UCLA’s Lingering Gender Equity Dilemma

The lone female chair is Aimee Drolet Rossi who heads up marketing

A survey of Anderson faculty by Korn Ferry found that more women believe the department chairs are to blame for the school’s gender equity issues, but Dean Olian did not escape criticism. Some 50% of the women faculty who responded to the survey believed that the dean is committed to and supportive of gender equity, but only 20% of the women believe that department chairs have been committed to and supportive of gender equity. “For political reasons, Judy aligned herself with white alpha males,” one professor claimed. “They are her kitchen cabinet. Others feels excluded.” The survey was completed by 90 faculty members at Anderson, 67 male and 23 female.

Olian also received significant praise in the report from unnamed faculty. “Judy does a good job,” the report quoted one professor as saying. “She’s a woman and she receives condemnation. Faculty need to stop pointing fingers at her.” Added another, “Faculty are quick to criticize. Judy cares about the school. She is focused on hiring senior women. Big hires with tenure were 100% male until this year. She’s done amazing things, brought salaries to market so when we compete, salary is not an issue.”

In the byzantine world of academic politics, Olian, like most deans, has her share of adversaries, particularly faculty who opposed her hard-fought efforts to end state funding for the school’s programs and make Anderson a self-supporting institution. None of that backdrop is addressed in the Korn Ferry report.

Instead, the consultants put some of the blame on hiring practices at the school. “The bias also surfaced during hiring which employs a seminar process described as adversarial,” they wrote. “Females who do not do well in this climate may be judged as less competent than males, and female candidates themselves may choose to join another institution whose climate they perceive as more welcoming. Either way, this process may impact Anderson’s ability to attract female faculty more so than male faculty.”

SHARP DECREASE IN FEMALE FACULTY FROM ASSOCIATE TO FULL PROFESSOR

The researchers also theorized that an “unconscious bias” pervades the school’s culture. “There is a great deal of evidence,” according to the report, “to support the perspective that male faculty are ‘given the benefit of the doubt’ to a greater degree than female faculty and that similar information is viewed very differently based on gender. This bias surfaces often when trying to determine the value of the contribution made to a collaborative effort, as well as in more marginal cases.”

The upshot: Korn Ferry found a sharp decrease in female faculty from associate to full professor, with 67% of female turnover occurring in the past five years. The consultants also discovered that tenure voting patterns revealed that female receive fewer ‘yes’ votes on average and more ‘no votes’ compared to their male counterparts.

The most compelling parts of the report are anonymous quotes from 30 confidential interviews with faculty conducted by Korn Ferry. “Distinguished professors are all men,” one professor told Korn Ferry. “There are no female faculty at step six or above. It’s startling.” Adds another, “Men’s role in the hiring process is very important. We invite people to do a seminar and the seminar culture is very adversarial. It’s bad for women and people from certain cultures. It’s off-putting because of how questions are asked—it’s harsh; people get yelled at. That has to stop.”

“We have very high standards for women that are not applied to men,” explained one professor to Korn Ferry. “The standards for men are too low. We’ve promoted a lot of men because of the old boy network.”

‘DISCIPLINES THAT EMPHASIZE MATH ARE FALSELY SUPERIOR’

The poet/quant divide was brought up again and again by the professors who were interviewed. “The school’s social psychologists are almost entirely women,” explained one faculty member. “There’s a lack of understanding about what they do. It’s viewed as soft and insufficiently managerial. Their research is sometimes dismissed.”

Complained another: “The quant/math people are a faction. To them, other areas are soft or irrelevant. If a woman does experiential work, she’s held to a higher standard.” One professor said research with a heavy quant focus tends to be more highly regarded. “We use the hard language of math excessively and inappropriately. It makes disciplines that emphasize math falsely superior.” Adds yet another professor: “They think math is real science and soft stuff is not. ‘Rigor’ means numbers.”

Women faculty told Korn Ferry they are also treated differently by male MBA students. “It’s much easier to be a man here,” one professor is quoted in the report. “There’s male privilege in the classroom. The business school is a very male place. We attract a certain type of male that has an aggressive style of questioning young professors. Females get that skepticism to a much greater degree.”

MALE MBA STUDENTS DO NOT TREAT FACULTY WITH THE SAME RESPECT REGARDLESS OF GENDER

“On teaching evaluations,” added a faculty member, “students comment on what female faculty wear. It’s more difficult for women, they have a tougher go of it.” Says another: “I notice bias among students. I get way more complaints about my slides. Students refer to men as ‘professor.’ For me it was (my first name).”

Only 14% of the female faculty at Anderson strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that “students treat faculty with the same respect regardless of gender.” Some 67% of the male professors, however, agreed with the statement.

Olian, who recently hosted many of the female business school deans on her campus to discuss gender issues, says she is committed to change. “Nobody likes this kind of attention but I don’t think anyone doubts my commitment to change the culture,” she says. We want to boost the number of senior female faculty, hiring from the outside and nurturing our own.”

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