APA Women in Higher Ed: Claiming Visibility and Voice

Executive Summary of Report by Dr. Shirley Hune

Introduction

The findings in the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) report by Dr. Shirley Hune, Asian Pacific American Women in Higher Education: Claiming Visibility and Voice, contest a popular conception that Asian Pacific Americans in higher education, especially women, are a "model minority" and a racial "success story." APAs have yet to achieve parity with whites in access and accommodation in the academy. They experience frequent racial and gender discrimination, and their serious educational and professional issues are largely ignored. The study reveals how, treated as "outsiders" and "strangers," APA women are excluded or marginalized in organizational structures and programs. It also documents the multiple ways in which stereotypes and racial, gender, class, and cultural biases obscure APA women and their concerns and impede their academic, personal, and professional development. Highlighting "everyday inequities," the study reveals the small behaviors and informal practices of even well-intentioned individuals whom APA women encounter in colleges and universities.

(The report uses the terms Asians, Asian Americans, and Asian Pacific Americans interchangeably. Author Shirley Hune argues that Asian Pacific Americans of (APAs) is more inclusive of Pacific groups, however, and better reflects the changes in the population since 1965.)

The monograph is based on research studies, campus climate and diversity reports, focus group and individual interviews representing a range of colleges and universities, and the author's own participant observation in the academy over two decades. The study gives visibility to APA women and analyzes their experiences as undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, professional staff, and academic administrators. It also gives voice to APA women through quotations gathered through interviews, memoirs, and other studies.

Shirley Hune is a professor of urban planning in the School of Public Policy and Social Research and an associate dean in the Graduate Division of UCLA. A third-generation APA of Chinese descent, she holds a Ph.D. in American civilization and has research interests in Asian American history, race and ethnic relations, minorities and women in higher education, and international migration and human rights policy.

Asian Pacific American Women and the Academy

APA women have demonstrated significant increases in bachelor's, master's, and first-professional degrees earned over the past decade, but continue to lag behind their male counterparts, the report finds. They are underrepresented in many fields of study at all degree levels, in doctoral studies, as faculty, and at higher levels of academic administration. APA female faculty generally occupy the junior ranks and have one of the lowest tenure rates in the academy. It may be that APA women are especially harmed by a chilly campus climate. Other findings include:

• APA women resent being treated as if they are both indistinguishable from one another and interchangeable. At all levels, they report being treated as if they are a "model minority" and a homogeneous group when APAs differ widely.
• Many APA women face an inhospitable campus climate. Students report being silenced in classrooms and other campus sites, excluded in the curriculum, and unsupported in advisement and mentoring.
• While attending college, many APA students are forced to confront their racial or ethnic identity for the first time--one of the "hidden injuries of racism"--whether it be at a predominantly white or racially diverse campus.
• Academic institutions tend to merge data on Asian international doctorates, most of whom will return to their countries of origin, and APA doctorates, who are domestic minorities.
• APA female faculty often experience unwanted and unwarranted overattention as racial minority group representatives and may be treated as "tokens." They find underattention as well in the devaluation of their research and teaching, and in the dismissal of issues they deem important.

Confronting Difference

As they seek to navigate the rocky terrain of higher education, APA students have shown an openess to "new" scholarly areas, such as ethnic studies, women's studies, and gay and lesbian studies, as intellectual and social spaces in an otherwise culturally alienating academic environment. They find higher education's resistance to the establishment of APA studies courses and programs a negative element in the campus climate, and are proactively seeking to address this bias and myriad other obstacles including:

• the unavailability of advisement and mentorship opportunities for APA students
• attempts to channel all APA students into math and science fields, even if they lack the aptitude
• different systems of evaluation for APA women faculty, their exclusion from the faculty community, and having their authority often contested in the classroom and within their departments
• feelings of invisibility and marginalization by APA staff contending with campus stereotypes, unfair work loads and evaluations, and slow career mobility.

 A Call for Renewal

In addition to ensuring equal access to higher education, the study calls for academic institutions to broaden the definition of equity to include access through and access from institutions into a diverse national and global society. AAC&U and all who took part in producing this volume see it as valuable to administrators and faculty for whom the information is largely unfamiliar, and those already engaged in campus diversity work who will be introduced to an additional dimension. Recommendations are included to address the unequal treatment of APA women in academe and to support colleges and universities in providing a climate of access, equity, and inclusion for all.

Publication Information

Asian Pacific American Women in Higher Education is third in an AAC&U series on the status of women of color in higher education in the U.S., also including Black Women in Academe: Issues and Strategies, by Yolanda T. Moses (1989, 1997), and Hispanic Women: Making Their Presence on Campus Less Tenuous, by Sara Nieves-Squires (1991).

Summary prepared by Association of American Colleges & Universities, printed here with permission.

Shirley Hune is a professor of urban planning in the School of Public Policy and Social Research and an associate dean in the Graduate Division of UCLA.