Women, Work and the Academy: Strategies for Responding to 'Post-Civil Rights Era' Gender Discrimination

Women, Work and the Academy > Executive Summaries > Susan Sturm

Research Description

Susan Sturm

Growing numbers of universities in the United States have undertaken gender and racial equity initiatives to achieve more inclusive institutions. They have formed gender commissions, undertaken data-driven inquiries, created processes for institutional analysis and ongoing deliberation, and implemented reforms as a result. These initiatives have been fostered by the actions of mediating institutions, such as the National Science Foundation and private foundations, research oriented non-governmental organizations, and professional and student associations. Universities have themselves formed informal associations to support and promulgate their efforts. They have used the internet and other forms of communication to share their work and learn from other institutions. Repeat players, both individual and institutional, are playing an important intermediary role across institutional domains as well. This work has sometimes been encouraged by the specter of coercive state power, such as through private litigation or regulatory agencies' investigation of university practices. My research documents and analyzes these simultaneous and, to some extent, linked developments to understand their implications as an approach to norm development, public problem-solving, and institutional transformation.

The Michigan and MIT gender equity initiatives are not a one shot gender equity program by a single institution. There is evidence that change is happening, at least to some extent, at an institutional and cultural level. Moreover, these initiatives are nested in an ongoing, multi-institutional practice arena involving other universities, mediating institutions, activists, and regulatory bodies. It offers the theory-in-practice of deliberative public problem solving driven by a combination of self-analysis, mobilization, cross-contextual comparison and institutional redesign.

This constellation of interventions offers a concrete example of the dynamics and mechanism that drive these new governance processes. First, the initiative institutionalizes accountable self-study that is generating information that otherwise would not be revealed about problems. Identification and disclosure of institutional problems proceeds in the face of strong incentives, some of them introduced by legality concerns, to avoid the problem. It occurs in no small part because of thorough-going participation in producing understanding of the problems by those affected and some of those responsible.

Second, the conceptual, structural, and strategic framework connects gender equity concerns with a range of related and underlying problems and values. Concerns about science are driving the initiative, without displacing the salience of gender. The problem definition and scope of the regime constructs and is in turn constructed by who is at the table, and is itself subject to scrutiny. Thus, the initial conceptual frame shapes and delimits who participates and how problems are defined, and the problems created by these conceptual boundaries are themselves questioned along the way.

Third, the initiative creates of new institutional spaces that are linked to and transformative of ongoing governance structures and processes. It fosters the development of mediating actors who enable translation, learning, and benchmarking across practice domains. It also creates experimental spaces that link governance systems, projects, and even regimes. These institutional spaces lie at the intersection of multiple governance and regulatory processes.

Fourth, the architecture of the initiative is itself creating spaces for mobilization of advocacy, leadership, and knowledge. It is also changing the context for the development, exercise, and redefinition of leadership. In so doing, the project acknowledges leadership as a significant factor. But it avoids the tendency to treat leadership and mobilization as exogenous variables and instead treats them as crucial components of the implicit regulatory theory.

Fifth, the initiative grapples with the mechanisms that enable or prevent cross-institutional learning to occur. It builds on pre-existing institutional and interpersonal relationships and networks. It also develops and empowers mediating actors who are creating a context for universities to look to each other both for ideas and strategies as well as a benchmarks and incentives for change. This includes an explicit focus on developing and continually revising a common metric that permits comparison and learning. In this process, the participants are confronting the profound difficulties and challenges even as they move forward in that endeavor. They are doing so with an explicit focus on sharing learning and data.

Sixth, the gender equity project is incomplete and uneven in its implementation and scope, even as it shows signs of penetrating the fabric of the institution and its organizational field. This provides a concrete domain in which to develop criteria for evaluating when change is symbolic and when it is substantive, both within a particular institutional setting and across institutional settings.

Finally, law and rights continue to operate in contradictory ways: as a normative catalyst and floor and as an obstacle or ceiling. The gender equity initiatives operate on a separate track from affirmative action programs. Lawyers are not driving the momentum and are most often not at the table. Affirmative action and human resources professionals tend to play a marginal role or to be completely uninvolved. At the same time, for some types of problems and some actors, law is playing a catalyst role as well as one of institutionalizing new understandings that have sedemented through the process of inquiry.

At this stage, we have identified five analytical categories that seem to us to capture major mechanisms contributing to the formation of a gender equity regime: (1) functionally integrating gender equity and core institutional practice through embedded independence and accountable governance; (2) developing and legitimating mediating actors; (3) building in architecture for sustaining mobilization and leadership; (4) connecting knowledge and action, generating usable knowledge; and (5) linking domains of practice: horizontally, vertically, and across regulatory systems.