Agents of change: Faculty leadership in initiating and sustaining diversity at the university of arizona

In the late 1990s, the collective action of several women faculty members in the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) initiated a study that found gender-based disparities in salary, office and laboratory space, awards, resources, committee assignments, named chairs, teaching obligations, and retention. With the support of their dean and president, these women made recommendations aimed at ensuring equity for senior women faculty, improving the professional lives of junior women faculty, and increasing the number of women faculty (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1999). Their study and MIT's quick, positive response received wide national attention; other institutions, among them the University of Arizona (UA), were inspired to investigate inequities on their own campuses (National Academy of Sciences 2004).