Warmer Climates: Women in Community Colleges

Estrella Mountain Community College

Recently, an article in Time raised the question, “Is there a climate-change tipping point?” As the article suggested, some scientists believe that the global ecological climate is akin to a system on a fulcrum. Typically balanced around an unstable equilibrium, the system, once permanently destabilized, accelerates swiftly away from the status quo. In nuclear physics, the concept of “critical mass” plays a similar role: a “critical mass” is the minimum amount of material needed to support a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Once started, the reaction accelerates without external support. These images are compelling—and if Malcolm Gladwell is to be believed, they illustrate social as well as physical realities. But do social systems have “tipping points”? Is there such a thing as a “critical mass” for institutional climate change?

When it comes to the climate for women, no institutions provide a better natural laboratory for testing these questions than community colleges. Community colleges have higher percentages of women students, faculty, and administrators than their four-year counterparts, raising compelling questions about their climates for gender equity. Do women gravitate toward community colleges because they do, indeed, provide more hospitable workplace environments? And if so, have their climates been affected by the existence of a “critical mass” of women? This issue’s authors explore these questions with results that are mixed but instructive, pointing toward the strengths of this unique educational sector as well as its sources of imbalance.

Taking up these questions explicitly, contributing author Linda Serra Hagedorn finds evidence that women have indeed reached a critical mass in the community college sector—but that women and men in adjunct positions, despite their similarly dominant numbers, are still subject to a chill. Taking a different viewpoint, Jaime Lester suggests that gender norms continue to negatively affect women’s experiences in the community college sector, despite their numerical equity. Still, as both Traci Schlesinger and Charlene Dukes point out, community colleges can be sites of unique opportunity for women students and administrators—and, as Christine Iijima Hall argues, they could teach four-year colleges a few lessons about serving their constituents. Collectively, these authors illustrate what some of these lessons might be, while also challenging the community college sector to continue improving its climate for female faculty, administrators, and students.

Institutional climate is notoriously difficult to measure, and the climate at community colleges is no exception. Yet as this issue’s authors affirm, women’s high numbers in community colleges suggest potential warming in that sector that may eventually extend across institutional types. In this instance, warming would be a welcome change.