When President Nan Keohane described a "deep reservoir of concern about women's issues" in a speech earlier this month, she argued for more attention to women's status at Duke.
Now, as Keohane prepares to flesh out plans for her initiative, other administrators are not only beginning to notice, but also consider how they can help.
In her April 12 address to the Administrative Women's Network, Keohane described conversations with Duke women at all levels, in which some expressed concern about a lack of dialogue on gender. She said complaints ranged from the specific, including pay equity, to broader campus climate issues.
Vice President for Institutional Equity Sally Dickson, whose office is largely responsible for addressing these issues, said the president's attention can only bolster her work. "As I have talked with people around the University in trying to assess what some of the expectations of women are, one of the things I have heard is that women's issues are not on the table," Dickson said. "What is the experience of women at Duke? Now I think the president is giving women a voice."
Keohane identified several routes that an initiative could pursue. For example, she proposed commissioning a professional study of Duke's gender culture, holding a national conference on women in academic life and gathering more data on concerns such as pay equity and the diversity of management.
At least one committee made similar recommendations in the early and mid-1990s, but with Keohane's help they could now become a reality, said Judith White, former chair of a committee on gender issues and then-sexual harassment prevention coordinator.
"It's very difficult to make changes when you don't have data over time. I think we are interested in knowing even some really basic things, like a comparison of the salary equity," she said.
White added that the administration particularly needs data that can be broken down in different ways, including race and ethnicity.
Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, said he will spend part of the summer as well as the fall semester considering how the administration can improve the climate for female students. He and Donna Lisker, director of the women's center, said female students often do not receive the respect they deserve, even beyond specific issues like sexual assault.
"We're beginning to think about [designing] some systematic leadership opportunities for women on campus. Many women already become leaders... but others may have an inkling about that, and we're not doing enough to help that along," Lisker said. "My fear is that women are still too often falling victim to stereotypes, that they get classified by what they wear, who they date."
Gender issues also have an impact on the faculty, said Nancy Allen, professor of rheumatology and immunology and incoming chair of the Academic Council. She noted that women are not commonly found in leadership roles, including in the Medical Center. For example, Brigid Hogan, a Vanderbilt University researcher, will be the first ever female chair in a Medical Center department when she assumes management of cell biology next December.
Robyn Wiegman, director of the Program in Women's Studies, said it is helpful to link institutional questions--such as dividing one's responsibility between home and work--to scholarly questions of gender.
"We have a lot of experience in how you can even gather data or even find out information about women," Wiegman said. "One of the things that women's studies as a field does is work in an interdisciplinary mode, where we try to link more analytical methods to more quantitative ones."
That a female president could not openly tackle women's issues in the first nine years of her tenure, is telling of Duke's culture, White said.
She said many female leaders, more than their male counterparts, must first prove themselves before addressing other agenda items.
"That's the ironic thing, that the response when you get a female president goes in two directions," White said of Keohane's 1993 appointment. "One, everyone's so happy that we've done this wonderful thing. Then, there begins to be this pressure to show you can do the other things, the regular things, so it becomes harder to talk about these issues."
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