Women at Hopkins discuss disparities

The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) Committee on the Status of Women hosted “Where We Stand: Women at Hopkins”  in the Mudd Atrium on Tuesday to foster discussion about gender issues at Hopkins.

The event featured several speakers, including keynote speaker Barbara Fivush, the associate dean of women in science and medicine at the School of Medicine, as well as faculty, staff and students from Homewood.

Karen Beemon, the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women and a biology professor, ran the event. She spoke briefly about how gender equality has improved in recent decades, but that she believes there is still disparity in the treatment between men and women at Hopkins.

“[KSAS] became co-ed in [the] 1970s,” Beemon said. “Even in the ‘80s, when I came, JHU was being described as a male institution. There was an atmosphere that was at best, indifferent and at worst, hostile to the concerns of women.”

According to Beemon, female students currently make up 57 percent of KSAS and approximately 50 percent of the Whiting School of Engineering. However, the percentage of tenured female faculty and staff members is at 30 percent.

Beemon said that one of the goals of the committee, which formed in 2002, is to work toward achieving the objectives outlined in the University’s Vision 20/20 report. One of the overall objectives defined in the report is to achieve gender equality at Hopkins by 2020.

Beverly Wendland, the recently appointed KSAS dean and a former member of the Committee on the Status of Women, also spoke at the event. She said that as the dean of KSAS, she prepared to carry out initiatives to achieve gender equality.

“[I am] prepared to fully embrace this mission and continue forward with our goals to ensure that we receive all the recognition that every woman has the opportunity to participate fully in all of the activities across our University and beyond,” Wendland said. “I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist with a chip on my shoulder, but I’m a feminist who has become aware that sometimes, there’s a reason to have a chip on your shoulder.”

In her keynote address, Fivush mentioned that powerful female figures are part of Hopkins’s history.

“One of the founding gifts of the School of Medicine was made by Mary Elizabeth Garrett, who was not allowed to go to medical school because her family did not accept that choice for her,” Fivush said. “But she actually was really one of the philanthropists that allowed the School of Medicine to be created in 1893.

“She stipulated in her will, upon the conditions of her gift, that women be allowed to attend the school in equality to men — that they be accepted on terms, that they be promoted at the same rate. This was quite visionary for 1893. So Johns Hopkins has a very rich history in thinking about gender equity and not so much in achieving it.”

Todd Shepard, co-director for the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality and an associate professor of history, also discussed environmental issues at Hopkins that may be contributing to the low number of female faculty and staff.

“[The issue is] not that women are not necessarily the first choice [for positions]... but [that they] are not deciding to come,” Shepard said. “They’re not deciding to stay.”

Karen Fleming, a professor in the biophysics department, explained that both men and women have been found guilty of gender discrimination, according to a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Graduate students Katie Glanz and Katie Boyce-Jacino discussed the Feminist and Queer Theory Graduate Student Reading Group, which they co-founded in 2012.

“As a new graduate student in the political science department, I was often the only woman student in the classroom, and I had experienced... being interrupted, talked down to and unduly challenged,” Glanz said. “In addition, I had found it difficult to find graduate courses in any department that related to queer and feminist issues. So given the situation, Katie and I decided to initiate [the group]... to discuss pre-selected texts.”

Senior Jennifer Huang discussed the efforts being made by the Women’s Initiative for Social Equity (WISE) student advisory board, on which she serves, to improve gender equality at Hopkins. The board was established in 2013.

“What we really wanted to do was make the leap from having discussions, having an awareness of what’s going on on campus [to] then actually trying to do something about it,” Huang said.

According to Natalie Richmond, programming chair for the Women’s Pre-Health Leadership Society (WPHLS), the disparity between male and female leaders is especially apparent in healthcare fields.

“Women have been disadvantaged in health care for a very long time... It’s about 50/50 in terms of people who are accepted into medical school,” Richmond said, “But if you look at health care administration positions, it’s almost entirely men.”

This year’s Student Government Association (SGA) is almost evenly balanced in gender, with 15 female and 17 male students serving in leadership roles.

The SGA Executive Board is also mixed-gender. Three female students — Bonsu, Vice President Kyra Toomre and Secretary Adelaide Morphett — serve on the board with along with Treasurer Will Szymanski.

“Usually tickets include one female and three guys, or split it evenly in half, however my ticket was 3:1 in favor of women,” Bonsu said. “Even when it was brought to my attention, I carried on business as usual.”

According to Bonsu, she is only the fifth female student to serve as SGA president at Hopkins. However, she does not feel as though she is treated any differently because she is a female president.

“The administration has been nothing but supportive and have challenged me to really grow as a student leader,” Bonsu wrote.

Alpha Phi President Juliana Wittmann agreed that she has also never felt that she has been discriminated against as a female leader.

“I have never felt that any individual on campus has taken me less seriously than my male counterparts,” Wittmann wrote in an email to The News-Letter.