A Statewide Policy-driven Approach to Gender Equity

This paper presents current successes and challenges of an NSF Advance-PLAN project designed to address gender equity through policy change on a statewide level. The project is based on the model of change that identifies effective change as a top-down policy driven approach through a central authority, in this case, a statewide board of regents that oversees all public universities. The model for top-down change is particularly suited to a small, rural state where a) n-values for gender related statistics at any institution may not be statistically significant b) institutional relations allow for cross-state cooperation and c) size of the institutions allows for timely implementation and assessment of policies. In addition, intercollegiate cooperation allows for provosts of all six institutions to serve as an advisory panel for the project. The paper will discuss the progress made by the project in terms of priorities including data acquisition and policy initiatives as well as challenges. Data have and are being collected and assessed in areas of salary, hiring, faculty annual reviews and retention. These areas were identified in review of past ADVANCE findings as key areas of implicit and explicit bias. Initial data analyses indicate that the state system follows trends identified in the literature including lower salary, differences in language used in annual reviews, and disparities in hiring and promotion. Challenges to the project include high administrative and project team turnover rates, difficulties in obtaining necessary data, and a state legislature that is chilly to issues of equity and diversity.