Editorials

The Associated Press 

The University of California has hired fewer female faculty following passage of anti-affirmative action ballot measure Proposition 209, creating a gender gap that needs bridging, women professors from across the 10-campus system said Wednesday. 

In 1994, women made up 37 percent of UC’s new hires, a record high, but the numbers have been falling since then. 

In 1998, women accounted for 27 percent of UC’s new hires, a year when women earned 48 percent of doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens, according to data prepared for the Senate Select Committee on Government Oversight. 

The decrease comes at a time when UC is engaged in a huge hiring surge to keep up with an anticipated enrollment increase. 

The declining number of new women faculty follows the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, the ballot measure dismantling most state affirmative action programs. That measure killed some UC hiring programs but did not override federal regulations on hiring equity. Still, several professors said it seems to have chilled enthusiasm for hiring women. 

“I am here to seek your help in ending preferential hiring of males on the Berkeley campus,” UC Berkeley professor Sally Fairfax said drily. 

Professors testifying offered a number of different factors contributing to the hiring drop-off ranging from bias and an “old boys’ network” to not offering childcare or keeping applicant pools too small. 

The hearing came two days after leaders of nine top universities, including UC Berkeley, acknowledged that barriers exist for women faculty in science and engineering and promised to address the inequity. The university presidents met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where officials admitted discriminating against women after a group of female professors produced an analysis two years ago showing unfair treatment. 

On Wednesday, UC officials defended their track record, saying they have hired more women than other major universities – for the year 1997-98, UC’s faculty was 23.5 percent female compared to Harvard’s total of 12.9 percent. They also contend that in some fields the number of qualified female candidates is small. 

Still, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood acknowledged “there has been a disturbing decrease in the hiring of women post-Proposition 209, which we are carefully examining.” 

Greenwood, one of two women chancellors in the 10-campus UC system, said UC President Richard C. Atkinson has a plan to address the problem, including asking each campus to establish a new goal for the number of women faculty  

and coming up with a plan to achieve  

that goal. 

State Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, who opened the hearing by declaring “it is absolutely imperative that we do the right thing and do it now,” said she was glad to hear of UC’s plan and would take steps to see it was implemented. 

Having more women faculty is about more than equity, said Marge Schultz, a Berkeley law professor. Women professors at Berkeley’s Boalt law school have “redefined the way we see rape,” and brought issues such as sexual harassment and the marriage tax penalty to the fore, she said. “What matters here is not simply the equal treatment of individual women candidates.” 

With UC expecting to fill 7,000 positions by 2010, creating hiring equity is the fair and smart thing to do, said UC Davis professor Gyongy Laky. 

“The women are there. They are qualified,” she said. “All of us know that this institution can do better.”