Affirmative Action for Women Faculty

Abstract

Federal affirmative action (AA) policies have sparked much controversy in higher education, but they have produced relatively minor changes in faculty composition at most universities. Study after study documents continued inequities in access to employment, promotion, tenure, and salary for women faculty and predicts little change in the 1980s given halted growth in the higher education employment sector [1, 2, 6, 8]. Why have affirmative action policies fallen so short of their intended impact on higher education? One of the critical issues is the extent to which affirmative action policies have actually been implemented at colleges and universities. If token compliance has been the norm, then a better understanding of the complex interaction of factors that produced positive change at relatively successful institutions is much needed information. This study, focused on affirmative action implementation at doctorate-granting universities, fits into a tradition of research on organizational change and policy implementation. Three institutions were selected as case study sites because of their high scores on a specially developed change index. The case studies describe the factors and processes thought to account for the amount of change that occurred on behalf of women faculty on each campus during the 1970s. Case synopses are followed by cross-site comparisons and implications for the literature on federally mandated change.