         
|
|
|
|
1st appeared
22 November
1999 Struggle for Gender Equity – The MIT Lesson
Speaking before a packed lecture room at UCSF, Hopkins, a prominent DNA researcher, said she believed that the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action laws had ended gender bias in the workplace. She had rationalized and refused to believe that gender bias – often subtle and unintentional -- existed even after she began to see its consequences while working at the prestigious institute of science for 26 years. But after discovering that she was underpaid by 20 percent and lacked the institutional resources awarded to her male colleagues, Hopkins was confronted with a truth she could no longer deny. "I realized that I was not exempt from the discrimination that I saw all these other women experience," Hopkins said. The revelation represented a turning point in her academic life. "I got mad." Her anger motivated Hopkins to write in 1994 what she described as a "rather strong" letter pointing out the discrepancies to the president of MIT. Fearing that the letter was too harsh and that she could be labeled as a troublemaker, Hopkins asked a tenured female colleague whom she admired to review the letter. "The worst word that can be applied to a woman is ‘difficult,’" Hopkins said. Much to her surprise, however, the colleague not only agreed to sign the letter, but suggested that they meet with MIT President Charles M. Vest to discuss the issue. Another tenured faculty member reacted the same way and the three of them set out to check whether their experiences were shared by other women in the School of Science, one of five schools at MIT. Deciding to poll tenured women faculty about their experiences, they were astonished to find out that only 15 of the 194 tenured professors in the School of Science were women. All of the tenured women who they approached agreed to sign the letter except for one, who said she never had experienced discrimination at MIT. "The power was in this group," Hopkins said of the 15 tenured scientists. "They happened to be exceptional people." In talking and sharing stories with each other, the professors realized how similar their experiences were and how entrenched the problem was at MIT. To document the disparities with data, their research revealed that women professors were paid less, worked in smaller labs and offices, received less research money and sat on fewer decision-making committees than men of equal status did. Unequal treatment of women In a letter to Bob Birgeneau, dean of the School of Science, who became an important ally, the women faculty proposed that a committee of senior women faculty be formed to investigate further. "We believe that unequal treatment of women who come to MIT makes it more difficult for them to succeed, causes them to be accorded less recognition when they do, and contributes so substantially to a poor quality of life that these women can actually become negative role models for younger women." they wrote. The heart of the problem is that equal talent and accomplishment are viewed as unequal when seen through the eyes of prejudice.…Currently, a glass ceiling exists within many departments." But establishing the committee took longer than expected, since Birgeneau had a hard time trying to convince department heads, who were white men, that there was a problem. Eventually, the committee was established with Hopkins as its chair. In interviews with women faculty, the committee also found that a chronic underrepresentation of women in leadership positions led to male cronyism that meant for women "unequal access to the substantial resources at MIT." To address the problems, the committee and the tenured women faculty in the School of Science recommended to the administration how to achieve equity and improve the status of senior women faculty, prevent the possible future marginalization of junior women faculty and boost the number of women faculty. Since then, MIT has raised women’s salaries an average of 20 percent to equal men’s; increased research money and space for women; appointed them to key committees and hiked the pensions of women who had already retired. "I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception," MIT President Vest wrote in a preface to the committee’s report. "True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance." Today, the percent of women faculty in School of Science exceeds 10 percent, a first for MIT. This year alone MIT has seen a 40 percent increase in the percent of tenured women faculty in the School of Science, according to the report. "We can take pride in the candor of dialogue that these women have brought to this issue and in the progress that we have made, but much remains to be done," Vest concluded. "Our remarkably diverse student body must be matched by an equally diverse faculty. Through our institutional commitment and policies we must redouble our efforts to make this a reality." An obligation to speak out Even after MIT’s top administrators admitted to the longstanding bias and have taken measures to correct it, Hopkins said she’s still uncomfortable talking about the inequities she and her female colleagues uncovered at MIT. Yet Hopkins said she has an "inescapable obligation" to speak out. For after much media coverage, the gender inequities still exist at MIT and at other elite academic institutions across the US. "Is the problem fixed at MIT? Obviously not," she says. "Despite all of this reaction, many of our male colleagues have remained extraordinarily silent on this issue." Despite the changes in policies and practices at MIT, it is difficult to extinguish the underlying attitude that stems from an era when men dominated academia, Hopkins said. "The problem is universal," she said. "But I do think meeting to discuss this issue is an important step in ridding our institutions of this unintentional gender bias." Asked about the small number of men attending her presentation, Hopkins said that there were more men present in the UCSF audience than at any other lecture she has given on the topic throughout the nation. Tanya Gonzalez, a fourth-year medical student who is a member of the group Women in Life Sciences (WILS), organized Hopkins’ visit. Wednesday’s lecture was co-sponsored by WILS, the Center for Gender Equity, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for the Status of Women, the department of biochemistry and biophysics, the Graduate Students Association, Associated Students and others. On Tuesday, Hopkins spoke to students and postdocs about her research on the biology of zebrafish, titled "A Large Scale Insertional Mutagenesis Screen in Zebrafish," as part of WILS’ annual lectures by women scientists. Links: MIT Faculty Newsletter With Gender Research Study Nancy Hopkins’ MIT Biology Website
|
||
|
DAYBREAK | ARCHIVES | CALENDAR
| CAMPUS NOTES Copyright ©1999 Regents
of the University of California. All rights reserved. |
||
With
wit and wisdom Nancy Hopkins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, recounted Wednesday the events surrounding what she called
the "summer of anger" -- when she first realized that gender
discrimination still exists.