December 2024

Dear Colleagues,

As 2024 comes to a close, I want to recognize the 50+ year history of the UCSF Committee on the Status of Women (CSW), which celebrated this milestone and their transformational legacy with several important events this year. As a community, we should all be grateful for earlier generations of women whose significant work has enabled many of us, myself included, to have careers that would have been impossible 50 years ago.

For decades, through tireless teamwork and allyship, CSW has been a powerful force for institutional change, supporting women and people of color and creating better systems for us to advance and thrive. As a university diversity committee, CSW has benefited from and works in partnership with our dedicated Office of Diversity and Outreach (ODO), which has been extraordinarily led by Vice Chancellor Renée Navarro since 2010.

CSW has created and catalyzed many initiatives to help UCSF become an employer of choice for women today. The committee continues to play an important role at UCSF, working to modernize and expand family-friendly policies at UC, address the diverse caregiving needs of women throughout their careers, and incorporate new voices into their efforts. As part of its equity-driven mission, CSW often advocates to extend benefits that faculty members receive to staff employees and learners.

Women have come a long way at UCSF. Our total population is now 63 percent women. Women make up 50 percent of faculty, 66 percent of staff, and 58 percent of postdocs, trainees, and students. Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann was our first woman chancellor from 2009-2014 and established the ODO in 2010. The current Chancellor’s Cabinet is 33% women, including former CSW chair Kathy Giacomini, PhD, now dean of the School of Pharmacy. In the School of Medicine (SOM), women faculty or faculty from groups that have been historically marginalized in medicine now hold 67% of Dean’s Council and 44% of SOM leadership positions (more SOM information).

There is still work to be done to ensure women thrive at UCSF and to mentor, support, promote, and recruit women into leadership positions. I encourage members of the UCSF community to reflect on how much has been achieved by campus groups and committees like CSW and how they too will contribute to a more equitable future at UCSF. Part of our work is to make sure we leave the institution better than we found it. I invite you to consider ways you can participate, build community, and be an ally to CSW, other diversity committees, Staff Assembly, and registered campus organizations. In honor of CSW, recognize a woman who has supported your UCSF journey.

I am impressed with and thankful for all that CSW and its allies have accomplished in partnership with Vice Chancellor Navarro. Read further to learn more about CSW’s powerful legacy and ongoing work.

Sincerely,

Catherine R. Lucey, MD, MACP
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

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Overcoming Challenges to Achieve Change for UCSF Women

 

When Diane Wara, MD, arrived at UCSF in 1970 as a resident with a one-week-old child, she looked for lactation spaces and resources to support her needs.

“There was nothing in place at all, either for pregnant women or for women who had babies and were returning to work,” she says.

In the early 1970s, Chancellor Philip R. Lee established what became known as the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) following the recommendation of the UC Office of the President (who was responding to a directive from the California State Legislature) to appoint advisory committees to “conduct comprehensive review and recommend action concerning personnel practices and procedures that affect the employment status of women.” Wara, who went on to lead the Allergy, Immunology & Bone Marrow Transplant division and Pediatric Clinical Research Center for over 25 years, set her sights on change. With Laurel Glass, PhD, associate professor of anatomy, as the inaugural chair, Wara and colleagues became founding members of CSW.

When Wara became CSW faculty chair in 1986, she planned to approach the administration to ask for maternity leave policies and looked for people to join her. “We actually had to search for women who were faculty members or senior staff,” she says. “That was a challenge.”

They started with maternity leave, Wara recalls, “because that seemed the most urgent.” It’s also an issue that is revisited often, as needs change. Under Chancellor Julius Krevans, the Child Bearing/Rearing Leave policy for academic women was enacted in 1987. In a sign of how the committee’s impact would be felt beyond UCSF, other UC campuses began to follow UCSF’s lead and grant maternity leave to their faculty.

Marveling at the dramatic change over the years, Wara, now distinguished professor emeritus of pediatrics, says, “We’ve gone from a policy of no breastfeeding, to one that has breastfeeding rooms, to one that mandates giving women time to breastfeed.”

Building Strength in Numbers

The leadership of Vice Chancellor of Diversity and Outreach Renée Navarro has been crucial to CSW’s work and to women at UCSF. The committee works intersectionally with peer university diversity committees and organizations to host events and build community. One way this is accomplished is through the Chancellor’s Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion (4CI), which serves as UCSF’s body to “advise leadership and provide ongoing evaluation of our institution’s work to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging across all dimensions of diversity.”

“One of the beautiful things about CSW’s impact on UCSF is that its advocacy and the resulting changes ultimately benefit all of us, going a long way toward furthering equity and inclusion at UCSF,” Navarro observes.

Elizabeth Ozer, PhD, professor of pediatrics and associate vice provost of faculty equity, who co-chaired the committee from 2008-2016 with Toni Grimes and Cathy Garzio and currently chairs the UC Systemwide Committee on the Status of Women, reports that CSW has relied on many partners to help achieve its goal, with a particularly strong collaboration with UCSF Family Services.

Ozer recalls a 2012 meeting at which CSW made a presentation to UCSF leadership asking for backup child and elder care, and Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann agreed to support a three-year pilot. Ozer says, “This was an example that, when you do your homework, when you have your data, when you make a compelling case, when you collaborate across the system, UCSF wants to do the right thing.”

The pilot became a permanent fixture, like many others. “I am struck by how many of the initiatives that were first developed as pilot projects have become institutionalized,” Ozer continues. “It’s pretty amazing.”

Taking a Long View

CSW is continuing to fulfill its legacy of advocacy, change, and community-building over 50 years later. The committee has benefited greatly from being inclusive of the University community, including residents, students, and postdocs.

Nerissa Ko, MD, MAS, professor of neurology, succeeded Ozer as co-chair in 2016 and remains in the role today. She co-chairs with Laurae Pearson, associate dean for administration and finance in the ZSFG Dean’s Office. Ko explains that in addition to broad policy issues, CSW can advocate for individual women. And sometimes, an individual’s situation exposes a broader problem that needs addressing.

“The committee has a steadfast commitment to listen attentively to all of the voices of the many women on campus,” Ko says. “We often will hear by email or personal outreach that something is going on. We can elevate that, especially if we hear the same thing from multiple campus sectors.”

CSW’s teamwork, with Navarro’s leadership, has “allowed us to elevate those voices and focus on advocacy, which has been some of the most rewarding things we’ve done.”

While many people know CSW mostly for International Women’s Day and other events, Ko is quick to remind people, “This is a working committee. We bring to leadership real issues related to policy, and in some cases, we can take it up to the UC Office of the President.”

Pandemic Relief

Pearson has served as co-chair of CSW for five years. Both faculty and staff co-chairs typically serve a two-year term, but the pandemic made turnover challenging.

CSW advocated for women during the pandemic, as many were disproportionately impacted when schools and child care centers were closed and they were caring for children or parents.

Consistent with the activities of the Covid-19 Recovery Task Force on Child/Dependent Care (co-chaired by Ozer and Laura Ishkanian, former director of UCSF Family Services), CSW submitted a long “blue sky wish list” of recommendations to Chancellor Sam Hawgood of ways the institution could support women.

“The chancellor absorbed it,” Pearson says. “We were able to have conversations about topics that we might be able to do incrementally to help our women be successful after we all came out of this epidemic.”

The Chancellor’s Cabinet ultimately adopted many of the recommendations. These included employee relief funding, expanding back-up dependent care, supporting UCSF partnerships for child care programs, and stopping the clock for promotion.

“That was a big win,” she says.

From Slow Progress to Major Institutional Change

In the words of a 2004 CSW report, “on a consistent basis throughout its history, the Committee has tackled the most daunting and serious problems facing women at UCSF, and has developed creative, practical methods for solving those problems and redressing longstanding grievances.” After decades of presenting data, research, and repeated recommendations regarding the status of women and people of color at UCSF, CSW achieved hard-fought institutional change. The committee can be credited with many accomplishments. A brief list:

• Advocated for expanded, consistent family leave policies; established and expanded UCSF-sponsored child care centers and lactation rooms; supported and helped secure funding for emergency back-up child care and elder care
• Supported the development of the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (reporting tip sheet)
• Worked with Faculty and Academic Affairs and ODO to initiate a salary equity reporting process
• Promoted the concept of diversifying search committees, which led to hiring more women in leadership positions
• Developed a series of useful tip sheets for people in specific roles at UCSF (e.g., committee members, seminar organizers, mentors, managers); these resources have been disseminated by other universities
• Advocated for campus-wide climate surveys, which have revealed gender disparities and led to efforts to find solutions
• Sponsored many events to educate and support women and create forums for conversation, including an annual International Women’s Day celebration, co-sponsored with Women of UCSF Health and Women in Technology (WIT@UCSF), now a week-long, inclusive event open to allies and people of all genders

Passing the Torch

Ko and Pearson are actively recruiting for new CSW chairs and members. “We are re-engaging with our up-and-coming women who might be in the junior phase of their career or education,” says Ko.

“The new generation has new challenges. We need their voices. We can't do this moving forward without incorporating them. The plea to residents, students, postdocs, and faculty and staff members is: ‘We need you. We want to make CSW work for you.’”

Pearson and Ko are working to revamp the structure of the committee and the recruitment process “so that we can have more of an open table for people to join,” Pearson says.

“I love this committee because we have a faculty co-chair and a staff co-chair, so when we talk about issues, we can look at them through both of those lenses. We also try to represent all of the schools.”

To learn more about joining CSW, visit their website. Learn more about university diversity committees, Staff Assembly, and registered campus organizations.

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Thank you to writer Dan Fost, Professor Nerissa Ko, Vice Chancellor Renée Navarro, Professor Elizabeth Ozer, Associate Dean Laurae Pearson, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Diane Wara for helping make this article possible.