TABLE 6 Number of Women and Men Full-Time Graduate Students in each Faculty ENGRG HLTH LAW NAT SCI SOC SCI w/o MED NOTE: Enrollment figures are as of Fall, 1969. Health Sciences figures do not include Medical School Faculty figures or Dental School Tenure figures. A MISCELLANY OF DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES The nepotism rule, the no-inbred-hiring policies, and the tenure system are among those that perpetuate discriminatory hiring and firing patterns and are contrary to the spirit of Executive Orders 11246 and 11375. Nepotism: We have all heard the arguments that the nepotism rule (now called the "favoritism" rule, and recently reaffirmed by Chancellor Gould) works against men as well as women, that it is a dead letter, that it will prevent a hypothetical department chairman in a hypothetical college from hiring his hypothetical wife to create a hypothetical voting bloc, or that it provides a social convenience for a chairman reluctant to turn down one of a couple. But changing the name does not change the rule, and dead letter or no (we do have couples serving in the same department on this campus by dispensation from above), the nepotism rule was instituted against the hiring of wives and remains to penalize women. Since it is culturally acceptable for husbands to put their careers first, but not for wives no matter how qualified, any forced choice between which partner is to work finds the advantage almost entirely with the husband. Thus the many academic women who marry academic men are forced into having to decide between career and marriage; their opportunities for combining both at what may be the best or even the only university in the area are denied them by an archaic nepotism rule. Further, in a day of growing numbers of academic husband and wife teams, especially in the sciences, the rule's very presence on the books can discourage qualified couples from applying. Conversely, having no nepotism rule can work to keep faculty teams from leaving for other universities where the wife can't work. Clearly the costs of the nepotism rule to the University are far higher than the advantages. No-inbred-hiring policies: The widespread policy of "no-inbred-hiring" by which a department or university refuses to employ any person who holds a 791 degree from that university, works, like the nepotism rule, to deprive women of equal opportunities in employment. Women who marry faculty men and move to the universities where their husbands have been hired may want to start or complete their graduate studies. On being awarded their degrees, however, they find that the university will not hire them. This is also true of the growing number of graduate students who marry faculty members. The policy also discriminates against women who want to return to graduate studies after marriage to men who are already established in the community-because their husbands cannot or will not move, these women are discouraged because no university job will be open to them, even if they do earn their degrees. Finally, the "no-inbred-hiring" rule, by its very existence, discourages many women from coming back for degrees at all, because there seems to be simply no way of using a long and expensive training. The "no-inbred-hiring" policy was established and widely accepted in an era of academic life very different from today's. Universities, faculties, and student bodies were smaller; there was much less movement from campus to campus, much less variety in subject, discipline, approach. Today's university, however, needs no such discriminatory restrictions; it is to the university's best interests to interview all applicants, including its own, and to choose from the widest field possible the best it can get. Any policy based on exclusion betrays the university's principles and restricts its choices as well as those of any person, especially a woman, seeking a job. |