Letter from Annette Flower and Jane Sheets to James L. Fisher

19 April 1972 TO: James L. Fisher, President,Towson State College FROM: Annette Flower and Jane Sheets, co-chairpersons, . Faculty Association Committee on the Status of Women We appreciate your detailed reply to our report of March 13th, 1972. We are pleased that you have written to Mr. Bosz, Secretary of Personnel, concerning implementation of the AAUP nepotism statement and that you have presented Ass_p.ciation of American Colleges documents to him on current maternity leave policy. We will examine these policies and subnit specific recommendations, as you suggest. Both Dr. Shaw and Dr. Gillespie have been very cooperat:i>ve in the matter of establishing and funding the Women's Center, and although it is in the early stages of its organization, we are certain that the Women's Center will, apart from its direct services and opportunities provided to students, greatly assist and support other programs of the college such as the Women's Studies Program and the program in Continuing Education. The posi tfon of Associate Dean is now available; this is '"the first available and reasonable opportunity to rectify the condition" of no women in policy-making positions in the administration. We are certain that you will appoint a woman with appropriate academic credentials who is sympathetic to the continued development of the Women's Studies Program, which is being generated mainly in this Division. We are concerned about the implications of the last part of your letter. You remark on the "relative ir.''"~~ui ty't of racism and ~exism, yet we find that the description you give of r:1c .3m is al::;o exactly ,;: .1aracteristic of sexism, namely: "'It was once 100 per ccr.t, effective, it was ~uppo.1~-:-ed by both formal and societal norms, and it was : ) resistant to chang that im are only now beginning to make inroads. st Sex:i~m is, in fact, older and m(.Jre pervasive than racism. · Your argument that ~there have been times in this century when, as an institution, our ostensible sexism was directed more towards men than women'" provokes an even fuller explanation. The term sexism means in part the acceptance of stereotyped roles for women and men. The historical sexism of this institution, indeed, of any college which began as a '-State Normal School, .. training women for the traditionally female profession of teaching at the elementary or secondary level, is obvious -- as obvious as the historical racism of an institution which was once racially segregated. Sexism, like racism, is as much a matter of subtle conditioning as it is of overt discrimination, and the societal conditioning which makes public school teaching a female role and college teaching a male role is certainly a clear example of sexism. Unlike many colleges which were, in the beginning, populated with men, and which gradually became coeducational and gradually added women faculty, always moving in one direction, Towson State College is experiencing two quite different movements: the first has changed the norma.l school to a college by, among other means, enlarging the curr i culum; the college proceeded to increase its ttrespe~tabilityn according to society by hiring male faculty and admitting