Chace discusses pay equity, maternity and tenure issues
President Bill Chace discussed a broad range of issues affecting the climate
for women at Emory in a special meeting Nov. 20 with the President's Commission
on the Status of Women (PCSW).
The topics discussed at the meeting were divided into three categories:
issues affecting women staff, students and faculty. The PCSW's Staff Concerns
Committee has been studying the issue of pay equity between male and female
staff since last year. After collecting largely anecdotal information from
women staff through several focus group sessions last year, the committee
wants to move ahead with collection of more quantitative data this year.
"We want to do an analysis of pay equity by gender," said committee
chair Mary Krueger. "which will involve an analysis of pay ranges within
pay grades."
Chace expressed support for the analysis, recommending that the committee
focus on two or three pay grades that are sufficiently representative of
the entire campus. He said such a focus would provide the committee the
information it is seeking without exhausting the resources of the Human
Resources staff. He said that if the data indicate that Emory as an institution
is not being friendly to women on the pay equity issue, other methods might
need to be used to determine the underlying causes of that unfriendliness.
The Faculty Concerns Committee has been focusing on maternity/adoption leave
and tenure/promotion issues, said committee chair Victoria Phillips. "We
need some feedback on the issue of women faculty who might be vulnerable
to having no paid leave when they need family or maternity leave,"
Phillips said. "We are concerned about the lack of a floor below which
no one can fall."
The committee is also concerned about polices that are worded in ways that
are family-unfriendly, such as asking women to time maternity leaves to
coincide with the academic calendar and unwillingness in some areas to stop
the tenure clock while women are on maternity/family leave.
Chace said the committee's requests "strike me as imminently sensible.
I see no reason why this shouldn't be done." He said the nature of
the family and extended family has changed a great deal, and the University
will always be sensitive to those issues, while remaining competitive with
other schools.
In response to concerns about the lack of a sound appeal process in tenure
and promotion decisions, Chace urged the committee to bring the issue to
the attention of the new Presidential Advisory Committee.
The Student Concerns Committee raised a number of issues, including a planned
effort to create a resource guide for women students. Committee chair Karen
Brown-Wheeler said almost all the information planned for the guide is currently
available in existing publications, but the committee wants to bring all
the information together into a user-friendly format for women students.
Chace expressed support for the idea and offered to pay all printing costs
required for the project.
Chace concluded the session by sharing his concern about the "lack
of women in high places" at Emory. He said that forthcoming searches
for a provost and College dean will provide fresh opportunities to include
women candidates in the search process.
--Dan Treadaway
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