am
special
report
the
Sunday
dcaily
by
daiiiel
ziw'e dling
iber 43
Night Editor:Lynn Weiner
Sunday, February 14, 1971
The
'U'
crusade
for/against
women
*i
ITY THE POOR University: one of
the great educational institutions in
the nation, famed for liberal achieve-
ments, it is berated publicly by the U.S.
Denartment of Health, Education and
Welfare b e c a u s e it discriminates
against-not blacks but-women. HEW
ordered the leaders here, all of them
men, to upgrade women: they must
revamp hiring procedures, formulate
employment goals and timetables, and
scour t h e ir records, scrutinize every
one, search their souls to discover
women they have oppressed, and then
pay back every penny which these
women should have earned but didn't.
Think of the work! Allan Smith, vice
president for academic affairs, calls
this demand an "imposition." "Our ob-
jetion is the godawful number of man
hours it will take todo it," Smith com-
plains. But University administrators
are getting something out of the agree-
ment: the national press has hailed the
University's commitment as "historic,"
and even 'University officials trumpet
their affirmative action plan as a na-
tionwide first. It's true the University
is the first college in the country to
tackle the problem of sex discrimina-
tion. It sounds so glorious! One begins
to forget the University started the
discrimination in the first place. But
behind administrative doors, the men
of the University are grumbling.
We just want to get those
bastards at HEW off our
backs," confides Fidele
Fauri, vice president for
state relations and plan-
ning. He's supervisor of
the University battle
agairst sex discrimination.
The University has treated the HEW
investigation and agreement hostilely
from the beginning. HEW shocked the
nation's college system when it blocked
new government contracts last fall to
four major universities because they
discriminate against, women - t h e
University was one of them. Women felt
powerless to challenge discrimination
in university employment until last
year, when the Washington-based
Women's Equity Action League (WEAL)
discovered the potentials of a 1965
Executive Order 11246, a.mended in
1968 to prohibit discrimination by fed-
eral contractors for reasons of sex as
well as national origin, religion, age
and race. Since then, WEAL has de-
manded investigations at more than
200 universities, including all medical
schools plus the entire state systems
of California, New. York, Florida and
New Jersey.
HEW fingered the University as its
test target. We're a good place to start.
Barely six per cent of the Uniyersity
faculty with professorial status are
women, and most of them cluster in
the school of nursing (all w o m e n
there), library science, childhood edu-
cation, social work and the literary col-
lege (romance languages are biggest).
Few of the women who work on the
nonacademic staff rise past secretarial
positions. It's common to find a
woman cleric with a BA or MA per-
forming 'the same duties as a man
classified higher up on the scale who
is earning $8,000 more per year. If you
wear a skirt you're an administra-
tive secretary; otherwise you're an
administrative assistant. Even when
women do make the senior administra-
tive assistant level - their peak at the
University - they average up to 27
per cent less money than men in the
same job.
Deep in the recesses of University
files, there is sordid information t h e
University wasn't anxious to reveal.
When a team of four HEW investigat-
ors arrived last August, University of-
ficials balked at opening all person-
nel files. "There's confidential infor-
mation in personnel files which we
don't feel just anyone should be able
to look at," says one administrator. He
says the Univeristy was protecting its
employes. HEW threatened to block
automatically federal conracts, and the
University loosened up. For what? Two
months later HEW delivered a scath-
ing 20 page report, crammed with evi-
dence of sex discrimination (the Uni-
versity refuses to release the report,
claiming that it is full of "misinforma-
tion" which would cause more public
harm than good), and demanded a
tough affirmative action program to
increase employment of w o m e n
throughout the University.
President Robben Fleming respond-
ed with a program which promised, at
best, to "keep staff members informed
periodically that the Michigan Civil
Rights Commission is available to re-
view and process discrimination, in-
cluding sex, complaints." HEW flatly
rejected the proposal, and to enforce
its point, blocked up to $7.5 million in
federal contracts. After frantic nego-
tia~tions with top HEW officials in
Washington, the University finally
wrote the nation's first affirmative ac-
tion program which HEW hopes will
pave the way for achieving employ-
ment equality between the sexes.
HEW has 200 more sex discrimina-
tion complaints pending; our agree-
ment will provide the model. If you
study it closely you'll know what pro-
gress to expect in the sex discrimina-
tion battle.
The Plan
The highlights of the program prom-
ise the University will:
0 achieve salary equity between men
and women employes who have t h e
same qualifications, responsibilities
and performance in the same job cate-
gories;
" pay back wages to any women who
has lost pay due to discrimination, re-
troactive to the date she was hired;
* undertake the "vigorous" recruit-
ment of women in faculty positions;
" give "priority consideration" to
eligible women who seek promotion in
nonacademic jobs;
* treat tandem husband-wife teams
equally, and pay back wages to any
wives who have been discriminated
against;
0 recruit men and women for em-
ployment without any classification by
sex;
* create a special commission on
women.
"Once you let women know they've got
you over a barrel, they'll take
every-
thing they can get from you," William
Cash, the University's human relations
director and member of the negotiat-
ing team with HEW, told me. "Women
just make life difficult." I leaned over
his desk to squeeze a little horn that's
mounted on wood and goes "blaaht."
regions, Kansas City and Seattle, dmn't
have any investigators.
HEW devoted an extraordinary
amount of time to the first stage of
negotiations with the University, but
won't have the staff to follow up on the
University's progress: "Now our inves-
tigations are hit and miss," says James
Hodgedon, the HEW Chicago Regional
director. "If we send investigators back
to Michigan, it means they can't go
some lace else."
The University will send periodic re-
ports to HEW, but that doesn't guaran-
tee the reports will be accurate, or if
they are accurate, that the progress
they represent will be satisfactory. "It
all depends on how you rate the Uni-
versity's good faith," says Hodgedon.
"I'm sure they're not complete scoun-
drels. Everybody has a little bit of
scoundrel in them. But we don't expect
clear sailing either."
Major a r e a s of discrimination
against women at the University re-
main untouched by the HEW agree-
ment. No mention of maternity leave,
no mention of child care centers. And
little mention of discrimination against
women in admissions.
HEW originally ordered the Univer-
sity to increase the number of women
admitted to graduate programs, but
after Fleming and Smith descended on
It's a
"Secretary
University administration - distrust
of women may sabotage it.
For example: Under its pledge for
"vigorous recruitment" of women pro-
fessors, University officials must send
HEW by March 8 detailed numerical
employment goals and timetables. Just
how many women will the University
actually hire? Fleming has told all de-
partments the University won't hire
any staff for at least three years. All
new personnel must come from normal
turnover, which means a woman's only
hope is capturing positions vacated
through resignations or retirement.
Tight economic conditions will mean
abnormally small turnover. "In t h e
short run," says Barbara Newell, an in-
stitutional freak as assistant to the
President, and chairwoman of the
Commission, "I'm afraid what we may
be doing is just making sure that
women aren't the first to be squeezed
out."
When it comes to actually formulat-
ing goals and timetables, each depart-
ment chairman follows his (they're all
men) own conscience: there are no
University-wide guidelines. Smith de-
fines the guarantee women will get:
"We have a University policy that says
to department heads: 'You will be
active, you will be aggressive, you will
set up a goal.' Then it's up to the in-
dividual units to achieve it."
University officials aren't eager to
compensate women who are lucky
enough to have jobs but haven't been
getting the salaries they should. The
executive officers seriously considered
suing the government in federal court
to challenge its clause on retroactive
pay. "The normal procedure, over-
whelmingly, in labor practice is to pay
retroactive to the date of the com-
plaint, not some arbitrary preolace in
the past," complaints Smith. Further-
more, he says, "We objected to the im-
oosition of our reviewing 15,000 files"
to find cases of sex discrimination. The
University said: let those with griev-
ances come to us. "But we finally de-
cided, it's just work."
Personnel woes
aller."
ordered, they considered only job cate-
gories which include both men and
women - less than 25 per cent of the
total work force. Then, instead of
comparing the average female to the
average male salaries - which would
show an enormous discrepancy - they
compared the average female salary
to the average salary of men and
women together. That weights the fig-
ure down.
Predictably, personnel found only 160
women in a total work force of 10,000
whose salaries are inexplicably below
"normal." Director of Personnel Ed-
ward Hayes says his department can
"explain away" all but 35 cases.
Personnel .won't even consider rais-
ing the pay of the mass of women
employes - clerical workers with bot-
tom pay and scanty worker benefits.
There aren't any male workers to com-
pare them with. Nor will Personnel in-
vestigate whether women with one
classification are doing the same job as
a man who's classified higher.
As a result, notes PROBE, the cam-
pus women's research group, the ad-
ministration "neatly sidesteps t h e
most blatant inequity in the Univer-
sity's present salary structure - that
is, females are systematically hired in-
to job classifications beneath their
training and abilities."
"That's a horrendous task," says
Hayes. "To gather facts on what an in-
dividual's duties and responsibilities
are takes four hours. Six thousand wo-
men times 4 hours is 24,000 man hours
of effort."
But, Hayes says, that's not the main
issue, which is: the University doesn't
need such a study. "We think job class-
ifications are equitable," he says, "be-
cause that's been one of our most fund-
amental concepts - that men and
women doing the same job get the
same pay."
What about women who qualify for
better jobs but don't get promoted be-
cause of their sex? This is an exam-
ple, says Vice President Smith, where
HEW's "interpretation of existing con-
ditions is wrong. They blame discrim-
ination as the cause of few women be-
ing in top jobs, when that's not' the
reason.
"HEW sees we have a large number of
secretaries who have high degrees, and
says we're discriminating because they
aren't in higher jobs. We have hund-
reds of well qualified faculty wives who
want to work to help support their hus-
bands. Many of them have training to
qualify them for jobs better than sec-
retary. But we don't have many jobs
available better than secretary. Do we
tell them they can't work? They say
they want to work, so we hire them as
secretaries."
Smith continues: "We have a good
many emploTes, knowing their tenure
here is only three to five years because
their husbands will leave, who don't
seek a shift to a higher position. They
don't want that additional responsibil-
ity."
But Smith concedes there are some
women who do deserve promotion, want
it, and don't get it. "We'll put their
names on a list along with everyone
else and consider them when there's
an opening," says personnel director
Hayes. That's the University's "priority
consideration."
Women who don't like the Univer-
sity's sense of justice can protest as a
last resort through normal grievance
procedures: complain to your super-
visor ("that's the man who hired you
and is responsible for the grievance in
the first place," observes Newell), then
to the department head, and finally to
the University Grievance Board: Di-
rector of Personnel Hayes, the chief of
the employe's department, and - as
a special new feature in sex cases -
a woman.
Personnel director Hayes has already
formed his verdicts. "As far as Person-
nel is concerned, discrimination against
women does not exist." He adds, "May-
be it does not insure the most fair
and impartial review since we are re-
viewing our own judgments." Univer-
sity officials say they'll use this pro-
cedure only for nonacademic employ-
es; the faculty maintains a tradition
of settling disputes informally among
colleagues. Most, of course, are men.
The best summary of the Univer-
sity's commitment to fighting sex dis-
crimination is the new Women's Com-
mission: it has no budget and no pow-
ers. Administration officials (none of
them will take credit) selected these
two men, eight faculty women and two
nonacademic female employes, by
"asking around to see who was inter-
ested" according to an administration
source. The University recently granted
the commission members time-off
every Friday afternoon; before then,
the commission was "a floating crap
game," says chairwoman Newell.
Newell says the commission .plans to
begin hearings in March on sex dis-
crimination and hopes "to have a few
concrete recommendations by the end
of the semester."
But the Women's Commission won't
review the crucial employment goals
and timetables which the University
will send HEW in March. "We simply
will not have time to get everybody
into the act," says Smith.
The affirmative action plan might
work at the University if government
enforcement could outmuscle the ad-
ministration's begrudging attitude.
Only punitive economic sanctions, the
contract bans, forced the University to
look at sex discrimination at all. But
f'
Fedele Fauri
the Washington office to protest the
issue was referred to Secretary Elliot
Richardson.
The University contends the execu-
tive order doesn't give HEW authority
to monitor admissions; HEW argues
that since admission to graduate school
is a prerequisite for employment as a
teaching or research assistant, it falls
under the HEW mandate. Few people
doubt there's discrimination against
graduate women: as funds get tighter,
Rackham will admit male students
"who are more likely to finish, less
likely to drop out and have babies," as-
sociate Dean Byron Groesbeck said last
year. If Richardson upholds the HEW
staff decision, says Smith, the Univer-
sity will go to the courts.
Undergraduate admissions, mean-
while, go completely unprotected by
the executive order. The LSA admis-
sions committee has maintained for
years a male-female freshman ratio of
about 55-45 percent, although there are
more qualified women than men appli-
cants in terms of standardized test
scores and grades. What's the ration-
ale? Smith suggests it might be "his-
toric" tradition. Another reason: "The
hard sciences would lose" if suddenly
more women and less men were admit-
ted. Women flock to the humanities.
In any case, the University isn't going
to look at admissions discrimination.
"We have enough trouble," says Smith.
Raising consciousness
On the top floors of the Administra-
tion Building, the University's male
leaders pace the corridors, damning
the whole HEW controversy as some
vast mistake. Fidele Fauri, poor fellow,
is burdened with unwanted responsi-
bility for the whole anti-sex disrimina-
tion program. "I don't know why I
have anything to do with sex," he says,
They're furious at HEW's "complete
arbitrariness" (Fauri's words) in fing-
ering the University. HEW negotiated
an affirmative action program with the
But women at the University aren't The Personnel office is combing the
applauding. The plan may prove to be files, ostensibly searching for women
more of a public relations hoax than who are getting cheated out of honest
a genuine commitment to fighting sex wages. But they're playing games with
discrimination. Political maneuvering, statistics: when personnel investigat-
bureaucratic obstinence, economic ors recently studied job files to find
realities, and a deep seated male - i.e. cases of wage discriminationi, as HEW