Agenda for Women 2000 History

Agenda for Women: History

From early in UMD's history, groups of faculty, staff and students have lobbied for gender equity and for attention to women's concerns. For instance, a skeletal Women's Studies Program was established in the late 1960s. In 1974, the Commission for Women was founded. In 1993, the UMD/AAUW Campus Initiative for Equity focused on campus climate, staff issues, tenure-track faculty and adjunct faculty.

In 1994-95, faculty and staff from Women's Studies and the Commission for Women petitioned Chancellor Renick to establish a UMD Agenda for Women. He asked Provost Simpson to take responsibility, and in 1996 the Provost's committee submitted the first Agenda for Women. The Provost issued three progress reports on the 68 recommendations of the Agenda, and the committee, under the leadership of Patricia Smith, issued responses. (The 1997 and 1998 progress reports, as well as the response to the 1998 report, are also available.)

During the 1999-2000 academic year, the Agenda committee and its new chair, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, decided to recognize the progress that had been made, to review the state of gender equity, to review previous recommendations and to develop a new set of recommendations. It collected quantitative data and, with the Provost's encouragement, ran a series of focus groups with a total of 44 participants in February and March 2000.¹ The committee received further input in April and May during conversations with the Faculty Senate, CASL Executive Committee, CASL Administrative Council, the Commission for Women, and the Staff Senate. The committee was also informed by small group discussions on a range of previously identified topics held by approximately 60 participants at the Mapping the Future Conference on May 4, 2000.

¹ Agenda committee members conducted separate focus groups with:

tenured faculty (7 randomly recruited women)
assistant professors & lecturers (4 randomly recruited women)
adjunct faculty (3 randomly recruited women)
professional and administrative staff (6 randomly recruited men and women)
clerical staff (8 randomly recruited women)
“traditional students” (9 women recruited through clubs)
“returning students” (4 women students recruited through Counseling)
engineering students (3 women responding to questions by email)

We underline that the focus groups elicited participation from a broad range of people who had not contributed previously to forming an agenda for women. Participants did not come just from the ranks of Women's Studies or the Commission for Women. Moreover, committee members who ran the groups participated in training to facilitate without leading the discussions.

Agenda for Women