The Agenda for Women is part of a broad effort to equalize opportunities and to foster an inclusive climate at UMD for staff, faculty and students.  The original Agenda, produced by a Chancellor-sanctioned committee in 1996, grew out of a long history of grassroots lobbying for women's issues.  The new version reviews progress made since the original Agenda and makes a new set of recommendations appropriate to campus needs in the year 2000.

In 40 years of campus history, women have made gains on many fronts.  However, both quantitative data and a series of focus groups conducted in 2000 with randomly selected staff, faculty and students revealed six areas of deep, persistent problems:

• Lack of respect for women and an occasionally inhospitable climate
• Gendered problems with pay and promotion
• A continuing absence of women in the upper ranks of administration and the best-paid faculty positions
• Inadequate support for the Women's Studies Program
• Lack of family-friendly policies to support staff, student and faculty responsibilities for childcare and elder care
• Failure to apply existing equity policies uniformly across campus units

1. Outspoken campus leadership for gender equity
2. Performance review of administrators on the basis of equity issues
3. Required seminars on gender discrimination and sensitivity for administrators
4. Orientation for new supervisors, especially those from the faculty
5. A Women's Center with appropriate space and staffing
6. Support for promotion of associate professors to full professor
7. A Women's Studies Director line at the associate or full level
8. Special hire of women full professors
9. Reclassification to address the growing gap between staff responsibilities and pay
10. A floor for staff salary at 185% of the poverty line
11. Faculty training for gender equity in teaching
12. A diversity course requirement as part of the general education requirement for students that addresses gender, race/ethnicity and other equity issues