State Sen. Jackie Speier spoke at UC Davis Tuesday to offer a progress report on how the UC system is faring in its attempts to increase the number of female faculty members it hires and how the state Legislature is assessing that progress.

Systemwide, advances are being made, Speier said. But she worries that many female faculty members still do not feel comfortable about voicing their opinions on university policies or climate. "There is nothing more frightening to me than some of our best and brightest faculty members harbor fears of speaking out," Speier said.

The Senate Select Committee on Government Oversight, that Speier chairs will hold a second hearing Feb. 20 on UC’s treatment of female faculty members and candidates for faculty positions.

At the hearing the committee will invite testimony from both university administrators and faculty members, Speier said. The committee also plans to expand its focus from looking at hiring practices to also scrutinizing the situations of female faculty members leaving UC campuses before they receive tenure.

In January Speier, D-San Mateo-San Francisco, and her committee held its first hearing on diversity in recent UC hiring processes. The senate’s interest, she said, was prompted by concerns that the number of women hired by the system had fallen since the passage of Prop. 209. In 1996, 36 percent of new faculty members hired by the system were women, but the percentage hired each year between 1998 and 2000 was below 30 percent.

After the hearing the committee released an audit that reported, in rather broad terms, Speier said, that some UC campuses and some departments needed to take steps to hire more women faculty members.

After the audit, UC responded, she said.

"I do believe there is a good faith effort under way," she said.

Among the recent university advances:

• UC Santa Cruz added to its faculty position announcements a statement that the campus was interested in candidates who promote diversity through their teaching and research.
• UC Santa Barbara added gender parity appraisals to its evaluation of each faculty dean.
• UC Riverside revised its faculty handbook to state a promotion of diversity throughout the hiring process, including placing more women on hiring panels.

Speier lauded UC Davis for recently hiring its first associate executive vice chancellor for campus community relations, Rahim Reed, and charging him with helping develop a family-friendly policy for the university. She noted that of this year’s new academic hires at UC Davis, 33 of 78 are women. That number is up 52 percent from last year, Speier said.

Women’s studies professor Anna Kuhn pleaded for Speier and her committee to look beyond UC’s hiring of women to the university system’s retention of them.

"Hiring women is just part of the equation," she said. "We have lost an enormous amount of senior women, and that is something that needs to be addressed."

Emeritus senior lecturer of Chicano studies Adajiza Sosa-Riddell asked what the state Legislature could do if UC failed to meet the Legislature’s goals.

Speier said she hesitated to guess, but a typical response could include withholding university funding or offering UC incentives to hire more women faculty members.

A group of about 50 people – mostly women – attended Speier’s lecture and a reception, both sponsored by the UC Davis Consortium for Women in Research.

"I think it took courage to come here tonight," Speier said. "But we are only going to be as good and productive as we care to speak out."