With women underrepresented on university science and engineering faculties nationwide, UC Davis is reaching out for ways to make the institution more "female friendly."

On June 29, the Women in Science and Engineering campuswide initiative held the first of a series of discussions on how to improve the recruitment, retention, promotion and success of female faculty, staff and students at UC Davis. The 40 participants who attended the session in Mrak Hall were asked for their feedback and recommendations. Additional meetings to take the campus pulse on this issue are planned for the upcoming academic year.

"Our goal is to build on the strengths of UC Davis in the area of women scientists and engineers," said Phyllis Wise, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and one of the leaders behind the initiative. "As a campus we've enjoyed some key successes in this area, but there is more work to do."

While women make up a large proportion of the doctorate pool in the arts and humanities, their numbers remain small in math and science. One reason is that for women, science and engineering jobs are exceptionally difficult to balance with family responsibilities.

Jeannine Pfeiffer, a lecturer in the Science and Society Program and co-leader for the initiative, said the upcoming dialogues would be used to prepare a white paper on the history and status of female faculty efforts at UC Davis.

One problem, she said, is that women typically encounter "isolation" in the sciences. Even as the percentage of women with advanced degrees has grown steadily in the past three decades, there remains a gender gap in the faculty ranks, especially in engineering, mathematics and science.

"This places women at a disadvantage," Pfeiffer said. "It's important to create social networks" that give women the information they need on issues such as child care and family benefits — information that males do not discuss as readily.

A recent report by law professor Marty West and three other UC Davis professors received national attention with its findings. Despite an unusual hiring wave and a steady increase in the number of women in the doctorate applicant pool, the UC system still lags in hiring women, the researchers noted.

At the June 29 session, West pointed out that the study found that UC had yet to match the proportion of women it hired in the mid-1990s, before the 1996 adoption of Proposition 209, which made it illegal for public universities to consider sex or race in admissions or hiring.

Competition from other universities for female faculty is a serious obstacle, West acknowledged. She suggests that UC Davis respond more quickly when a faculty member is targeted for recruitment and receives outside job salary offers. Currently many UC Davis academic units need those outside offers in writing — by then, West added, it might be too late.

Wise agreed, saying it was a "missed opportunity" for UC Davis to lose female faculty members to other institutions that pursue them more aggressively.

Even so, the issue has made headlines beyond UC Davis this year. In May, Harvard pledged $50 million over the next decade in an effort to "diversify" the faculty after the university's president, Lawrence Summers, suggested that "intrinsic aptitude" might be a reason women lag in science and engineering.

Speakers at the session pointed to tenure as another pitfall. With a shortfall of women who make it through the tenure process, West recommends that the university hold "pre-tenure" workshops, a mentor system for new faculty and informational workshops for graduate students.

"About 85 percent of both men and women eventually receive tenure," said West. "What we don't know is who leaves before the process is complete. We need the data to do a study on this."

Maureen Stanton, an evolutionary ecologist and winner of the 2005 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, said women are not as likely as men to promote themselves or their careers.

Kimberlee Shauman, assistant professor of sociology, examined the careers of female scientists in her book, Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes. She told the group that while women who major in science graduate at the same rate as men, many fall behind in their career paths during the childbearing years.

As Shauman says, marriage does not slow their career progress, but children do, mainly because child-rearing responsibilities fall heaviest on the mother. Short-term slowdowns — such as maternity leave — can have a negative effect on a career overall.

Erin Shupe, who graduated this spring with a bachelor's degree in genetics, asked the group, "Is it worth pursuing a career where you do not get what you want?"

Stanton said colleges and universities must develop a culture and specific policies that enable women with children to strike a sustainable balance between workplace and home. "We try to hold ourselves to a higher standard in academia than in the private sector," she added. "We're here today discussing this issue where that might not be possible elsewhere."