Women fall through faculty gender gap at OU

Sources:
Nancy Mergler
OU Provost
405-325-3221
nmergler@ou.edu

Micheal Nash
OU Press Secretary
(405) 325-3916
michealnash@ou.edu

Data from 2011 OU Factbook ;Graph by: Ajinur Setiwaldi

The Faculty of the University of Oklahoma is dominated by men with a majority of them occupying the total instructional faculty and deans' offices.

According to the 2011 OU Factbook, more than 80 percent of 391 professors on the Norman campus are men. Women occupied about 24 percent of all full professor positions at four- year colleges and universities in the United States, according to a report by the American Association of University Professors.

It has been forty years since Congress passed a law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. Yet women still struggle to be admitted to the top faculty ranks in colleges and universities, according to the American Association of University Professors.

The Association of University Professors report that in 2003, women occupied 43 percent of all faculty positions. They made up 39 percent of all full-time and 48 percent of part-time faculty.

Women occupy about 34 percent of total full-time faculty at OU, according to the 2011 OU Factbook.

The OU Institutional Equality Office has an affirmative action policy. OU is committed to the continuation and expansion of positive programs which reinforce and strengthen affirmative action policies because of its desire to ensure social justice and promote campus diversity, according to Institutional Equality Office website.

“OU recruits faculty at the national level,” said provost Nancy Mergler.

The percentage of minorities and women in each OU academic unit is compared with the percentage of minorities and women in the national availability pool for that discipline, she said.

Mergler said if the availability percentage within the national pool is greater than the incumbent percentage within the OU academic unit, deans, chairs and directors are informed of the number needed to mirror the national data.

According to the Fall 2010 faculty census and OU's affirmative action plans, the national availability data predicts that 341 of 921 of the regular faculty would be women. OU's actual percentage of women in the regular faculty is four percent lower than the prediction.

OU is constantly working to create and maintain a diversity, OU spokesman Micheal Nash said.
These efforts have created programs like the OU Cousins and Religious Studies Program, Nash said.

“In regard to faculty and staff, OU strives to maintain and further advance the diversity of our campus through each hiring process,” Nash said.