A Fairer Course for Women : Is there an institutional bias at UC Irvine medical school?

The University of California ought to be in the nation’s vanguard in drawing capable women to its faculty, paying them adequately and promoting them to top positions. But a new study of the faculty at the UC Irvine medical school offers a glaring example of how a great public university can fall short of its promise.

The evidence comes from a task force study of the school that depicts an institution bogged down in the deplorable typecasting of gender that is widespread in society. The dean, Walter Henry, acknowledges that the school must do better, and he says he is devoting resources to studying the problem.

That’s somewhat encouraging, but the evidence shows that the medical school has a long way to go. The slow pace of change to date suggests that there’s an institutional bias that may not be cured simply by a few more hires. For example, women made up only 10% of the medical college faculty in 1981, and the percentage was unchanged a decade later. Women at the associate professor level today make $9,000 a year less on average than their male counterparts.

The most glaring problem is at the top. There are only seven women who are full professors, versus 124 men, and only one woman was hired at that rank in the last six years.

Nor is the UC Irvine medical school alone among medical schools in its sorry hiring and promotion record. A recent study at UC San Francisco, for example, found that women made up only 9% of the tenure and tenure-track faculty there.

So how to fix the problem? There should be many more hires, more promotions and better pay. But that alone won’t do it; a fundamental commitment to changing the institutional culture is needed. Henry would only have to stroll across campus to get that message from one nationally recognized expert on women in the workplace, Judy Rosener, a professor at UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management.

What top administrators in medical schools really need is consciousness-raising in their own ranks. Without basic shifts in attitudes in high places, reform likely will always come too slowly.