on the Status of
Women in the UW System
on the Status of
Women at UW-Green Bay
of Women on the
UW-Green Bay Campus
Proposed Action Steps
Introduction to the Initiative on the Status of Women
in the UW System
On September 24, 1998, President Katharine Lyall created an ad hoc
Committee on the Status of Women in the University of Wisconsin System
and gave it the following charge:
As we prepare to enter the 21st century, I would like this Committee
to review how far we have come and how we might focus our efforts for
the next decade to ensure that the UW System uses the talent of women
effectively and serves all students well. We are not alone in these
goals - other universities, businesses, and nonprofit organizations
have similar purposes; the Committee should look to identify "best
practices" around the country that could be considered for adoption
in Wisconsin. I would urge the Committee to focus its final recommendations
on three to five areas which it considers the most important and the
most susceptible to significant progress in the next decade.
The development of Plan 2008: Education Quality through Racial/Ethnic
Diversity, a Systemwide project for increasing the diversity of students,
faculty, and staff, provided some of the immediate impetus for the establishment
of the Initiative on the Status of Women. When the final version of
Plan 2008 was approved in 1998, many women across the UW System, including
a group of Women's Studies administrators, expressed concern that it
did not directly address issues related to gender. Yet, because they
were very supportive of Plan 2008, they also did not want to dilute
the plan's attention to crucial questions of ethnic and racial diversity
by asking that it be expanded to include women. Instead, they proposed
that President Katharine Lyall establish a new, parallel initiative
focusing explicitly on the status of women to update the last Systemwide
study, develop a new leadership institute, and make recommendations
that would improve the status of women.
The last Systemwide assessment of this kind was conducted by the 1980
Regents' Task Force on the Status of Women. To learn what progress had
been made since then, what new conditions or needs had developed, and
what successful strategies might already exist within the UW System,
the Committee employed several methodologies:
A. Collection of statistical data by the Office of Policy Analysis
and Research (OPAR).
B. A Systemwide mail survey of undergraduate students, faculty, and
staff, conducted by the Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory.
C. Focus groups with women students, faculty, and staff at each of
the UW System institutions, conducted by members of the Committee on
the Status of Women in the UW System.
D. A polling of Chancellors of the UW System institutions, asking them
to identify "best practices" used at their institutions to
evaluate, achieve, and maintain equity for women students, faculty,
After examining these four sources of information, the Committee concluded
that substantial progress had been made, but that very significant needs
and concerns persist. Moreover, it appeared that many of the most important
problems would not be effectively addressed by piecemeal solutions,
but will only be solved when the UW System and each of its institutions
have in place a comprehensive system for addressing women's concerns
and pursuing the goal of equity for women in the University.
The Committee therefore made five broad recommendations, to be implemented
at both each individual institution and at the System level:
1. Expand educational opportunities for women students, by, e.g., establishing
activities and programs that attract and retain more women students
to math, science, engineering, and technology fields; developing new
initiatives to help women take advantage of changes in technology and
increasing globalization; and ensuring access to higher education for
women who are disadvantaged by economic or family circumstances.
2. Increase the hiring, promotion, and retention of women faculty,
academic staff, and classified staff, by, e.g., expanding the recruiting
and mentoring of women faculty; improving professional development activities
and career ladders for academic staff and classified staff women; and
developing leadership opportunities for women to move into administration.
3. Make the learning and working environment more welcoming to women,
and especially women of color and women who identify as lesbian, bisexual,
or transgendered, by, e.g., developing workshops and training sessions
for members of the University community, beginning with administrators,
managers, and supervisors; reviewing and improving the system of reporting
and responding to complaints of discrimination, harassment, and sexual
violence; and establishing a wider system of supports for women students
and employees throughout the UW System.
4. Provide conditions that allow for balancing work and personal life,
by, e.g., expanding and improving childcare services and access to them;
developing a more flexible workplace through flex-time, job-sharing,
and equitable implementation of family leave policies; and providing
domestic partner benefits such as life insurance, health insurance,
retirement survivor benefits, and sick leave.
5. Create an effective organizational structure for improving the status
of women in the University of Wisconsin System by establishing a UW
System office on the status of women; supporting the establishment of
committees on the status of women at each UW institution; and mandating
that each institution develop by January 2001 a plan that addresses
the key areas for progress identified in this report.
The UW System report, "Equality for Women in the
University of Wisconsin System: A Focus for Action in the Year 2000"
can be found at www.uwsa.edu/acadaff/status/home.htm