On this campus, the Commission for Women is a girl’s best friend.
The commission, an advisory commission that regularly meets with Vice Chancellor for Diversity Rickey Hall, is responsible for communicating the needs of women on campus to the administration and assisting in crafting legislation and initiatives that address their needs.
Jennifer Dobbins, law student at UT and the graduate assistant for the Commission for Women, said by advocating for women on campus, the Commission plays a vital role in ensuring that the status of women at UT will continue to improve.
“I think overall, looking back across the decade, that the status of women has significantly improved on campus, but I think we still have pressing issues to address,” Dobbins said. “The commission serves a very important role in addressing these issues.”
A few of the recent issues on the Commission’s docket include sexual assault policy on campus, lactation facilities, maternity leave for mothers and pay inequality based on gender.
For Joanne Hall, faculty Senate representative in the Commission for Women, the most pressing of these issues is sexual assault.
“We need to be constantly, I think, at the chancellor’s ear with issues that affect women,” Hall said. “And I would say now, the issue that most affects women is the number of sexual assaults, that here, and on other campuses as well, go unreported.”
In order to address these issues, the commission is currently working on revising current sexual assault policy, including how the university responds to these claims as well as proactive and educational initiatives to change students’ perspective on sexual assault from the first days of first-year orientation.
Dobbins said she thinks the current policy revisions, while a step in the right direction, will not be enough to change the social stigma surrounding sexual assault.
“If you look at the news and recent events that are going on, it is clear that we need a culture change regarding sexual assault and sexual violence,” Dobbins said.
Adams said the reason the commission is choosing to focus more on sexual assault is because she and the caucus, as students, understand how this particular problem is affecting the student body.
“We see what’s going on around campus, because we are able to get a really hands-on approach,” Devon Adams, member of the Commission for Women student caucus, said. “Students are more comfortable telling their friends about it than faculty or staff, so we hear more about it.”
Aside from sexual assault, the commission will be conduct studies on pay inequality to assess what changes need to be made to faculty salaries as well as hosting a symposium featuring prominent women from STEM fields to come and speak on campus this coming April.
“(We are) looking at the pay gap for faculty and staff, making sure that the pay gap between male and female employees decreases and that pay equity increases,” Dobbins said.
Despite the negative stigma which often comes attached to the word, Dobbins, Hall and Adams, all said they consider themselves and their organization feminist in that their purpose is to empower women and promote equality between genders.
“A feminist is someone who believes that women should be treated equally,” Adams said. “If that is the definition, then I think the C for W is definitely a feminist organization, because that’s what we’re striving for.”
