Since 1981, the Commission for Women has served as an advisory group to the president of Penn State on the status of women at the university. The commission identifies areas of concern for the women employees and students and recommends solutions.
The university president appoints the members of the commission to recommend policies and programs to enhance the university’s working and learning environments. Some of the issues include recruitment, advancement, retention, salary equity, personal safety, and sexual assault awareness.
The commission is currently chaired by Angela Rogers and Vicki Hoffman. Hoffman is a staff member in Information Technology Services facilities management, and Rogers is a marketing communications specialist in the Department of Geography.
A 1991 Penn State journalism grad, Rogers earned her master’s of science degree in workforce education and development in 2004. She sat down with Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith at Zola’s Kitchen & Wine Bar to discuss the mission of the commission and the barriers to advancement that women still face.
Mimi: Angela, you’re an alumna of our freelance family of writers for Town&Gown dating back to the early 1990s.
Angela: That’s right.
Mimi: And we thank you for that part of Town&Gown. We’re here today to discuss your ascension to co-chairmanship on the Commission for Women. How did that happen?
Angela: I’ve been working at the university for almost 20 years, and after I left Outreach and started over again in the Department of Geography, a friend of mine said, “Why don’t you join my marketing committee on the Commission for Women.” And I was looking for another way to really connect again with colleagues around the university. So, I said Yes, and we worked together on the marketing committee. I found that my style of marketing was a little more assertive maybe than they were used to, but they liked it. That led to me being more involved. With the commission, it’s really up to each member how engaged they want to be. If you want to be engaged and you want to be a leader, there’s an opportunity for you to do that. If you just want to hang out on the fringes and do something here or there and be supportive, you can do that, too.
Mimi: Why are there two chairpersons?
Angela: There are cochairs simply because there’s so much work to be done and we’re all so busy. It’s a way to lighten the load.
Mimi: Ten years ago, I interviewed the chair of the commission, who was Karen Schultz, and they had a theme for the 25th anniversary, “Reflect, Reassess, and Remove.” Do you have a theme now 10 years later?
Angela: Yes, we do have themes. The theme this year is “Lifting Ourselves and Each Other.”
Mimi: Not bad. So how are you doing it?
Angela: Well, one of the things that the commission does is we have educational programs once a month at our public meeting, and we present a program or a speaker. That helps the rest of the people in the community learn a little bit more about the issues, the research, the facts about where we are, where women are, what we’re doing, and what are the barriers and challenges that we’re still facing. Sometimes that information is underground — people don’t know it, they just see the surface.
Mimi: Some people would prefer not having to speak about it.
Angela: Sure. It’s very hard for women who have experienced discrimination to feel like they can talk about it.
Mimi: What are the things we should be doing together? Let’s use as an example of being paid for equal work. Do you have any idea how we are on that major concern of the women’s movement?
Angela: Well, all I can say about that is I’ve been reading some research lately that shows that the pay gap still exists. It’s not consistent, it differs across occupations. And the other thing about it is a lot of organizations are becoming more conscientious about starting women and men at an equal salary basis when they are right out of school when they start. But there are small differences, small disadvantages that women have in how their work is perceived or whether they’re promoted or whether they’re given raises over time, so then after seven to 12 years, there’s a big difference. Other research has shown that over the course of her career, a woman will leave a million dollars on the table compared to a man doing the same job.
Mimi: What can we, as the Penn State Commission for Women, do? Are there steps we can take?
Angela: I think there are two ways to approach the problem. The first way is to educate women on what they should be asking for.
Mimi: Let me interrupt you. Women tend to undervalue her talent.
Angela: Exactly — just as everyone else does. A woman underestimates her value and her talent, and other men and women around her also do the same thing.
Mimi: That’s the education piece.
Angela: Educating women to be aware of the salaries in their field and to ask — don’t just take the offer they make — ask for more. A man would ask for more, so a woman should ask for more, too. Although, it’s a double-edged sword there because if you’re perceived as pushy, then that works against you as a woman. The other thing is to educate the people who are doing the hiring and the people who are in administrative and supervisory roles so that they can be more aware of these unconscious biases they’re bringing to their hiring decisions and their decisions about promotions.
Mimi: Does the commission attempt to be a catalyst where if you find an area where there’s obvious inequality that they can help the individual work on this?
Angela: No, we’re not set up to really be direct change agents. We’re set up more in educating and monitoring.
Mimi: An advisory to the president of the university is how the phrasing was then and apparently still is now.
Angela: That’s right.
Mimi: Has the commission ever thought about inviting the president to one of its meetings to talk openly about whether this is a problem at Penn State and how do we work together to begin making it more equitable?
Angela: Well, we do meet with the president and the provosts annually to report on what we’ve been doing and what our concerns are. But I think with President Barron, he’s very open and interested in this in a way that our previous presidents haven’t been as much.
Mimi: I think universally his style is very open to, and attentive to, the individual needs of others, starting with the economic-development base. Do you have a thread that will keep you on the path that will contribute to getting closer to equality for women in the workplace?
Angela: I think we do. Before I decided to run for chair, I talked with the other previous chairs, and they said that you have to take the long view. You can’t just think about how much you can accomplish in just one year. You have to think about how your work is building on the previous work and contributing to the future. Then, you can take a look back and see what you’ve accomplished over time with the work of everyone else on the commission. So I try to keep that in mind when I start to feel impatient. We have people cycling on and off the commission, but we have committees that continue over time, and one of those committees is the assessment committee, which produces a status of women report every few years. We recently came out with a 10-year trend report on the status of women at Penn State.
Mimi: Can you give us the high points of that?
Angela: Yes, the high points, or low points actually, show very little progress has been made in terms of women moving up in academic ranks, in terms of women moving up into higher-level administrative positions. I’m sure you would not be surprised to hear that women are vastly overrepresented at the lowest levels, particularly in nontenured faculty positions.
Mimi: On the other hand, we have more female deans today than ever in the history of the institution.
Angela: That’s good news. One of the other things we do is we have a project that I started a couple of years ago called “Women with Influence,” where we did mini-profiles of the women in these leadership position — dean, director, and chancellor positions — to show that we do have women in these leadership positions and to get their advice for women who are more at the beginning of their careers on how they got there, what were some important events in their careers.
Mimi: Has the administrative fellows program lived up to its expectations of transferring women? And I now know that they have men in those positions, as well. Statistically, has that worked?
Angela: I don’t know that it has statistically worked up to expectations. I do know that the people that have gone through that program found it to be extremely valuable for their careers.
Mimi: And some have advanced as a result of it, but it would be interesting for the commission to examine specifically how well that’s done because that’s a program that could be expanded if it’s working. And if it’s not working, how do you infuse it with some oomph to make it work?
Angela: I think that’s a great idea, and you’ve hit on kind of one of the frustrations I have — that it’s very hard for us to get data. I just mentioned the status of women report at Penn State and how we did a 10-year trend report. It’s very difficult to get the data to do that kind of reporting, and for us to be able to do it more routinely and to do it with programs like administrative fellows would be wonderful, so that’s something we’re pushing for.
Mimi: What else is the commission doing? What is the underlying mission of the Commission for Women?
Angela: I’d say our mission is to pay attention to the issues of equity and the concerns and barriers women are facing, advise the president and leadership about what those issues are and how we can address them, and to help women learn to be able to recognize those barriers and help themselves, too.
Mimi: What steps could you take that would formalize more of the reporting and make it possible for you to get more of the data? Going forward, I believe the current administration is an open administration. Women are frequently mistreated in the workplace for all kinds of ridiculous reasons. Not to address this is improper, and we’ve had enough warning on a bigger problem of sexual assault. We’ve had enough to learn from that tragic experience that to neglect the real women’s issues will bite us one day, and the commission for women has that opportunity. I would challenge you to try to find more formal ways to implement specific goals.
Angela: I accept that challenge!
Mimi: Do you still have your mentoring program?
Angela: We do.
Mimi: I think there’s a tremendous need and demand for stronger women to help mentor other women.
Angela: Definitely, within the staff and the faculty, as well, and that’s something else that we’re looking at.
Mimi: I think that’s important and there’s a lot that could be done there, and when it’s done, women can rise to greater success. If you were to define the one, two, or three things that you could do to make [the commission] more effective, what would those be?
Angela: The first thing is that we want to improve the process that we use to recruit and work with our members. The second thing is that we need to have data that we can collect and look at on a regular basis. And the third thing is that we need to communicate more with what we’re doing. A lot of times I think people will think or wonder, “What’s the Commission for Women doing?” We’re not so out there in the public eye as maybe we should be.
Mimi: Part of my life was being at the right place at the right time to be able to use my voice for what I felt was legitimate. We have come a long way, and you have implied that, as well. But we have a long way to go because it boils down to economics, and I leave with the idea of thinking about that, and don’t lose your enthusiasm and stamina to fight the fight gracefully and successfully — because it can be done.
Angela: Thanks for saying that. Well, I’m a fan of you, and I appreciate the time to talk about the Commission for Women!
Mimi: I’m a fan of you because you’re trying to improve the lives of women, and we all need to do it! Thanks so much!
