks among local colleges, universities, and businesses to maximize the opportunity for a partner placement.
Support institutional power bases for faculty women, including strong faculty women's groups, committees on the status of women, and women's studies programs.
Academic leaders: Deans and chairs
Recruit women and people of color to correct the imbalance in numbers of
male and female faculty and faculty of color.
Ensure that women and people of color are well represented as colloquium
speakers, visiting professors, and other types of appointments that contribute
to the intellectual life of the department.
Have departments develop clear and written tenure and promotion criteria
that are distributed to all faculty and used as the standard by promotion and
tenure committees at department, college, and university levels.
Explore ways to extend or slow the tenure clock for women and men who need
to reduce their load or take time off to meet family responsibilities.
Provide written annual progress reports.
Enhance the status of part-time faculty, ensuring they are compensated appropriately,
are covered by health insurance, and have pension benefits. Mechanisms to facilitate
transition from part-time to full-time status should be established.
Achieving Equity in Compensation
The goal in this area is to ensure that women are compensated appropriately
and equitably for their many contributions to their institutions. Specific recommendations
include:
Institutional leaders: Presidents and provosts
Institutionalize regularly scheduled monitoring of salary equity and pay
attention to equity in other forms of compensation (benefits, stipends, summer
support, pensions, access to outside income) and resources affecting faculty
success (e.g., space, equipment, travel funds, student support).
Monitor gender discrepancies in initial and counter offer letters. The role
of the outside offer in contributing to gender differences in salaries needs
to be examined, and if inequities exist due to a differential willingness of
males to play the "market game," these inequities should be promptly
redressed.
Procedures for awarding distinguished professorships and naming chairs should
be examined for gender bias, including indirect bias against fields that have
proportionately more women.
Ensuring Accountability
Administrators play a key role in ensuring that the ideals reflected in policies
become translated into realities. Institutions must provide administrators with
the resources and support they need to promote equity and hold them accountable
if they fail to meet their responsibilities in this area.
Institutional leaders: Presidents and provosts
Encourage leaders who appreciate and value individual differences and who
recognize and will not tolerate racism and sexism.
Offer incentives, such as equipment or support staff salaries, to departments
now hiring and promote women and ethnic minorities at levels equal to or better
than those represented in the employment pool.
Immediately replace administrators who practice or permit discriminatory
practices.
Enhancing the Environment for Women as Teachers
Academic leaders: Deans and chairs
Provide new faculty with a reduced teaching load their first year and/or
the year before tenure so they can meet research requirements for achieving
tenure.
Keep the number of different preparations required per semester at a minimum
and, as much as possible, assign faculty to teach similar courses across terms
or years.
Equalize course assignments so that women and men in the same stages of their
careers have similar teaching responsibilities.
Provide new faculty with a teaching mentor who can answer questions about
the mechanics of teaching and about the role of teaching in one's home institution.
Insofar as possible, ensure that the mentor understands issues related to gender
and ethnic bias in the classroom. Instructing new women or minority faculty
to behave in the same way as senior White men will not be effective.
Ensure that advising responsibilities are equalized across faculty so that
women do not carry an undue burden.
Assign good student teaching assistants to faculty, as often as possible.
Provide travel money to attend teaching workshops and conferences (in addition
to money for research-related conferences).
Develop a multimethod approach to teaching evaluation that has clearly stated
written objectives and includes a combination of peer and student ratings. Provide
training materials for peer evaluators that educate them about pedagogical techniques
as well as the potential for bias in the process.
If a faculty member has a joint appointment, make it clear how she or he
will be evaluated in both settings and which setting, if any, will be given
greater weight.
Encourage women faculty to keep good records related to their teaching. They
should understand which information is required for personnel decisions and
which can be gathered solely for teaching improvement purposes.
Give credit for "out of the classroom" teaching, such as advising,
independent research projects, and theses.
Consider publishing in teaching-related journals as a way to indicate teaching
acumen.
Collect data to examine possible systematic gender biases in teaching evaluations
that might be present on campus and in the department. In doing so, consider
moderators of gender bias, such as gender of the student and discipline, rather
than merely main effects analyses.
Promote the development of distance learning, alternative delivery methods,
and other activities that encourage flexibility of schedules.
Support innovative teaching methods, including active and cooperative learning
approaches.
Support the development of courses and teaching experiences related to the
psychology of women and gender as well as other issues of diversity.
Enhancing the Environment for Women as
Researchers
Academic leaders: Deans and chairs
Provide new faculty with a start-up package that will allow them to pursue
an excellent program of research in their area. Be aware that some women are
hesitant to ask for needed items that may seem to them excessive. Clarify that
it is acceptable to ask for everything that is required for them to be productive.
Allocate adequate space for research to new women faculty. Inequitable allocation
of space, often a consequence of the overacquisition of space by senior faculty,
can seriously impair junior researchers' careers.
Encourage new faculty to submit a grant proposal within the first year or
two, particularly if federally funded research is the norm in your department.
Designate a research mentor for junior faculty. Ideally, the mentor should
be a senior member of the department, whose research is in roughly the same
area, who enjoys mentoring. If such a person cannot be found in your department,
is there an appropriate person in a closely related department?
Develop mechanisms to enable faculty to spend a summer, semester, or year
in another institution that can provide facilities and support for their research.
Be aware of possible evaluation bias when a woman labels herself or her research
as "feminist," "ethnic," or "lesbian." Broaden
definitions of scholarship to include nontraditional methodologies and perspectives.
Recognize the importance of the scholarship of integration, application, and
pedagogy.
Nominate women for awards recognizing outstanding scholarship.
In evaluating faculty based on their national and international reputation,
recognize that some highly productive women doing high quality work have had
limited opportunities to develop such reputations because of limitations on
their ability to travel due to the lack of access to child care and the need
to meet family responsibilities.
Enhancing Women's Service and Leadership
Roles
Academic leaders: Deans and chairs
Develop methods to evaluate service contributions and to recognize them in
annual merit, promotion, and tenure decisions.
Protect assistant professors from excessive committee work, so that they
have the time necessary to develop a research program.
Provide release time, research assistants, or summer stipends for individuals
who take on substantial service burdens so that they will be able to maintain
their research programs.
Recognize substantial editorial contributions (e.g., editing a major research
journal) as contributions to research knowledge.
Increase the number of women in the administrative pipeline through networking,
shadowing, experience, politics, friendships, women's leadership training, and
faculty recommendations.
Provide mentors and affiliations with power brokers for new women administrators.
Developing and Disseminating Training Materials
Academic institutions and professional and educational organizations must work
together to fund, develop, and disseminate training materials that can equip
administrators and faculty to foster equity in their institutions. Many of these
materials already exist, and it is a question of making them more accessible.
In other cases, new materials are needed, and we focus here on those that APA
should take a leadership role in developing.
Many chairs may be of good will, but they do not recognize gender discrimination
when it happens and do not know how to intervene when they do recognize it.
Develop materials and offer workshops for department chairs on how to identify
and correctly label sexism when it occurs in a department and how to intervene
successfully to eliminate it.
Publish an American
Psychologist article that can
be used to train department chairs in addition to women faculty and students
to be able to understand and recognize modern forms of racism and sexism.
Establish a training institute for chairs and deans of psychology programs that addresses training in issues of equity, women faculty, and people of color.
At annual and regional meetings, offer workshops for women faculty and administrators on how to use the power of their positions effectively.
Develop training materials for peer evaluators of teaching and distribute them to all department chairs.
Ensure dissemination of information about the history of women faculty in
psychology. As long as each new generation of women perceives the problems as
"solved" and therefore does not address them, the problems will continue
(see Appendix A).
Package and disseminate the gender
relevant sections of APA's Ethical
Principles of Psychologists and
Publication Manual, for
example, those dealing with sex discrimination, sexual harassment, publication
credit, and so forth, so that they can be used to establish expectations and
create equitable norms in local institutions.
Continue to publicize and disseminate materials developed by APA's Commission
on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement in Psychology.
Ethnic Minority Issues
Ethnic minority issues cross cut all of the above task force areas of concern.
Underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in psychology continues to be a severe
problem, and unless ethnic minority issues are addressed, full participation
of women psychologists in academe cannot be achieved.
Curricula that are sensitive to issues of both gender and ethnic diversity
should be developed and disseminated.
To encourage more ethnic minority faculty and graduate students to visit
elementary and high schools, academic institutions should allocate "credit"
for such activities.
Summer science programs and career days that include psychology and highlight
ethnic minority models in a culturally sensitive way should be developed and
disseminated.
Funding should be targeted for talented ethnic minorities and low income students to ensure they have the financial resources needed to pursue higher education.
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