Title IX and Women in Science
The other day, I heard about a celebration of how much Title IX had done to open doors for women in athletics. I applaud this opening, of course. Don't get me started on stories about my daughter playing basketball and soccer. But, I remember in 1972, my last year as a postdoctoral fellow, when I heard that Title IX had passed, I never thought it was about athletics. I felt we were in for a legal revolution in all fields covered in colleges and universities. Since then, it has been applied in some other areas beyond athletics, but that's the area where progress in response to it is most obvious and praiseworthy.
The Title IX law actually says that educational opportunity must be equal for males and females in any federally funded college or university program. National Organization for Women (NOW) has a very helpful web site on the law that you can see by clicking here. The application of Title IX with teeth, by which I mean government enforcement, is in athletics. But just imagine what would happen if Harvard or MIT were told it couldn't get any more federal dollars unless it was actively increasing the number of women full professors in STEM fields? Wouldn't that be fun? Why hasn't it happened? Does anyone know?
I would love to hear from some feminist lawyers on why this apparently has seemed like bad strategy, when it has worked so well for athletics. Must we focus our resources to win cases? Is Professor Nancy Hopkins at MIT doing as well with her study committee as lawsuits might be able to do? Do we think that female university presidents are the best fix for this problem? The enforcement strategy worked so well with athletics I am scratching my head about why it hasn't been applied in STEM fields.
Hi Helen,
Your outline sounds eminently do-able to me. Now all we need is for NSF or NIH to decide to do it!
cheers,
Laura
OK, just for fun...Start with biology as a test case as the equity at even the postdoc level is close to 50%. Use the recommendations by countless studies on why women leave science to devise retention strategies and to alter recruitment. Have the NIH do the monitoring as part of the grant review process by adding a new section that the university has to address on gender equality. Do their numbers bear out their words after 5, 10years post program development? If not, then cut them off...but only the men of course so that over time there will naturally be more successful women faculty :)
Just for fun, I'd like to think about how enforcement could be done. I wonder if dept of education really has the resources to request the numbers and then compile them.
One metric that would make sense would be a percent increase in women full professors. European countries are very worried about lack of persistence of women as ranks get higher, and relatively few female full professors except in Finland. The European Science Foundation has tried to enlist all the big universities in an effort to reverse the trend. I don't know what kind of enforcement and reporting they have, but I presume the universities wouldn't be eligible for grants unless they cooperated.
cheers,
Laura
I'm with Silent but Mad. I don't know what would happen, but I would love to see it. I think there are far more women getting PhDs even in Physics and Astronomy than are showing up in the R1 faculty cohorts. NSF data just came out showing some progress but far, far to go. I think enforcement would be a very good idea. Who, though, should do the enforcement? I would think the Department of Education would perhaps certify that efforts had been made and progress was evident, then NIH would get their list and use it to purge institutions that were not in compliance. Probably it would get quite political.
FBP
Oh, it's been thought about and discussed...and discussed. Here's a timeline of events: http://momox.org/TitleIXSEtimeline.html
Unfortunately what usually comes back is who would enforce this? NSF, NIH? What metrics would be used? And what would the long term consequence to science be? My opinion is that if you take away the money, the universities will snap into line. But you have to do it in a smart way. If women really don't want these jobs, then you may have posts that stay open when they really shouldn't. And in physics and astronomy, you may not have enough women to fill faculty positions based on the number of grad students. But I think we should just do the experiment and see what happens!
Yeah, that's a question I've asked myself many times. Why no enforcement, no quotas, not even any discussion of physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science? Even biology at some R1 universities! Go, lawyers! How can we get real government regulation of this issue?
