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The UCD Response to Proposition 209
By Charity Hirsch
Martha West, law professor at UCD and
specialist in
labor law has been studying the situation for employment of women faculty
at UCD
and other colleges and universities in the US for many years. Davis, has
been her
special concern, and she has been checking their hiring statistics for
years.
Proposition 209, a legislative initiative banning preference for women or
minorities,
was passed in California in 1996. In 1995 the UC Regents had already
abolished
affirmative action in student admissions in the UC system. Even after
Proposition
209, however, federal law still requires affirmative action in hiring by
employers
receiving federal contract money.
This includes UC. Despite federal law, after Proposition 209 went into
effect, the
percent of women among new faculty hired at UC Davis fell from a 10-year
average
of 34% to 15% in 1997-98, and 18% in 1998-99. West conjectures that the
faculty,
who actually do the hiring, feel there no longer is any obligation for
them to hire
women or minorities.
The effect of Proposition 209 on admission of minority students to UC has
been
widely reported. We see another, perhaps unintended, and actually illegal
effect
when we look at UC hires.
Among recent American PhD recipients, 47% are women. West has
always felt
that UC should hire mostly assistant professors who would come from the
crop of
new PhDs. This would be good for hiring women and good for the University
budget. However, almost 40% of UC hires continue to be already tenured
professors,
not recent PhDs. Because women make up less than 20% of tenured faculty at
research universities, upper level hires come from pools with a much lower
percentage of women in them.
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