The Women’s Consortium is an organization of the PASSHE system devoted to identifying and addressing the needs of women faculty staff students and administrators. The Consortium is unique organization that has existed for four decades without state funding. Since 1980 the Consortium has offered an annual conference where women students, faculty staff and administrators meet to network. The Women’s Consortium worked to implement systemwide the agenda for women in Higher education developed and endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE). Working with the Chancellor’s Office, Consortium members advocated for the ACE agenda to be incorporated into the system affirmative action referred to as the Social Equity document (1988;1990). Subsequently the Women’s Consortium worked for more than a decade to implement the ACE agenda at each of the universities. We were successful in the establishment of Woman’s Centers and Women’s Studies Programs across the System, and contributed to the conduct of a Commission on the Status of Women. We also successfully endorsed the availability of Child care. Each campus has a sexual harassment policy but our participation in that was resisted. The leadership awards given on campuses of the PASSHE are one aspect of the ACE agenda. The development and conduct of the Leadership Institutes for Undergraduate Women, For Women Faculty and for Women Staff are important and ongoing contribution of the Women’s Consortium. Mary Keetz, a foremother of the Women’s Consortium, founded the Institute for Women at West PASSHE. In 1991, Keetz published The Status of Female Faculty in Pennsylvania’s State Sytem of Higher Education: An Historical Perspective, 1974-1989. Keetz provided an information base on full and part time faculty by professorial rank in the State System and at each of the 14 campuses. The report demonstrated that full time women faculty were a minority with the State System, and were concentrated in the ranks of instructor and assistant professor. The Emerging Presence of Female Faculty in Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education: A Historical Perspective, 1974-1994, a follow up report was published by the Women’s Institute for Research (Keetz, 1997). The extended study demonstrated that full time women faculty in the State System continue to be a minority, and remain concentrated in the lower professorial ranks. A pattern of gender inequity had persisted for 21 years. The PASSHE scored below the national average percentage for women at the professor rank. THE PASSHE lagged behind other state systems in female representation at the upper ranks. The data suggested a retention problem or inequities in the promotion process. In the Spring of 1989, the Chancellor and members of his office met with the Institute for Research, representatives of the Women’s Consortium, APSCUF representatives, and individuals from the Commissions for the Status of Women to discuss gender inequities in the PASSHE. The chancellor’s Office agreed to support the continued data collection on the gender composition of the faculty in the PASSHE, and to use that data as a key indicator for performance review. Chancellor McCormick also endorsed in principle the initiation of a leadership institute for women faculty.

Courtesy of the PASSHE Women's Consortium