PREFACE

This website contains the report of the current Senate Council Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women. As such, it extends into the digital age the continuum that began in 1848 at Seneca Falls with the birth of a movement to secure economic, educational, political and social equality for women. In the Fall of 1990, the original Ad Hoc Committee released Let Facts Be Submitted to a Candid World as its contribution to the on-going efforts to achieve true equality for all women. This ground-breaking study explored all facets of the work lives of women employed by the University of Kentucky. It investigated every phase of university employment from recruitment through retirement planning and from salaries and wages to issues of organizational climate and culture. The workplace realities of support and professional staff women were documented with as much rigor and detail as were the experiences of faculty and administrative women.

A Blueprint for Gender Equity at America’s Next Great University represents the efforts of the current Committee to further women’s centuries-old quest for equality. The original report provides the baseline for this new appraisal of the formal status and workplace experiences of women employed at UK. Strategic indicators are used to document where progress has occurred during the last decade and where change and improvement are still needed. As was true of its predecessor, this new report is both a candid assessment of current realities and an ambitious plan for institutional change and improvement. Examples of real progress and patterns of disturbing stability during the last decade are highlighted, but the focus is on the future. The heart of this Blueprint for Gender Equity is a set of specific action steps. Implementation of these recommendations will not only improve the status of women employed by the University of Kentucky, but will contribute substantively to the fulfillment of the University’s aspiration to become America’s next great institution of higher learning.