Women on the verge

Arizona Daily Wildcat Photos courtesy of Desert Yearbook Ina E. Gittings, former athletic director, developed several extensive exercise programs for female students. She also started the first women's polo team in the country at the University of Arizona.

The University of Arizona made sure women knew how to act like ladies.

Skirts carried past the knee, women snuggled into dorm beds by 10 p.m. and home economics was an accredited major.

A national movement toward gender equality in the 1960s made daily life easier for women, but bigger changes and issues still loomed.

As Women's History month draws to a close, the progress and struggles of current students, faculty and staff will form the last chapter of UA women's history before the millennium.

Editor's Note: The Century 1999, the turn of the century and the millennium will be a worldwide year of historical reflection and celebration. The Arizona Daily Wildcat features the sixth in an occasional series on the events and people that shaped the University of Arizona community.

Foundations

As two of the first female pioneers at the UA, Ina E. Gittings and Estelle Lutrell helped pave the road to positive change for women.

"The whole movement started in the 1940s when women started getting into the work force and making changes," said Karen Anderson, a history professor and former Women's Studies head.

She said women like Gittings started a revolution with small steps toward achieving recognition.

Gittings joined the university in 1920 - a year after the UA Women's Athletic Association formed.

As UA athletics director and women's physical education professor from 1922 to 1951, Gittings developed extensive programs in dance, track, horseback riding, swimming and team sports.

She also started the first female polo team in the country at the UA.

Lutrell claimed another first for the UA - holding the distinction of being the first female Arizona Library Association president in 1930.

Her greatest contribution to the university was the construction of a second library, which became the Arizona State Museum.

Colleagues said Lutrell's assertive nature helped her advance in a time when women's suffrage was young and few women were employed at universities.

"Students, faculty and even presidents quailed before her sharp and vigorous attack, often with brandished umbrella, on anything of which she disapproved," former UA librarian Patricia Paylore told the Arizona Alumnus in 1956.

Lutrell, who served as a librarian at the UA's Main Library from 1904 to 1932, also taught in the English department.

While at the university, she contributed to the statewide institution of a service that allows public access to UA library materials through written requests.

Females, who are now more prominent as librarians than males, head each of the three state university libraries, offering inspiration to UA librarian Karen Williams.

"Carla (Stoffle, UA Dean of Libraries) has made many great achievements for the (UA) library in the past five or six years," she said. "That, and the fact that we have three female library directors in the state, does open doors for us (women).

Average Salaries for Full-time Instructional Faculty Salary percentage 1973 Men Women (women/men) Professor $20,350 $17,275 (84.89%) Associate Prof $15,850 $12,175 (76.81%) Instructors $10,000 $9,900 (99.00%) 1997 Professor $80,502 $73,523 (91.33%) Associate Prof $55,685 $52,054 (93.48%) Lecturer $48,354 $41,529 (85.88%) source: Fall 1998, Annual Faculty Reports Summary, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Report of 1973

"It makes me personally feel like I can do anything in the field."

Giant Leaps for Woman-Kind

In 1965, women at the UA were still required to register their marital status.

Marriages after registration were reported immediately, or the woman was suspended from classes, according to the 1963-1965 University of Arizona Biennial Catalogue .

If a female student under the age of 23 wished to marry, she had to present a letter of approval from her parents to the dean of women. Students who didn't were suspended.

But despite the oppressive nature of some guidelines, Anderson said women's rights were increasing.

"The sixties were really good for women students," she said. "Socially, women were beginning to be treated like adults."

In the early 1970s, several protests questioned the enforcement of civil rights laws that were passed in the previous decade.

Major progress for women occurred when the U.S. Supreme Court passed Title IX education amendments in 1972.

The document stated that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

The legislation allowed women to participate in sports, but also allowed substantial progress in the classroom.

"People often think of Title IX as being good because it benefited female athletes, but it really was very good on an academic basis, as well," Anderson said. "It is why every academic department has to admit applicants based solely on qualifications, and was a wonderful step for women."

Women's Studies Program

The UA Women's Studies department began as a small committee in 1975. This program consisted of two permanent faculty members, a visiting assistant professor and a network of 60 affiliated instructors who taught most program courses.

Women's Studies advanced, but did not take major steps toward being a department until the early 1990s.

"It has been a slow progression, but a progression, nonetheless," said Kari McBride, a Women's Studies department lecturer and member of the UA Commission on the Status of Women.

It was not until 1994 that the program received permission to begin granting tenure to its faculty members. One year later, Women's Studies was approved to offer the Master of Arts degree, and in 1997, the Arizona Board of Regents granted Women's Studies departmental status.

Money matters

The Committee on the Status of University Women came together as an organized body in 1972. The next year, CSUW officials issued a statement saying that women should be included in decision-making processes at all university levels.

During this time, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that women at the UA were paid an average of 15 percent less than men.

Female associate professors at the university made an average of $3,700 less than their male counterparts, and full-time female professors received nearly $3,100 less per year than men in the same position.

After 25 years, salaries for men and women are still not equal at the university level.

"It is kind of an uneven pattern," Anderson said. "In the 1980s, we made considerable bounds in pay equity, but are moving far too slowly in the 90s."

In 1998, full-time female professors made an average 8.7 percent, or about $7,000, less then males at the UA, and female lecturers garnered 14.12 percent, about $3,600, below men, according to the fall 1998 Annual Faculty Reports Summary.

"In some cases it's a couple hundred dollars, in others it's a couple thousand a year," Anderson said. "But the lifetime earnings compounds to tens of thousands, if not more, that women simply are not making."

In an unexpected move, administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledged last week they have systematically discriminated against female faculty for decades.

The admission includes salaries and research money awarded to female faculty.

To counteract the problem, the school agreed to increase pay for female faculty by an average of 20 percent. They also plan to retroactively adjust retirement packages for some women to compensate for the inequity during their tenure at MIT, wrote Science School Dean Robert Birgeneu in a statement.

"I think it's great what they did at MIT and they should do it at the U of A," said Judith McDaniel, a Women's Studies adjunct lecturer. "They have brought women into academia and we have the numbers, but still haven't been able to get equal pay."

ASUA Women's Resource Center

In 1975, the Women's Coordinating Committee was created, and later founded the Associated Students Women's Resource Center.

The group formed out of concern that UA students needed more visible female role models in the academic environment. The committee also said students required a centralized location for health resources and literature pertaining to women.

Nearly a quarter century after its creation, the Women's Resource Center is still adapting to students' needs.

The center recently expanded by planning and attending the first conference between the UA's women's center and its counterpart at Northern Arizona University.

The conference, held last weekend, was on NAU's campus in Flagstaff.

The retreat's mission states that volunteers aimed to "improve and expand the capabilities and resources of the WRC... incorporate ideas from other successful projects sponsored by different resource centers, and ultimately pool all of (their) energies for the benefit of the student body."

"We hope to make this a tradition in the state to strengthen both of the resource centers," said Sarah Ballard, the center's director.

The Women's Resource Center and other female-oriented organizations have provided support to women, heightening awareness most effectively when many people are involved, Anderson said.

"You have more voice when there are more of you," she said.