Glass Ceiling Commission - The Impact of the Glass Ceiling and Structural Change on Minorities and Women

Glass Ceiling ReportGlassCeilingBackground12StructuralChange.pdf: 9391 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Obstacles to Sustaining Diversity: Historical Context and Current Experiences of Underrepresented Minority Women and Men in Sociology and Economics

White men predominate in the top ranks of the professorate, but recent efforts have attempted to decrease inequality and increase diversity in the academy by hiring more faculty, especially women of color. Have equality and diversity efforts worked or has negative departmental climate limited efforts to make diversity sustainable? Despite the long history of and many contributions by women of color (URC) as public intellectuals, activists, and founders of organizations to promote Blacks and Latino/a people, we find that much of their work is still marginalized and is not viewed as legitimate science. This treatment may lessen the ability to increase equality and sustain diversity in academic institutions. The paper tests whether URC women scholars are still experiencing inequalities in comparison to their male peers of color in two disciplines, that of sociology and economics. We include these two disciplines because of similarities in origin and of topics. First, we hypothesize that women of color have significantly more negative experiences in sociology and economics departments than do men of color, when other conditions are held constant. Second, we hypothesize that structural conditions, are related to experiential outcomes for these scholars. Third, we hypothesize that participation in minority-oriented organizations improves women of color’s experiences. Fourth, we hypothesize that interacting gender with participation in minority-oriented organizations, significantly improves women of color’s situation. The study results show that women of color continue to experience greater problems of access, marginality, inclusion, and harassment in sociology and economics departments. The sustainable development goals of achieving gender equality and increase educational opportunities cannot be achieve without addressing these inequities and inclusion issues

Final Report: Task Force on the Implications of the Evaluation of Faculty Productivity and Teaching Effectiveness

The Task Force on the Implications of the Evaluation of Faculty Productivity and Teaching Effectiveness was charged in 1999 by ASA Council to determine whether faculty productively measures (including outcomes assessment measures) used by institutions of higher education and various external agencies “threaten the freedom of faculty teaching and research.” The Task Force was asked further to examine the ways in which productivity-reporting requirements affect faculty, to report on “best practices,” and to make any recommendations for appropriate ASA action to the Council. The report produced by the Task Force highlights the contextual factors that help to explain the increased emphasis in the United States on the evaluation of faculty productivity and the assessment of student learning outcomes including a series of social movements to adapt corporate models to the university and to consider teaching as scholarship. In addition, the Task Force stresses that discussions of faculty productivity are greatly complicated by definitional issues. The Task Force draws a critical distinction between the productivity of individual faculty members and the productivity of larger entities such as departments or colleges. They also distinguish between faculty productivity and student outcomes. Studies of aggregate productivity are complicated by numerous quantitative measures of the “production of students.” While the gathering of data on individuals in the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service has a long history, disputes continue about how to measure these aspects of productivity. Faculty annual activity reports are the most common way to measure these types of productivity. These measures are then aggregated and provided to administrators. When an aggregate is the unit of analysis, faculty productivity can be measured by asking faculty members to complete activity reports that indicate how work time has been used over a given period of time (usually an academic year)