University graduate student and biology teaching assitant Amiee Riley (top right) cools off with her daughter Mackenzie, 2, (bottom left) and niece Sidney, 7, (middle) on October 6, 2009. Riley had to take an unpaid year off from her research and teaching to care for Mackenzie after she was born . Riley said she chose to find other day care for Mackenzie because she McPhaul was too expensive.
By CHELSEA COOK
Wisdom, justice and moderation.
The three pillars serve as a mantra for anyone and everyone involved in the University’s educational mission, but when it comes to women’s needs at UGA, the motto can be a misnomer.
Wisdom? More than 200 years after the University employed its first female faculty member, women are still underrepresented among professorial faculty — at 32 percent.
Justice? Female faculty are denied any University-constructed policies on spousal employment assistance, maternity leave or child care, which leaves them with little choice but to find an institution that does.
Moderation? The University provides the bare minimum, federally-mandated options for any work-life needs women often look for.
University faculty — both women and men — have fought for equity of its female employees. But under a budget crunch its woes have been quieted, and taken off the back burner.
They aren’t even on the stove.
“If you don’t want to make the moral argument, there is an excellent practical argument: In order to attract the best talent, you make the investment in these relatively low cost resources that will attract the best talent,” said Susan Mattern-Parkes, an ancient and medieval history professor at the University. “And if that talent happens to be female, then we are at a competitive disadvantage if we are losing talented women to other institutions just for something like that.”
According to the Georgia Fact Book, as of fall 2008, 39 percent (160) of the faculty on tenure-track were female, tenured faculty were 28 percent (356) female and of the faculty with full professor status, 21 percent (167) were female.
“We’ve known for some time that women, for whatever reason, have not been promoted as much as men at UGA,” Mattern-Parkes said.
Mattern-Parkes was the first female to be promoted to full professor status in her department — only one year ago. “As you move up in the ranks, the percentage of women gets smaller.”
Arnett Mace, the University’s senior vice president for Academic Affairs and provost, said despite the numbers, it is important to consider the increase of female faculty in the last decade.
“I came here in 1991 as a dean, if you looked on stage at graduation in 1991, there was one female dean and vice president for research at that time … the rest were Caucasian males,” he said. “I say all that to point out, I think there has been a significant change in terms of the number of female and minority members that occupy upper-level administrative positions at the University, particularly in the last 10 years.”
This academic school year, of 16 schools and colleges, five deans are female.
According to the Fact Book: Of the executive, administrative and managerial staff positions, 32 percent (113) were held by women. Women hold 91 percent (1,285) of the clerical positions on campus.
“Whatever the reason for this is, we don’t know because we never asked the question. We didn’t check to see why [we have fewer female faculty],” Mattern-Parkes said. “And you can find out those things, other universities have done studies for why people leave, or don’t come in the first place. It should be possible to tell.”
Mattern-Parkes and other faculty have ideas why the University isn’t attracting, hiring and retaining as many women as it should.
But there is one thought she refuted without hesitation.
“There’s an argument that says 30 years ago, there weren’t as many [female] Ph.D.s, and so they haven’t had time to move up in the ranks,” she said. “I think that was a good argument 20 years ago, but I don’t think it works today.”
Mace disagrees.
“[Current female professors] were in an era where there was a smaller population of females who were pursuing advanced types of degrees,” he said.
But there is less of a disparity between male and female faculty members at the University’s peer and aspirational schools, which have moved ahead of UGA in providing what women seek from an institution of higher learning.
“I think what kills us at the very beginning is that there is limited help on campus for accommodating trailing spouses,” said Vicky Wilkins, associate professor and Director of SPIA. “Our department did some research and we have quite a bit of data on this.
We would have strong female applicants in our job pool, we would make them an offer and they would refuse it.”
At Michigan State University, considered a peer institution by the University’s Board of Regents, there is a “Dual Career Center.”
According to MSU’s Web site, “Assistance may be provided during recruitment or at any time during employment, including when retention is an issue. Assistance includes exploration of employment interests, discussion of job search strategies and information and/or referral for employment at Michigan State as well as other Michigan universities, colleges and regional employers.”
UGA has an office dedicated to this function — the Office of Spousal and Partner Employment Assistance. But it is only used as a recruiting tool when the administration wants to fill challenging or difficult-to-fill positions. This means no faculty member, potential faculty member or their spouse can approach the office for assistance.
OSPEA is only used when the administration assigns them to a spouse.
“We’re not working with every single position, and we don’t guarantee employment,” said Lindsey Van Note, an executive and faculty search group consultant for OSPEA. “We typically work with nine to 10 people in an entire year.”
Under the federal Family Medical Leave Act, UGA is required to offer faculty and staff 12 weeks of unpaid family and medical leave. But the University has no maternity leave policy of its own, leaving female faculty who plan to have children to create their own way of orchestrating maternity leave.
“The problem with faculty is you can’t just go back into the classroom the day after you have a baby, so you have to negotiate something for the semester that the baby is born, and usually it’s not really an option to teach part of a semester and have somebody else take over,” she said. “So, what we do is everybody negotiates their own thing.”
What usually is done, Mattern-Parkes said, is people use accumulated sick leave for maternity leave.
“It’s all done individually, it can be very, very unfair,” she said.
“People end up with totally different situations, and some people have worked very hard and some people get nothing at all, and it causes a lot of resentment. Chairs have to negotiate every single time somebody has a baby. It’s a huge waste of time, money and manpower.”
The fight for a subsidized child care facility on campus is nearing its 8th anniversary, and despite the demonstration of need for one by faculty, staff and students, plans for a facility have not been made.
“As a society, we’ve pretty much agreed that child care is a good thing for 30 years now. And I shouldn’t have to make an argument over six or seven years that child care is a good thing,” Mattern-Parkes said.
Both she and Wilkins agreed having quality, accessible child care was one of, if not the most important, benefit to a woman applying for jobs.
“It may be more important than salary,” Mattern-Parkes said. “When my kids needed child care, [it] was by far the most important thing for me, more than salary, more than a library.”
While the University has the McPhaul Center, a child development lab, campus child care crusaders say McPhaul doesn’t compare to what other universities offer employees as child care options.
McPhaul is a small center — able to enroll about 150 children — and its tuition ranges from $160 to $195 per week.
Mace said once a child care facility was established, an immediate debt would fall on the University.
“With child care, to pay off a debt load from base zero, the tuition would need to be at a level above or equivalent to the highest [costing] child care,” Mace said. “The theoretical role would be to have a sliding scale, now whether or not we’ll be able to do that, I don’t know.”
“Obviously, we have some budget issues right now, but honestly, we’ve been waiting on a good budget year for 10 years,” Mattern-Parkes said. “It’s time to suck it up and say, ‘we’ve got to do what we need to do’ without waiting for a good budget year .... And you know, we’re happy to pay to renovate a fraternity, but we don’t want to pay for early education for our under-advantaged children for our low wage employees. And I just don’t see how that is.”
-- Edited by William Moore
