Copyright 2002 eMediaMillWorks, Inc. (f/k/a Federal Document
Clearing House, Inc.) Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
October 3, 2002 Thursday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 2207 words
COMMITTEE:SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
SUBCOMMITTEE: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE
HEADLINE: TITLE IX AND SCIENCE
TESTIMONY-BY: BIRCH BAYH, ATTORNEY AND PARTNER,
AFFILIATION: VENABLE, BAETJER, HOWARD & CIVILETTI, LLP
BODY: STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BIRCH
BAYH ATTORNEY AND PARTNER, VENABLE, BAETJER, HOWARD & CIVILETTI, LLP
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE
COMMITTEE ON SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
OCTOBER 3, 2002
Mr. Chairman and members of
the Subcommittee, it is a privilege to have the opportunity to share some
thoughts with you this afternoon on a subject which is near and dear to my
heart. It is a tribute to the entire committee that you recognize the subject of
discrimination against women in those highly skilled areas of mathematics,
engineering and the hard sciences as one of the most critical remaining vestiges
of discrimination. In the high tech world in which we are living, we as a
country cannot tolerate the underutilization of more than half of our population
which happens to be women. To compete in today's world America must fully
utilize all of its resources and we are far from meeting this goal in the
education areas which are the subject of this hearing. To put it into today's
terms, it is like telling the Arizona Diamondbacks that Randy Johnson and the
New York Yankees that Roger Clemens will not be permitted to pitch in the early
stages of the trip toward the World Series.
Discrimination against women is to a great extent an unconscious, yet
insidious fact of today's life. Most of our society does not realize that it
exists. That makes the public awareness potential of your hearing extremely
valuable.
When I became involved with discrimination
against women in a very personal way, I was blessed to have an Oklahoma wheat
farmer's daughter as my bride. Marvella was an outstanding human being,
extremely intelligent, and recognized with many honors at the tender age of 18,
whose dream was to become a student at the University of Virginia. Upon
application she was informed that girls need not apply. She provided me with a
masters degree in awareness of how discrimination affected the lives of our
women for the next 261/2 years. I am presently blessed by my wife, Kitty, who
has been providing me with a Ph.D. degree in awareness of how American women are
treated in business and corporate society. To get a complete and alarming view
of discrimination and its effects on our families and their standard of living,
on the relationship between husbands and wives, and the consequent drain on our
society's well-being, I highly recommend Ann Crittenden's The Price of
Motherhood. It presents a truly frightening picture as far as equality is
concerned. This committee is dealing with a critical and perhaps least-known
element of this hurdle in our efforts to see that all American citizens are
treated equally, and that America realizes its full potential.
The other witnesses on the panel are extremely well qualified to assist
in your efforts. For a statistical analysis of this problem, I suggest that
after reading my friend and colleague Marcia Greenberger's statement, you take
it home and put it under your pillow at night. Ms. Greenberger and the National
Women's Law Center have over the years served as modernday Paul Reveres, or
should I say Abigail Reveres, with a message of "Wake up, America." Permit me to
give you some personal reflections of what these statistics mean, and share my
thoughts about some of the factors which should be considered as the committee
fulfills its responsibilities.
From a policy
perspective, I became involved in the legislative efforts to root out
discrimination against women, as the principal Senate sponsor of the Equal
Rights Amendment. Before proceeding further, I should point out that the death
of Congresswoman Patsy Mink this week should remind us that she and many of her
peers, Edith Green, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Barbara Mikulski, Pat
Schroeder and others both within and outside the Congress, worked tirelessly to
achieve our common goal. I was shocked at the degree of discrimination that
existed across the board. Women did not receive equal pay for equal work. Women
were often treated more harshly by the nation's court system, because "women are
not supposed to commit such crimes." However, it was immediately apparent that
the most egregious and damaging discrimination existed in the area of education.
Tomes have been written about the fact that the future of our boys and girls and
our country depends upon the quality of our education system. I need not repeat
the impact of shortcomings in this area to the future well being of our country
in today's high-tech environment to those of you who are well aware of this
fact.
Most of the publicity about Title
IX's existence has been from the accomplishment of our women athletes.
Olympic champions, the World Cup in soccer, Olympic medals, the annual trip to
the Final Four in women's basketball, and the extraordinary capabilities of the
women who nightly perform in the WNBA, have been visual reminders of what women
athletes can accomplish. I have been told by countless numbers of these women
personally involved that their opportunity to participate would not have been
possible were it not for Title IX.
I
most confess that this athletic success warms my heart but it also reminds me
that at the time we were considering the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX, I thought that the greatest benefit would come from
opening the doors of our education system so that girls, young women, faculty
members and administrators could fully utilize their God-given talents in the
academic area. As Marvella would remind me on occasion, "We cannot ignore the
need to develop the thought processes and talents of 52% of the nation's
population."
We have made significant progress in
opening the doors of education to America's young women in the last 30 years.
Before Title IX, womens' enrollment in higher education was in
the 40s. Today, women constitute approximately 53% of the student bodies on our
campuses, however a careful statistical analysis of the disparities which exist
among the various degree programs causes one to be less enthusiastic and to
realize that, despite this progress, unacceptable elements of discrimination
continue to exist. Marcia Greenberger and her associates at the National Women's
Law Center have provided a detailed study which permits us to focus on where the
problem of discrimination is greatest. At the risk of over simplifying a complex
problem, boys and young men have, from an early age, been prepared to follow one
educational track. Girls and young women have been sensitized to follow another.
It has been the age old stereotyping in which educators have assumed that girls
and young women are better qualified to fulfill certain roles in society and
boys and young men have been educated to fulfill another.
Prior to Title IX, our nation's education system
provided boys with shop and vocational education and girls took home economics.
The opportunity to train for jobs in the automotive, aviation, food and maritime
trades was reserved almost entirely for boys. At the postsecondary level, young
men traditionally received training for jobs in trade and industry and technical
occupations. At the same time young women were traditionally educated to be
homemakers, teachers or in the health occupations and cosmetology, all of which
were lower paying jobs. It is readily apparent that wages received in
male-oriented occupations provided a better standard of living for the worker
and his or her family.
Permit me to zero in on one of
the areas of education and that is engineering. Although at some institutions
such as MIT and Berkeley the percentage of entry level students is 30%, if one
looks at overall averages for the year 2001, students in the entering class
averaged 18%, bachelor degrees 20%, and Ph.D. degrees 16.7%. For the faculty as
a whole, women faculty constituted 8.9% and senior faculty 4.4%. Approximately
2% of executive positions were filled by women. This constitutes a dismal
picture and it is easy to become depressed at the discrimination which exists in
this area. Permit me to suggest that rather than dwell on failures, we recognize
the successes which have been made in other areas of education. I am an
optimist, I am confident that if our institutions of higher learning set the
proper standards and follow the proper practices which are designed to
accomplish the goal of equal education opportunities for women in the
engineering field, we will reach this goal.
Unfortunately, the problem cannot be solved by Congressional awareness
or by passage of legislation. Congress can send a clear message to those in the
Department of Education and the institutions of higher education throughout the
land that present standards will not be accepted. However, to solve this problem
in the long run requires dealing with a more fundamental problem. In my
judgment, this problem must be addressed first at the breakfast and dinner
tables where mothers and fathers need to understand that equal opportunity
should be expected for their daughters as well as their sons. Psychiatrists have
observed that young girls/daughters begin developing expectations for themselves
at a very early age. It is encouraging to note that soccer and baseball fields
and basketball courts are filled with girls at an early age on into high school.
Those girls are participating in athletics because their parents have encouraged
them to do so and have been on the sidelines encouraging them to participate and
to be successful. Women would not now be participating at significant
percentages in athletics at our colleges and universities and playing for the
WNBA if it were not for encouragement at home or in the early ages of primary
and secondary education. Also, it should be pointed out that the Department of
Education had rigid requirements which were regularly enforced across the
nation's athletic fields. Despite the notoriety and justifiable pride which has
accompanied women's accomplishments in the athletic field, it is imperative to
recognize that only a very small percent of the student body in our universities
and colleges ever play varsity athletics.
Also, it is
critical to note that young women need role models which help them focus and
develop self-esteem. In the athletic area they have Chamique Holdsclaw, Cynthia
Cooper and Mia Hamm, but who are the role models in the academic area? Before Title IX women were suspect if not outright prohibited from
studying in the areas of law and medicine.
Today, in
the upper 10% of most graduating classes you will find at least half of them are
women, often the number one graduate is a woman. We need to inform our daughters
of the accomplishments of women in corporations and businesses where numerous
women are CEOs and serving on corporate boards. But what about the fields of
engineering and science? Who do they have for role models? We need to alert our
daughters to accomplishments in these areas. Of course, we recognize the
exploits and the sacrifices of women astronauts such as Christina McAuliffe and
Sally Ride. Permit me to use an excellent example of a peer model in the area of
engineering. Recently, my alma mater, Purdue University, appointed a woman,
Linda P.B. Katehi, as the university's Dean of Engineering. This is all well and
good, but Dean Katehi is one of only 5 women deans out of the top 150
engineering schools in the country. What happens to young women who determine to
enter the engineering field? I have already cited the abysmal record in this
area. Why do so few women choose engineering as a career? Here is only one
snapshot. To advance as a faculty member, it is critical to be granted
tenure.
This status is not available until seven or
eight years of faculty experience. Often the first stage to granting tenure is
to receive the majority support of your peers on the faculty which is mostly
constituted of men. Often the vote is held in secret and one cannot help but
wonder whether male faculty members vote no because they are not comfortable to
have female faculty members succeed. Permit me to suggest that the Subcommittee
ask the Department of Education to allocate sufficient funds to establish
specific criteria which must be met for institutions to comply with Title IX in the academic area. The Department should establish a
system of careful examination and enforcement such as that which now
exists in the field of athletics.
I am sure that
members of the Subcommittee can, from their own experiences, develop ideas which
will help provide little girls, older girls and young women with examples and
programs which will result in them developing the self esteem and incentive to
make their mark in areas where now they are not comfortable.
Unbelievable as it may sound, often young women report that the reason
for not pursuing an engineering education is that reports from women who have
preceded them are to the effect that often male students have made life
miserable for them and their professors have often exhibited outright hostility.
If we mean business, I suggest that such students should be expelled and such
professors should find new employment.
Thank you for
providing me with the opportunity to express my thoughts.
