Equal Footing: What Would that Mean?
By Judith White, Assistant Vice President, Office of the Executive Vice President, Duke University and Chair, National Initiative for Women in Higher Education

Like many of you, we at Duke have spent time this fall reflecting on Title IX and changes in campus life in the thirty years since its passage. For us, however, 1972 also marked a local milestone for women's education-the closing of Duke's coordinate Woman's College and the merging of women students into our undergraduate Trinity College.

In November we had our first reunion specifically for Woman's College alumnae. The occasion was a celebration of the Woman's College and its legacy of leadership and excellence. For me the invitation to lead a seminar during the event was also an occasion to look back at the history leading to the creation of the Woman's College in 1930, thirty-four years after a gift from Washington Duke established an endowment for Trinity College with the stipulation that women were to be educated on "an equal footing" with men.

In 1896 it was truly extraordinary that a benefactor of a small, southern, historically white college would put such tangible support behind not just education for women, academies or institutes specifically for women were springing up across the south, but collegiate education for women and men in the same place. The idea was so unusual that for nearly 20 years, the inclusion of women remained very limited. Then in 1914 a campaign to fund a new women's residence hall was framed by the Trinity president as the beginning of a coordinate college, a part of Trinity College that would clearly be apart. The project began in earnest in 1924 with new gift from Washington Duke's sons. Alice Mary Baldwin, recently hired as the Dean of Women, was charged with planning for the Woman's College of Duke University.

Dean Baldwin focused much of her attention on making sure the women students had access to the same curriculum, and for the most part to the same faculty as the men. At the same time, she was determined that the separate residential campus for women, opened in 1930 and built two miles from the Gothic campus for Trinity College, was to be a place of support and leadership training for Woman's College students. The record of Woman's College graduates shows that her approach did give women students as close to an equal footing with men as could be made available in that place and in that era.

By 1972, different conditions for securing equality seemed possible. Because many progressive thinkers believed full equality would not be achieved until women were where men were, the Woman's College was closed in 1972 and women were integrated into Trinity College. It is not coincidental that the Woman's College closed the same year as the passage of Title IX.

The record of women entering various professions since 1972 shows that when obvious barriers to women's advancement are lowered, some women in whatever settings will prepare themselves and achieve in areas where white men once had exclusive opportunities. Making sure that all women have such access and are not blocked from achieving was an important goal at the time of passage of Title IX. It clearly remains an important task today. But as we continue our necessary vigilance about gender equity, are we ready to move from being on an equal footing as men, to being women and men on an equal footing together?

What would that mean? I do not have easy answers. I know we need some new questions. Today many more institutions ask "which women?" and "which men?" when the statistics are gathered. That's a good start. Disaggregating sex data by racial and ethnic categories is an absolute requirement for getting a larger picture. We also have to find ways to look at differences among us by age, economic background, sexual orientation and physical abilities. The goal is not to divide us but to help us understand and improve the specifics of our lived experiences on campus.

In addition, we have to ask some harder questions about the lives of women employees. When we look at the status of women employees, we have to look beyond the obvious counts. Outside the faculty ranks, women employees outnumber men on most campuses, often by as much as two to one. More women do hold jobs once held exclusively by men. More often, however, women are clustered in some fields and men in others. What reinforces this clustering? What makes some jobs "women's jobs" and others "men's jobs"? What does it take to change this? Does changing these patterns move us towards parity and equity? Is having more men in a field the only way to raise the status of women employees? What lessons do institutions convey to students about gender in the workplace?

Given the large number of women employees, what do we know about the experiences among women of different backgrounds and in various employment categories? We know that being women in the same place does not always create solidarity. Indeed as I have talked with many women here at Duke, one African American secretary captured the heart of the matter, "We don't see the issues as gender-related. We're all women here, but we are not all treated equally." This particular woman meant racial discrimination, but others focus on tensions of class and status. How do we negotiate the distinctions made between women in salaried positions and those in hourly-wage positions? Is it true that there are no gender issues here? Has the gendered clustering of most women's jobs made us just that much more aware of our other differences? Or are there other historical factors that make gender equity only part of the issue in improving the lives of women on campus?

Why do I feel hopeful about taking these questions on now, even as we see increasing challenges to gender equity and Title IX? First, as a member of the Steering Committee of President Nannerl Keohane's Initiative on the Status of Women at Duke, I know I have the backing of my university leadership to ask such questions. In addition, as Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Initiative for Women in Higher Education, I know I have colleagues across the country in NIWHE who can help me explore these questions. Together the NIWHE network represents campuses, research centers, and national educational associations. Working with allies like you, we can shape questions, sponsor and gather research, bring these issues to the attention of educational leaders and policy makers, and, most important, provide an avenue for involving activists on more campuses.

We know that higher education as a whole can only be transformed if institutions sign on. One campus at a time, under local conditions. But we also know that local conditions can be shaped by external forces and accumulated information. The National Advisory Board of NIWHE is encouraged that so many of you have signed on to spur the next generation of equity initiatives. We hope that still more of you will log on to our web site, CampusWomenLead.org. You hold the key to how equality will be defined in the coming years. If you are coming to Seattle this year for the AAC&U annual conference, look for us there. The conference title is "The Courage to Question: Liberal Education in the 21st Century." Bring your questions. Answers also welcome. It is clear our footing is not yet equal. Our goal is to get there together.