I am so discouraged. So disheartened. So many have come before me and written of the struggle for women in academia. It is an old story, told over and over again. But as time passes, it feels harder and harder to accept it anymore. It is painful. I feel a deep hollowness in my very being. I feel I have been robbed of my dignity and my worth, with each grievance. In fact, I often despair. Everything I have tried to do to improve the plight of women in academia feels for naught. Is it time to stop beating my head against the wall. Time to stop encouraging brilliant young women to pursue a position in the academy?
The old saying seems true:
"Women have to work twice as hard, to be considered half as good."
Nothing has changed.
It is 2009. I have been working in the academic world in one way or the other for more than 30 years. I have been a professor at UC Berkeley for 20 years. I was part of the women’s liberation movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I raised my only daughter to believe she could be anything she wanted to be. I have raised my three sons to respect women and their accomplishments and gifts; to value their caring and intuition and emotion and devotion and beauty.
I have taught countless young women the skills they need to be successful scholars. How to ask research questions that are meaningful to public policy and society at large. How to approach the analysis of quantitative data. How to interpret results and frame the findings in a way that is accessible to a broad audience of scholars, policy makers, and lay people. I have inspired them and given them hope and encouraged them along the way.
I have worked my way up the academic ladder, always exceeding the standards set for each rung, so as to leave no doubt, no crack in the armour, that I might be judged anything other than worthy.
And yet I learned this past year that, for no apparent reason other than gender, the women faculty in my department earn on average $50,000 less a year than our male colleagues. Over my 20 year career at the University of California, this means that I have earned about $1 million less than my male counterparts! And this doesn’t even include the losses to my future retirement income. This was such devastating news. How do I process this?
The reaction of the other women has been a non-reaction. The older more accomplished women faculty seem so beaten down, that they cannot even bring themselves to hope that something might be done to redress this gross inequity, let alone actually do something about it. They know from decades of experience that they will be ignored, that at best, lip service might be paid to the issue, but in the end, nothing will be done. It is the men who are the administrators after all. And they have “theirs”. They seem to see the women as annoying complainers and whiners, not deserving, clearly, or to be treated in the same manner as they are. And our Dean says, “There is nothing I can do.” With that attitude, surely there is nothing he will do.
The latest personal grievance came to me via e-mail this morning. I opened an email from a trusted colleague from another university who I also consider to be a friend. We share news of our children, our vacations, our lives. We have worked together closely for the last decade on several research projects and I thought we had a great deal of respect for each other and for each other’s work. And yet, here it was. Now don’t get me wrong. This particular slight was much less egregious than most of the others that have came before. But it is still causing me a great deal of pain. I have most recently been collaborating with this researcher at this other university on a state initiated quality of health care project for the last year. It has two parts. One addresses heart disease and this is the work that is being done at his institution. And one addresses the prevention of hospital acquired infections, which I direct at UC Berkeley. The paper was written jointly, with all of the material on the hospital infection prevention piece written and submitted by me.
It turns out that the final paper was never shared with me before it was submitted to a journal. In fact, I didn’t even know it had been submitted to a journal. And when a close female friend of mine in state government in Sacramento (who has also fallen victim over her career in health care to gender discrimination) saw it, she immediately noticed that my name was nowhere to be found on the list of authors. She notified my colleague and he wrote me last night to apologize for “forgetting” to acknowledge my contribution by including me as an author. He has asked the journal to pull the paper and will resubmit it with my name included. I suppose he should be hailed for making things "right". However, he belittled my contribution in his email by saying that I had contributed “some text and a table”. In fact, I wrote all the text and supplied the data for the section on prevention of hospital acquired infections.
He forgot me? He did not notice I was not listed as an author? How could this be? He apologized and I have accepted his apology, but I am left puzzled as to how this could happen. It is not the first time by any stretch of the imagination. And he in fact is the only one who has sought to fix the "error." But each time it happens, I feel like a peg in a peg board, pounded lower and lower and lower, until I am not sure I can hold my head up any longer. These slights make me feel so devalued, so empty, so confused.
My husband says I am too trusting. I am sure he is right. But that is my nature, and I believe, part of my charm. :-) I expect people to behave professionally. I expect people to be honest. I expect people to be respectful. Have I led all these young women I have trained and supported down a path that will never be truly fulfilling for them? Have I encouraged them to enter a world where their true worth will never be recognized? Where they will never be seen as equals? Where they will end up earning millions less than the men who are often not as brilliant, productive, or accomplished as they? Oh, God, what have I done?
One of my extraordinary young female doctoral students escorted my two Labrador retrievers to France for me this summer. The task was Herculean, as the information given to us by the airline turns out to have been wrong at every turn. But she handled each incident with grace. She never got frazzled, she made quick decisions, she handled herself professionally, and the dogs and she arrived safely. She went on to Paris to visit friends and then back to California, to work on her dissertation. And I received the most lovely note from her. It read:
Thank you again for your generosity and hospitality. I had an amazing trip thanks to you.
It was especially wonderful to see how you have navigated the challenges of academia and your own personal life. It is a real inspiration to all women.
Today, I weep for her. I weep for the dozens, if not hundreds, of other women I have inspired. I weep for the assistant professors, who still face this daunting prejudice. And I weep for my daughters and their daughters. And for women in every field, who every day are forgotten, slighted, ignored, and devalued. It is 2009. Unbelievable.