September 1997: Vol 11, Number 1


Office for Women's Affairs celebrates 25 years


Hiring practices, promotion, salary, and power position. It sounds like a rundown of today's top concerns for university women indeed, for any woman on a payroll anywhere. But in fact, these four issues headed a list compiled in 1972, based on a survey of women faculty conducted by the local chapter of the Association of American University Professors (AAUP), to show the need for an office devoted to ending unfair practices at IU.

The university took some persuading. Many people simply did not believe that IU was guilty of gender discrimination—including, in some cases, the very women who were earning an average of $1,300 less each year than their similarly qualified male colleagues. Then-Chancellor Byrum Carter, however, distributed copies of the AAUP's report to all major administrative offices on the Bloomington campus, and Professor Peggy Intons-Peterson took the matter up with the Bloomington Faculty Council.

While the initial AAUP study had focused on women faculty, by the time the Faculty Council approved the creation of a new office, on February 15, 1972, the proposal had been reworked and reworded to encompass the needs of women staff and students. The council charged the yet-to-be-chosen dean with responding to "the interests and needs of women on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University." She was to assume responsibility for identifying discriminatory policies and proposing remedies, for investigating complaints of unjustified discrimination, and for working with university committees whose domains overlapped with hers.

The need for the office was expected to expire with the first dean's term. Instead, so far were the demands on the new office from letting up, that when Eva Kagan-Kans stepped down in 1975, the committee searching for a successor had to modify the job description, hiring a second person to take over the duties of affiirmative action officer initially assigned to the dean.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Office for Women's Affairs, we asked each dean (and Professor Intons-Peterson on behalf of Eva Kagan-Kans, who died in 1988) to tell us about the particular challenges she faced during her term.

Eva Kagan-Kans, 1972-75
When Professor Eva Kagan-Kans was appointed in 1972 as the first dean for women's affairs, her mission was "to establish a climate in which women faculty, students, and staff are provided with full opportunities for the development of their abilities," according to Byrum Carter. Kagan-Kans embraced this charge with the enthusiasm and vigor necessary for her to manage the seemingly insurmountable tasks of developing new programs; convincing people the programs were needed; and spearheading committees set up to work on an affirmative action plan, equity reviews, benefits for part-time faculty, recruiting women, and an informal grievance process. All this on a half-time basis!

The mission of OWA was difficult, in part because it demanded the evolution of attitudes. Many people on campus did not yet recognize the need for the new programs. Some wanted information about inequalities that had existed, while others refused to accept even overwhelming statistical evidence. Still others were hostile to the entire enterprise. Part of the job for Kagan-Kans had to be a widespread educational campaign. Campaign she did, with fervor!

As she discovered, not everything could be done during her three years as dean. Everything was, however, begun. Kagan-Kans laid the groundwork for future deans, adhering to her own stringent criteria of quality and equality. She demanded the utmost in scholarship from her students and herself. She also demanded that the rampant inequalities of the time be evaluated, studied, and, ultimately, remedied. Admissions, salaries, promotions all came within her purview. The standards she established for quality and equality may stand as her most memorable legacy.

The campus community lost a friend, a mentor, and a challenging intellect when she died on Dec. 16, 1988, after a relatively brief illness. Her contributions are commemorated by a fund set up in her honor by the Office for Women's Affairs and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. For the past several years, the proceeds from this fund have been given as graduate student awards for outstanding papers about women, Eastern Europe, or Slavics.

—Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson

Jessie Lovano-Kerr, 1975-79
The major challenges facing the IU Office for Women's Affairs in the mid-1970s reflected a new awareness of institutional inequities experienced by women and people of color. Our goals were to analyze and improve the status of women students, staff, and faculty and to heighten awareness among both men and women of the changing roles of women in society and of the psychological and institutional barriers restricting their full development.

In addition to working with relevant IUB offices, the university community, representatives of other IU campuses, and national women's organizations, the Office for Women's Affairs organized task forces to study the status of women on campus and sponsored a number of projects. Among the most significant were the first CIC Conference on Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, which included participants from all IU campuses as well as other Big 10 universities.

There was also a series of growth workshops for all IUB women students, staff, and faculty, directed by a counseling psychologist, to explore internal and external barriers to educational growth and career potential. The success of these workshops formed the basis for obtaining several federal grants to develop a model program and training package.

An OWA task force on women in science, comprising IUB faculty women in physical and social sciences, obtained a National Science Foundation grant to hold a conference for female high school students in Indiana at which noted women scientists spoke about their professional work, their personal lives, and the issues they faced in combining their roles as professionals, wives, and mothers.

A forum on women and rape was led by women who had experienced rape and were willing to discuss the physical, emotional, and psychological barriers they suffered. Their testimonials deeply affected the large audience of women and men.

The OWA research center task force conducted a number of studies on the IUB campus. Several were very significant in effecting positive changes, such as a survey on the quantity and quality of advising provided to women and minority students and a survey on retention, professional development, and quality of life. This comparative study of men and women non-tenured faculty was a cooperative project with the dean of the faculties. OWA distributed the questionnaires to female faculty and the dean of the faculties to male faculty. The return rate was 100%!

(Jessie Lovano-Kerr is now a professor of art education at Florida State University, Tallahassee.)

—Jessie Lovano-Kerr

D'Ann Campbell, 1979-86
D'Ann Campbell views the major achievements of OWA during her tenure there as grappling with sexual harassment, assisting faculty with promotion and tenure problems, designing a grievance procedure for staff, and evaluating part-time staff positions for upgrade to full time.

At the time, sexual harassment was getting increased attention as a problem on college campuses nationwide. To persuade IU that it needed to address the issue, Campbell circulated what she called "The X,Y,X Cases," reports on actual cases at IU, with the names deleted. She was also involved with the production of a film on sexual harassment, You Are the Game, and the first Title IX campus survey on sexual harassment. Both of these projects drew national attention.

Under Campbell, the OWA Rape Task Force helped establish the 24-hour crisis line at Middle Way house, trained rape crisis volunteers, and presented educational programs. The Task Force on Women's Concerns worked with the women's services office of the IU Student Association to sponsor Women's Wheels.

(D'Ann Campbell is on the faculty of the Sage Colleges in New York.)

—Adapted from an article by Diane Ledger

Phyllis Klotman, 1986-93
It was my first time working with women per se," says Phyllis Klotman, a former campus affirmative action officer, about her tenure as dean for women's affairs. "I found it fascinating."

When Klotman, professor of Afro-American studies and director of the Black Film Center, began her seven-year term, she thought the time was right to work on expanding OWA's sphere of influence. "My initial focus," says Klotman, "was on staff women." The office had always responded well, she felt, to the needs of women faculty, but was not always so successful at addressing staff concerns.

Among her most successful projects was the establishment of the Commission on Personal Safety (CPS). In addition to inviting both professional and support staff women to serve on the commission, Klotman points out that, "safety is an issue that touches all women on campus." Initially, the CPS had to overcome some resistance among those who found it difficult to accept that "beautiful, bucolic Bloomington was not always a safe place for women."

As dean, Klotman took on other issues affecting the lives of women staff, faculty, and students, sponsoring workshops on investing in the stock market, buying a house, and car mechanics. "Women," she says, "are much more than their jobs. The broader support you give them, the better they are at their jobs."

She was particularly interested in the question of childcare, noting that research now backs up the common-sense observation that people who are worried about their children perform less well at work. Klotman recalls trying to educate her colleagues about the importance of "excellent childcare, adequately funded." She adds, "I like to educate administrators. I think it's important to inform people if they need their horizons broadened."

Other projects Klotman worked on during her years as dean include coordinating a professional mentoring program for undergraduate women, holding workshops and panel discussions on the tenure process, and establishing a Little 500 women's bicycle race. "I could not understand it," she says, "when I came to IU, and women were racing tricycles!"

Altogether, Klotman found her years as dean for women's affairs extremely satisfying: "Women established this office. Women had ideas about what it should be. When I was at the Affirmative Action Office, having OWA as a resource was extremely important. And I consider that office a resource now."

(Last year, Phyllis Klotman became professor emerita, but she still maintains her office at the Black Film Center.)

Julia Lamber, 1993-Present
Julia Lamber became dean in July 1993. She says, "I was fortunate to come into an office with a great tradition and therefore had the luxury to pick up already established programs, like the Commission on Personal Safety and the Women Partners Program, a mentoring program begun by Phyllis which matches students in their junior year with women professionals in the community." Committed to enhancing the community of women and increasing the visibility of the Office for Women's Affairs, the dean sponsors monthly luncheons for women faculty, honors the outstanding woman staff member with a monetary award, holds a paper competition for excellence in graduate student research papers, and frequently gives talks on women's issues to campus groups.

In 1993 the campus established the Women in Science Project within the Office for Women's Affairs to promote concerted and coordinated action to attract, encourage, and advance more women at all levels in science and mathematics and to improve the leaning and working environment for women in science and mathematics.

In 1994, the office established a Women Faculty Mentoring Program, which matches untenured women with senior women outside their departments but in related disciplines. Lamber says, "It is a wonderful experience to call my senior colleagues asking them to volunteer as a mentor and to get the enthusiastic and willing responses I do."

OWA hosted the first-ever reunion for former residents of Memorial Hall, once a women's dormitory, during Homecoming '95. Alumnae ranging from the building's earliest residents to some of its last, in the mid-60s, attended.

And 1996 saw the birth of a new student organization, the Women's Student Association, with plans for a self-defense program, a leadership conference, and a film series. "The best part of this position is getting to know all the wonderful women on campus, " says Lamber.

Last fall Lamber became Interim Director of the Office of Affirmative Action. "I had forgotten that Eva served in both capacities in the early 1970's. I have always been struck by the continuities of those who have served as dean with OWA, but I hadn't realized the full extent of it. Back in the '70s, Jesse was doing work on women in science, which we picked up again with the Women in Science Project," says Lamber.

Next year the office will have an new dean as Lamber has announced she will be leaving the office next summer. After a leave of absence, she is looking forward to returning to the law school classroom and having some time to write about her new project "The answer to football is crew: theories of discrimination in intercollegiate athletics."


Where were you in '72?

  • "All in the Family was America's favorite TV show, and the Academy Award for Best Picture went to The French Connection.

  • Congress amended Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the federal statute prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and religion, so that it would now apply to public employers and institutions of higher education.

  • Harry Truman and J. Edgar Hoover both died that year, as did 11 Israeli athletes attacked by terrorists at the Summer Olympics in Munich.

  • The Dow Jones Index topped 1000 for the first time.

  • Congress passed Title IX, prohibiting sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

  • With fewer than 24,000 American troops left in Vietnam, the Army phased out the draft, switching to an all-volunteer force.


    New Women Faculty, Part One

    This fall, 55 scholars join the faculty at IU Bloomington as tenured or tenure-track professors. Fourteen of these new hires are women. Throughout the course of the coming year, we will introduce these women in the Majority Report, highlighting their academic interests.

    Assistant Professor Kelly Askew, (PhD, Harvard University), joins the anthropology department, where she will teach about ethnomusicology and the arts. In addition to her research on Swahili musical performance, Askew does work for the film industry. She is in the midst of a project involving a documentary series about Africa and she recently served as a musical consultant and Swahili coach for the Paramount Pictures feature The Ghost and the Darkness.

    Assistant Professor Andra Alvis, (PhD, Berkeley), teaches Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her research interests include gender theory, psychoanalysis (particularly the work of Melanie Klein), women's writing, and the Japanese autobiographical genre known as the shishosetsu, or "I-novel." She has also worked for two years with Japanese psychoanalysts in Tokyo and is interested in the cultural inflection of psychoanalytic theory. In the future, Alvis hopes to offer a course on contemporary writing by Japanese women.

    Radhika Parameswaran, a lecturer in the School of Journalism, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Iowa. She wrote her dissertation on the reception of Western popular romance fiction in a city in southern India. Her teaching interests are gender, race, popular culture, international communication, and basic news writing. Her research interests also include ethnographic audience research, qualitative research methods, and post-colonial theory. She has published articles in Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, Gazette: The International Journal of Mass Communication, and Journal of Communication Inquiry.

    Julie Auger, (PhD, University of Pennsylvania), has a joint appointment as assistant professor in the departments of linguistics and French and Italian. Before assuming her previous position at McGill University, Auger spent a year at IU as a visiting professor of French and Italian. She specializes in developing socio-linguistic approaches to French dialects, with particular expertise in Québec French, Picard, morpho-syntax, and variation theory. She has attracted major funding for her sociolinguistic and theoretical study of Picard and regional French.

    Associate Professor of Law Hannah Buxbaum holds a JD from Cornell and an LLM from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg, Germany. She has worked for the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, practicing in the areas of banking, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law, with an emphasis on global capital-market transactions. Her teaching program will include U.S. and international business courses.


    Opportunity for all: Office for Women's Affairs serves spectrum of IU's women

    The mission of the Office for Women's Affairs is to enhance opportunities for women on campus by promoting improvements within the university. The dean and her staff serve as advocates for women students, staff, and faculty; identify new and hidden issues; work to resolve grievances and complaints; provide support and referral services; educate about sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other aspects of personal safety; offer short-term individual and group counseling; act as a resource to other units on the Bloomington campus; sponsor educational programs on topics such as women's leadership and professional development; and provide information, support, and intervention about such matters as salary, promotion and tenure, career development strategies, workplace conflict, and educational opportunities.

    Advocacy

    OWA provides women with information, support, and intervention concerning salary, promotion and tenure decisions, career development strategies, workplace issues, and educational opportunity. Call the office at 855-3849 to make an appointment with the dean or the assistant to the dean.

    "OWA was an invaluable resource in a difficult tenure case."

    —faculty member

    Women Partners

    Women Partners is OWA's mentoring program for undergraduate women. The program matches women in their junior year with professional women in the community for a year-long, one-on-one mentoring partnership. Junior partners shadow their senior partners, meet their partners' colleagues, attend meeting, and discuss challenges professional women may face. For more information, contact OWA or e-mail wpp@indiana.edu.

    "The program helps me stay young and gives me a chance to give back some of the benefits I received from mentors when I was her age."

    —senior partner

    Counseling

    OWA offers short-term counseling to women for any women's issue, especially sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sex discrimination, or sexual orientation. Our counselor is available for individual sessions and also facilitates an ongoing women's support therapy group. Contact OWA to schedule an appointment or for more information.

    "All I can say is thank God there's a place like this to come to."

    —group member

    Majority Report

    Published four times each academic year, the Majority Report provides a forum for the concerns of women in the IUB community. In the past few years, the newsletter has addressed issues such as gender equity in athletics and in the IU workplace, women's roles as parents and professionals, and the importance of gender-specific mentoring for women students and junior faculty. The newsletter is distributed to all faculty members, senior administrative staff, women staff, and women graduate students on the Bloomington campus. It is also available on the OWA website at http//www.indiana.edu/~owa.

    "The Majority Report reminds me of what amazing women we have here at my alma mater."

    —staff member

    Women in Science

    Women in Science Project develops and implements programs that promote the participation of women in the science and mathematics field at the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty levels. The project's long-range goal is to create a positive learning and working environment in which women in science and mathematics can thrive.

    "It's important to be able to look at someone in a faculty position and say, `That could be me.'"

    —recent graduate

    Outreach

    Outreach is a group for lesbian and bisexual women age 25 and under. The group provides support, discussion, and friendship.

    "Outreach feels like old friends."

    —student

    Faculty Mentors

    The Women Faculty Mentoring Program matches first-year women faculty with tenured women professors outside their departments but in related disciplines. Each fall, all newly hired women are contacted by the Dean for Women's Affairs and invited to participate in the WFMP. OWA organizes group meetings twice a year, but the bulk of the mentoring is done one-on-one. The Women Faculty Mentoring Program and OWA's other informal mentoring opportunities mean that women faculty can network with other women, feel less isolated, and ultimately be more likely to remain members of IU's academic community.

    "I was left feeling that whenever I needed some advice, it would be there for the asking."

    —first-year faculty member

    Personal Safety

    Personal safety programming at OWA has two components. The Commission on Personal Safety addresses issues that have a direct bearing on the personal safety of students, faculty, staff, and visitors to the Bloomington campus. Created in 1987 by Chancellor Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis, the commission accomplishes most of its work through its subcommittees on communication and policy, education, and facilities and services. The dean for women's affairs and the dean of students serve as co-chairs. OWA also coordinates volunteer-led presentations about gender communication and rape awareness for classes or student groups. For information, e-mail cps@indiana.edu.

    "There are a number of visual reminders of the work of the CPS—lights, phones, maps, videotapes. It's extremely gratifying to participate in this mission."

    —CPS member


    MAJORITY REPORT INDEX

    Percent of men who are color blind: 9

    Percent of women who are: .25

    Percent increase in the number of women lawyers among employed American civilians from 1983 to 1995: 11

    Percent increase of women economists for that period: 12

    Percent increase in women physicians: 8

    Chances that an American academic describes him or herself as a political conservative: 1 in 5

    Chances that an American academic describes him or herself as a political liberal: 1 in 3

    Percent of American academics who are politically on the far left: 4.8

    Percent who are far right: .4

    Percent of IUB buildings built prior to 1900: 2

    Percent built between 1960 and 1969: 35

    Number of Latin American countries in which a rapist is exonerated if the victim accepts

    his marriage proposal: 14

    Number of years the editor of Divorce Magazine spent working at Wedding Bells magazine: 3

    Percent of 1995 recipients of doctorates in business who are women: 28

    Percent in engineering: 12

    Percent in education: 62

    Average salary of a business professor: 63,183

    Average salary of an engineering professor: 66, 328

    Average salary of an education professor: 45, 990

    Chances that a male first-year college student says that the activities of married women are best confined to the home and family: 1 in 3

    Chances that a female first-year student agrees: 1 in 5

    Chances that a student earning a PhD in engineering in the U.S. is an American citizen: 2 in 5

    Percent of American college students who are women: 56

    Percent of pediatricians who are women: 42

    Percent of Americans who name their cars: 67

    Number of performances given on Broadway of Fiddler on the Roof when it closed in 1972: 3,242

    Percent of first-year college students who say they decided to go to college because

    there was nothing better to do: 3.4


    September index sources:

    1,2 USA Today Snapshot, http://www.usatoday.com/leadpage/snapshot/snapshot.htm; 3,4,5 U.S. Census Bureau; 6_9 The Chronicle of Higher Education Sept. 13, 1996; 10,11 IU Fact Book 1996-97; 12, 13 April Harpers Index; 14-23, 27 The Chronicle of Higher Education Aug. 29, 1997; 24, 25 American Demographics August 1997; 26 Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History.


    Staff to lean on: OWA welcomes three

    Like the local public schools, the Office for Women's Affairs begins this year with a large incoming class three of our staff members are new this fall and a building under construction. In spite of the dust and disarray occasioned by the renovation, the office is open as usual, and our new staff have already joined the veterans in furthering OWA's 25-year mission of serving women students, faculty, and staff at IU Bloomington.

    Our new secretary, Marlene Gardner, joins the OWA staff after three and a half years as secretary for IU's Industrial Research Liaison Program. She moved to Nashville, Ind., from the Boston area five years ago. After hours and on weekends, she likes to ride the hills of Brown County on her Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

    Bloomington native Samantha Brauner, now in her third year of a four-year joint degree program in law and public affairs, is coordinator of safety programming. Her job is to raise public awareness about sexual assault, working with volunteers who give presentations to classes and student groups and with the Commission on Personal Safety. Before joining the Office for Women's Affairs, she ran the Protective Order Project at the law school, offering free legal help for victims of abuse. Brauner, who has a bachelor's degree in sociology from IU, enjoys rock-climbing, swing-dancing, and walking—or being walked by—her matched set of Alaskan Malamutes.

    Another Bloomington native, Leora Baude, takes over this fall as editor of the Majority Report. An English student at IU, she has worked for the last two and a half years for the Office of Alumni Publications and has been a research assistant for the Majority Report. This summer, she spent six weeks studying in London. Less of a daredevil than her new colleagues, she seeks off-duty thrills in the racy bits of Jane Austen's novels.


    Women in Science

    The Women in Science Project welcomes everyone to a new year.

    In upcoming months, we will be offering students opportunities to participate in the Women in Science and Engineering Intiative sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium similar to the Big 10 athletic conference.

    Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, IU will be able to pay the way for up to 12 undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and the sciences to attend professional development and leadership workshops with student colleagues from other Big 10 schools. The workshops will cover such topics as understanding and negotiating the culture of science and mathematics, writing research proposals and papers, and balancing personal and professional lives.

    The first CIC conference is scheduled for Nov. 14_16 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Anyone interested in attending should call Lynn Wilson, Women in Science Project Coordinator, at 855-3849 or e-mail lkwilson@indiana.edu.


    Majority Report


    Dean for Women's Affairs...................Julia Lamber

    Editor.......................................................Leora Baude

    Assistant.................................................Karen Frane

    The Majority Report takes its name from the gender composition of IUB's undergraduate population, which is 54.5% female. To receive a copy, call (812)855-3849 or e-mail us at owa@indiana.edu.

    Last Updated: November 12, 1997
    URL:http://www.indiana.edu/~owa/97_septm.html
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