Women, minorities post
moderate employment gains

A trend over the past few years of moderately increasing numbers of minority and women employees continued last year, according to Bob Ethridge, associate vice president and director of Equal Opportunity Programs.

Ethridge's office recently released the University's 1997 affirmative action plan, which reports the number of minority and female faculty and staff for 1995-96.

"I was very pleased with the increases in minority representation in most [job] categories," Ethridge said, "even though some of those increases were relatively small."

The four groups included in Emory's definition of minorities are African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans. Minority staff for all of Emory (including Emory and Crawford Long hospitals) comprised 45.8 percent of the non-faculty workforce last year. Minority staff representation includes:

Executive/administrator/ manager, 15.03 percent (up 1.23 percent from 1994-95);
Professional non-faculty, 29.02 percent (up 2.72 percent);
Secretarial/clerical, 60.28 percent (up 1.68 percent);
Technical/paraprofessional, 53.08 percent (up 9.18 percent);
Skilled craft, 28.92 percent (down 4.08 percent); and
Service/maintenance, 83.7 percent (down 3 percent).

African American representation was up in all but one of the staff categories (down 2.4 percent in skilled craft). The technical/paraprofessional category posted the largest gain, a 10.3-percent increase.

Women accounted for 72 percent of Emory's non-faculty employees last year. The percentage of women staff in each category increased last year. Women accounted for:

55.7 percent of executive/administrator/managers (up 6.6 percent);
70 percent of professional non-faculty (up 1 percent);
90.8 percent of secretarial/clerical (up 2 percent);
58.2 percent of technical/paraprofessional (up 0.4 percent);
3 percent of skilled craft (up 0.9 percent); and
60.3 percent of service maintenance (up 4.7 percent).

Ethridge said that Crawford Long Hospital, which was included in Emory's affirmative action plan for the first time this year, posted strong numbers in both the women and minority categories. Women account for a majority of staff in five of the six categories, and minority staff make up at least 20 percent of five categories. (The exception in both cases is the skilled craft category.) "A lot of our success this year can be attributed to bringing in Crawford Long," Ethridge said.

On the faculty side, minorities accounted for 15 percent of 2,093 regular, full-time faculty members. Minority faculty by rank included:

Professor, 7.6 percent (up 0.9 percent);
Associate professor, 10.5 percent (up 0.9 percent);
Assistant professor, 20.1 percent (up 1.8 percent);
Instructor, 17.5 percent (up 0.3 percent); and
Lecturer, 12.1 percent (up 0.3 percent).

Although women comprised 29 percent of the faculty (a 3-percent increase over the previous year), Ethridge pointed out declines in the percentage of women faculty at the associate and assistant professor ranks. He called the decreases-as well as the unchanged percentage of women full professors-an "area of concern" for his office. "That's on my agenda for this year," he said. Women faculty by rank included:

Professor, 12 percent (no change);
Associate professor, 25 percent (down 2 percent);
Assistant professor, 34 percent (down 2 percent);
Instructor, 58 percent (up 1 percent); and
Lecturer, 57.6 percent (up 4.6 percent).

All in all, Ethridge characterized 1995-96 as a positive year for minority and female employment growth at Emory, and he expects that trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

-Dan Treadaway

Women, minorities post moderate employment gains

Women, minorities post
moderate employment gains