Social Science Grant Examines Gender Equity at WSU
Proposal Title: Current Status of Gender Equity at WSU: A Report of Existing Efforts
Project Overview and Link to ADVANCE Initiatives
Year after year on campus after campus well meaning faculty and administrators generate reports related to particular topics. These reports are created by task forces, commissions or committees charged with examining a particular issue and providing recommendations. Unfortunately, many of these reports sit on shelves and are left unattended and unacknowledged and their recommendations left unheeded. WSU has been no stranger to this process especially related to issues of faculty equity and diversity. The purpose of this project was is to examine and analyze reports and documents that have been generated in the past 5-7 years in order to: (1) provide a benchmark of where WSU is with regard to gender equity, and (2) to honor and build upon existing efforts to create a more equitable WSU environment.
The goal of the ADVANCE grant is to create change in policy, structure, and climate to support diversity and gender equity in STEM especially for faculty. Adequately monitoring such change calls for a complete picture of the current status and existing initiatives. The intent of this project was to not just provide yet another report, but instead is to provide a complete picture of current (and recent) initiatives that are related to the WSU ADVANCE Grant so the grant team has information to build upon.
The project was guided by the following questions: What was the impetus for the report? Who called for the report? What actors were involved? What were the major findings? What suggestions were offered? What came of the suggestions? How is the report related to ADVANCE initiatives? The analysis was based on 12 different reports written about issues related to gender equity between 1997 and 2007.
Summary of major findings
The analysis of the reports highlight that issues associated with gender equity and faculty quality are important and present to faculty, staff, and administrators at WSU and have been for quite some time. The ADVANCE grant is timely in terms of pursuing goals of increased representation and advancement of women in STEM fields given WSU’s emphasis on diversity. The findings provided ADVANCE team members information about present and recently past campus initiatives that have related ends in effort to build upon what we already know as a campus about issues related to gender equity.
The four themes that are related to the ADVANCE grant goals and are clearly present as topics of concern in the reports that were part of the analysis include child care, climate, leadership, and salary. Child care concerns center around lack of affordable and quality child care and especially for infants. Climate issues are related to how the WSU climate is not one that is conducive to recruiting and retaining a quality faculty. Leadership as a theme is focused on providing opportunities, development, and pathways for women to advance in their careers. Salary is an endemic issue that is focused on addressing salary inequities internally at WSU and also making WSU salaries competitive with peer institutions.
Recommendations and implications
Collating the findings from existing initiatives provided the opportunity to validate and build upon existing ideas that were part of the reports in the study. Recommendations that emanate from this project include:
- Institutional transformation calls for community participation and support. Use of existing information from previous initiatives also looking at gender equity is an important vehicle to create community. With each new project it is not necessary to start anew, but instead, where possible, tie ADVANCE initiatives to those already under way.
- ADVANCE initiatives need to be directly tied to existing efforts at WSU to have credibility with members of the WSU community already involved in gender equity pursuits.
- It is important to involve organizations and committees (e.g., the Association for Faculty Women, Women’s Commission) that are already established at WSU to become part of the WSU community geared toward institutional transformation.
