Title IX watchdogs keeping tabs on university academic departments
Critics of Title IX in Madison know the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination at any school that receives federal funding as the one that helped doom the University of Wisconsin-Madison's baseball team.
Yet the next major Title IX debate on college campuses, and potentially the UW, likely will have nothing to do with sports.
Over the past couple years, government agencies such as the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and NASA have started undertaking Title IX compliance reviews in university science and engineering programs at a handful of schools across the nation. In fact, auditors from the Department of Energy visited UW-Madison April 1-2 to review its graduate physics program, and a final report is due out by the end of the year.
"If the government is giving us money and they want to assess that we're spending it in a way that they feel appropriate, it's our job to cooperate," said UW-Madison Professor Susan Coppersmith, who last month completed her three-year appointment as chair of the Department of Physics. "So we have no problem with that process."
While Coppersmith struck a carefully neutral tone on the review, supporters of Title IX on campus say it could create opportunities in science for women, who have traditionally been under-represented. Conservative critics around the country, though, are already taking aim at the Title IX reviews of academic departments. They say the audits could cheapen the value of science education and undercut the credibility of those women who already have what it takes to succeed in science.
"American scientists should brace themselves for the destructive tsunami headed their way," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
In a similar vein, the executive director of the conservative National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, wrote in an Aug. 8 column for the Chronicle of Higher Education that "a society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously."
Sommers -- who has authored such books as "Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women," and "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming our Young Men" -- also believes using Title IX in the sciences is "deeply misguided."
"I think this could really harm women in the end by creating a two-tier system where men will gain entry into prestigious science programs because of ability and women because of a combination of ability and gender requirements," Sommers said in an interview. "There is a flaw in this thinking here, a confusion. Science is not a sport -- men and women play on the same team.
"In sports, very few women can compete on equal terms in, say, basketball. But there are many brilliant women in the top ranks of every field of science and technology, and no one doubts their ability to compete on equal terms. But that will change if Title IX becomes the law of the land and is rigorously imposed in the sciences as it has been in sports."
The law had a major affect on UW-Madison in terms of sports.
The university spent 13 years in an ongoing battle with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights trying to prove its Athletic Department wasn't violating the law.
The government finally decided UW was Title IX compliant in 2001, after the school added three women's sports -- softball, lightweight crew and ice hockey -- and trimmed the rosters of men's sports like track and wrestling to better balance the ratio of female and male athletes on campus.
Some around town still are angry about Title IX's role in killing the UW baseball program in 1991, when a cash-strapped Athletic Department first started seriously attempting to even out the number of male and female athletes on campus by eliminating the sport (gymnastics and fencing for both sexes were axed at the same time). The program had been in existence for more than 100 years, and Wisconsin still is the only Big Ten Conference school without a baseball team.
But outside of sports, supporters of Title IX at UW say it has been a boon for women.
"I wouldn't be where I am without Title IX, which was passed in 1972," said Dr. Molly Carnes, director of the UW Center for Women's Health Research. "Before that, they had quotas in many schools keeping women out of medical school. I got into medical school in 1974. So I always say that if my mother had been able to get pregnant when she wanted to I wouldn't be a physician."
Carnes, who also is both the co-director of UW-Madison's Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute and a professor of Women's Health Research in the Department of Medicine, added that making sure there are a variety of perspectives, no matter the field, is a healthy thing.
"Look at the field of women's health," said Carnes. "Huge, important aspects of women's health were completely ignored in the medical school curriculum, in research, in clinical practice -- until we had more women's physicians. Women started asking, 'How come no women were included in these cardio-vascular trials? What about teaching about menopause?'
"We've seen a whole transformation of medical school curriculum and the practice of medicine. That's one example of how allowing members of underrepresented groups into the decision-making process makes things better."
The resurgent push to use Title IX as a tool to help women better succeed in certain fields appears to be rooted in a 2004 study by the General Accounting Office (now known as the Government Accountability Office), Congress' investigative arm, which recommended that federal agencies perform reviews to check that academic mathematics, engineering and science programs are welcoming women and treating them fairly.
The report singled out the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and NASA for not doing enough.
In 2006, a study titled "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering" was published. Committee members which authored the study suggested using federal antidiscrimination laws at higher education institutions, through regular compliance reviews, to help level the playing field.
"I think we meant it in spirit and philosophy -- not in bean counting," said Jo Handelsman, a "Beyond Bias and Barriers" committee member who is chair of UW-Madison's Bacteriology Department in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. "The real issue is giving women the opportunity to succeed. We just can't afford to lose half of our brain power if this country wants to compete in the sciences."
On Aug. 8, 2007, President Bush signed into law the America Competes Act, which directs the Department of Energy to conduct at least two Title IX compliance reviews per year.
The Department's Office of Civil Rights had already reviewed Columbia University, which was found compliant, while reports on reviews conducted at UW-Madison and the University of Washington at Seattle are due out by the end of this year. According to a Department of Energy spokesperson, one of the factors used to determine which institutions will undergo Title IX reviews is the amount of financial assistance the department provides the school. UW-Madison received $35.7 million from the department in 2006-07.
"I think having these federal organizations involved, it can be one of the elements that promote change," said Handelsman. "In every social change, there has almost always been a watchdog element to it."
Among other things, these federal agencies have taken inventories of lab space and interviewed faculty members and students about the climate on campus, in terms of women's participation in research projects and their recruitment to departments.
To date, the U.S. government has yet to find a science department that is not compliant with Title IX -- whatever that really means. In fact, a spokesperson with the National Science Foundation said one of the reasons the foundation no longer has an interest in conducting Title IX reviews is the absence of a coordinated federal effort, and the lack of measures to quantify who is, or isn't, following the law. The National Science Foundation helped with the review of Columbia in 2006, but has not taken part in any investigations since then.
"I think one of the reasons for wanting a coordinated federal effort would be that there would be consistent guidelines that are meaningful," said Maria Zacharias, a public affairs specialist with the foundation. "But that's not the state we're at."
In addition, all institutions which receive National Science Foundation funding already have to certify their compliance with Title IX before receiving an award. Additionally, the foundation also has in place a mechanism to handle any Title IX discrimination complaints -- making these compliance audits a bit redundant.
It must also be noted that virtually no one is currently calling for a quota system to be part of any future Title IX guidelines in regard to the sciences.
"To somehow envision an external mandate or a federal agency or state agency saying you must have these number of employees, I think runs contrary to how this university runs," said Luis Pinero, UW-Madison's Title IX coordinator and director of the Office for Equity and Diversity.
Observers on both sides of the Title IX debate use statistics to make their case.
On one hand, the 2006 Survey of Earned Doctorates showed that women received 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees and 59 percent of master's degrees on college campuses across the nation. In addition, 2006 marked the fifth straight year in which the majority of doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens went to women.
The survey showed that women earned the majority of doctorates in education (65 percent), social sciences and psychology (57 percent), life sciences (52 percent) and humanities (51 percent).
"Here is what is extremely odd about this Title IX movement," said Sommers. "We are looking at a serious problem with males in education. Our universities are approaching 60 percent female. The University of Wisconsin is about 55 to 56 percent female. So why not have some investigations about the under-representation of men in college enrollment?"
Conversely, that 2006 study also shows that women make up just 28 percent of the awarded doctorates in the physical sciences and 20 percent in engineering.
The most troubling numbers, some contend, is that data collected from 2001-03 shows that while women earned 28.7 percent of the doctorates in the physical sciences during that period, women make up just 16.1 percent of the assistant professors on campuses, 14.2 percent of the associate professors and only 6.4 percent of the full professors.
"Unconscious bias is the big debate," said Carnes. "Unconscious prejudices play out. Each of these levels we call gatekeeping junctures in an academic career. And at each level there is an opportunity for unconscious bias to be played out. So at every juncture, you see fewer women."
Added Handelsman: "You can give people a resume with a man's or woman's name on it, and the same resume will be rated more favorably if you have a man's name on it. Studies have shown that type of bias over and over and over again. Women have to prove themselves at a higher level to get the same recognition or evaluation as men."
In addition to the role of "unconscious bias," other factors often cited as reasons for a shortage of women in some of the physical sciences and engineering include: the lack of mentors for females in these fields; academic hostility from colleagues; and a chilly campus climate.
Handelsman also said the responsibilities for family care-taking -- both of young children and for aging parents -- often fall on women's shoulders.
"Universities just aren't set up to deal with these family issues," said Handelsman. "There is choice and there is choice, and there is opportunity and there is opportunity.
"Women in some sciences may say no one is forcing me out or telling me I have to go. But when they look at their life choices, they don't have the same choices that men have if they want to bear children and have a family life."
Others, however, point to studies that seem to indicate the lack of women in the physical sciences and engineering is simply because men prefer these particular subjects more than women.
As for how UW-Madison is doing in eliminating unintended bias and presenting quality opportunities for women across campus, Handelsman said the school is "at the forefront of tackling these issues. UW-Madison is looked at as a leader throughout the country and people come to us as a campus very frequently to figure out how we've done things differently from other campuses.
"But it's not a simple problem and it's not going to go away overnight."
Neither will the debate on whether or not Title IX should be used as a tool to make sure women are truly given a fair opportunity to excel in the physical sciences and engineering.
"Young men don't have groups marching in brotherly solidarity, advancing their interests in psychology programs," argued Sommers. "The women's groups are organized and determined, and they want to do with Title IX in the sciences what they did in sports. Recall that in sports it didn't start out as a quota system -- people denied that we would ever demand statistical parity.
"But today that's the goal."
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Jo Handelsman, chair of UW-Madison's Department of Bacteriology, says Title IX could be used as a tool to promote change in the sciences.
