AUBURN'S GENDER INEQUALITY THROUGH THE AGES
BY: CAROLINE STONE
Source: Auburn University Libraries
It has been 124 years since the first three women passed their examinations to be admitted to Auburn University, then known as the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, to begin their work toward a Bachelor of Science degree. In the century since Auburn became co-ed, women students have slowly gained more leadership roles, from editor of the Auburn Plainsman student newspaper to the president of the Student Government Association, or SGA. However, after all this time, there is a lingering perception at Auburn that male and female students are far from equal.
1964 Glomerata page on the WSGA
Source: Glomerata
As women began attending Auburn, the country as a whole saw the beginnings of the suffrage movement, one of the most significant components of which is called the first wave of feminism.
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“The first wave is [characterized by] suffrage and the right to vote,” Dr. Tal Peretz, a women’s studies professor at Auburn said. “To the extent that it was about anything else, it was about being seen as real people independent of men. Women were defining themselves not as property of men, but humans in [their] own right. While it is difficult to mark the exact beginning of this movement, many observers place it with Seneca Falls Convention [in 1848], ending with the passage of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.”
Even after American women achieved the right to vote, women at Auburn were governed, for the first seventy years of the co-ed era at the school, by a strict code of conduct decreed by the Women’s Student Government Association, or WSGA, For example, women were unable to live in apartments off campus, had to eat in separate dining halls from men, could not be seen drinking in public places, and had to obey a strict curfew. Leah Rawls Atkins lists these and many more
restrictions in her essay “Blossoms Amid the Deep Verdue: A Century of Women at Auburn.” The strict rules had the possibly unintended effect of women consistently maintaining a higher GPA than men because they were locked in their rooms studying while “boys roam the streets all night,” according to a 1961 article in the Plainsman.
The second wave of feminism began in the early 1960s, and with it women were questioning their traditional roles in society as a wife and mother, and seeking equal rights in their economic and personal lives, according to Martha Rampton in her article “Four Waves of Feminism.”
“When you think of the feminist movement marching in the streets, that activity marks the second wave of feminism,” Dr. Peretz said. “It was in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Women across the country and at Auburn began to speak out about their desire to direct their own lives. Auburn women also argued for an end to curfews, separate dining halls and housing restrictions. Gradually, these restrictions eased, and by 1970 the WSGA had merged with the SGA.
While the official rules have relaxed for women, social restrictions have not. A woman did not serve as SGA president until 1988, when Cindy Holland was elected. Since then only one other woman, Lauren Hayes, has served, about 20 years later. A year prior to Holland’s term, the SGA elected its first African-American president, Harold Melton.
The racial integration of Auburn began in 1964, though the number of black students attending Auburn remained low until 1969, when the first black football players signed on to the team. 68 African-American men and 80 African-American women were enrolled, marking the first time there were more black males than females, according to Atkins in her essay. A woman Atkins interviewed remarked that some black students attended Auburn and then shortly left in the 70s, “perhaps intimidated by the high percentage of white students.”
The center of social life for black women was the Afro-American Association, according to Atkins. There were consistently small numbers of minority students, a problem Auburn still faces today. Out of 4,525 degrees awarded in 2015, 294 were awarded to African-American students, and only 541 overall students were multicultural. In the 60s and 70s, both black and white women lived in the dorms on campus, because they were not allowed to live anywhere else. Women long tired of this aged tradition began working to change the rules on campus.
A male columnist in a 1970 edition of the Plainsman wrote that women were probably satisfied “with their lot in life.” However, women then and now have shown that they are not. Atkins wrote in her book that in the 70s women held “boycotts of the dining hall [and] camp outs in front of the Social Center and on the president’s lawn.” These acts of social justice have paved the way for women at Auburn. Decades later, women at the university are still standing up for what they believe in.
Spenser Tonarelli is a junior from Tampa, Florida. She studies communications with a minor in philanthropy and non-profit studies. Like over one third of the children in America today, according to the Population Reference Bureau, Tonarelli grew up in a single-parent household.
“My mom raised me, and so just seeing how motivated and how hard-working she is, it definitely instilled that motivation in me,” Tonarelli said. “I’m not expecting everything to be handed to me, so I expect to work really hard every single day. When I have tasks that I need to get done, I give it my all.”
Tonarelli shows what it’s like to be a woman at Auburn through her involvement in many organizations on campus.
“I am currently involved in Student Recruiters, where I’m able to give tours to potential students going on college visits,” Tonarelli said. “I’m also an orientation leader for transfer students who are transferring to Auburn University. I’m an assistant director for community and faculty for Auburn University Dance Marathon. I’m on the student philanthropy board, which helps bring awareness about philanthropies to Auburn’s campus. I’m also a member of a social sorority here at Auburn.”
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Social sororities, and the Greek Life organization as a whole, have been a driving force in Auburn's organizations over the years. Especially in SGA, it is
Spenser Tonarelli
Junior, Student Recruiter
rare that anyone will be elected without the support, both financially and in person, of their sorority or fraternity. Hannah Rashbaum, a sophomore in special education, is a member of a sorority at Auburn.
“Greek life gives you a support system,” Rashbaum said. “It gives you something to be involved in and can open doors for you. It teaches discipline and work ethic to those that otherwise wouldn’t have it. Auburn makes a conscious effort through Panhellenic to have sorority women support each other, and I think that’s really great.”
However, not everyone sees sororities in the same light.
“I know my experience as a black woman on campus may be drastically different than a white woman or Latina woman,” Chanelle Leonard, a sophomore in public administration said. “After I started wearing my natural hair out I've noticed that’s the first thing white people look at when they talk to or see me…a lot of the times I feel as though the sorority girls, when they're on the concourse, overlook black girls."
“I definitely do think I would still face the same discrimination at any other school but maybe not on the same level,” Leonard added. “I would like to be somewhere else and have considered transferring numerous times but I feel as though there’s a lot of work I can and need to do at Auburn to make it a more accepting and better environment.”
Fighting for social justice has been an ongoing effort at Auburn, and is especially a continuing effort for all marginalized groups. Those women that led boycotts in the dining hall and camped out on the president’s lawn led the way for succeeding generations of Auburn women to feel confident and not completely unequal from men on campus.
“Honestly, I don’t feel underappreciated or disadvantaged as a woman,” Caroline Kupec, a sophomore in social work said. “I am confident in myself and my ability to go after what I need and want in regards to school and always have been. I feel like sometimes I get treated differently, but I’m not sure if that’s in regards to me being a woman or something else entirely.”
In the spring of 2016,
137 total engineering degrees awarded to women, whereas 509 degrees were awarded to men.
Hannah Marsh, a senior in chemical engineering, also feels that there is less direct inequality for genders in school, though her experience in a co-op proved to be a different environment.
“It’s definitely a male-dominated major,” Marsh said. “Being a woman in chemical engineering is not as different in a school setting. It’s still school. However, I did a co-op so it’s especially different in the workplace. You just have to really assert yourself and make sure you know what you’re talking about, and that everyone around you knows that you are knowledgeable in your field.”
Women in the work force are finding more problems than just gaining co-workers’ respect. Women must face the gender pay gap, a system that show how women consistently make much less than men even in the same job.
“The gender pay gap is an incredibly complex topic that often gets oversimplified,” Dr. Peretz said. “But the key issue is that regardless of what controls we apply or what factors in to the pay gap, there's always still some unexplained gap that is only attributable to sexism; direct discrimination.”
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The American Association of University Women, or AAUW, conducted research on the earnings ratio of men to women in each congressional district of each state. Click on the districts below to see the wage gaps in Alabama.
In Alabama, women make a range of 69 to 84 percent of what men make. The most staggering difference is in Congressional District 1, where the largest city in the district is Huntsville. In this district, women make only 69 percent of what men make; the median salary for a woman was $34,969 in 2014, whereas the median salary for a man was $50,867, according to the AAUW research.
The “glass ceiling” is a common term among those who study gender. David Purcell, Kelly Rhea MacArthur and Sarah Samblanet from the Department of Sociology at Kent State University state in their article “Gender and the Glass Ceiling at Work” that women represent approximately half of the American workforce, yet are often not promoted to the top management positions, even though they have the skills and qualifications for the job.
“The glass ceiling is the barrier on how women can climb the corporate ladder,” Dr. Peretz said.
One example in a university setting can be seen with the SGA. Currently, five out of seven members of the executive officers are male. However, the executive officers are not the only positions that have people questioning the equality of SGA.
Johnson and Tonarelli show two very different versions of organizations here at Auburn – one a government group and one a nonprofit group. Some organizations lean heavily on the male-dominated system of the past, while others are dominated by females. Auburn University Dance Marathon, or AUDM, is in its sixth year, and out of all of those years, there has only been one male president.
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The Women’s College of the University of Denver reported in their 2012 “Current State of Women in Leadership” that women make up 75% of the nonprofit workforce. At Auburn, the College of Human Sciences awarded 95% of their degrees to women in the Spring of 2016. This college holds both human development and family studies courses and nonprofit courses, and is a similar if more drastic statistic for women in the nonprofit workplace.
“The history of nonprofit and charity work [correlates with] the history of women - and it’s worth being very specific and clear - middle class white women - not being able to work outside of the home but still wanting to be an important member of society,” Dr. Peretz said. “I think the other important thing to note about that is the culture end of things. Our cultural norms of men are about paid work and employment and breadwinning. Our cultural norms about woman are about nurturing and caring and helping others and that makes a lot of sense, then, that women would be directed towards nonprofit work.”
While there can be no one answer as to why AUDM is so female-oriented, studies and articles show that the nonprofit field is much more accessible to women than other business fields. Here at Auburn, AUDM is one of the largest organizations on campus that has an almost equal mix of genders attending their main event, and yet still has strong female leadership.
With over 516 organizations and 75 majors, there are many opportunities for women and men to have equal leadership and opportunities. However, this is not the case. Few large mix-gendered organizations have equal leadership on their executive board. Slowly but surely, women are breaking the barriers to become leaders in Auburn’s largely male-run campus. But, they still have a long way to go.
When the first three women stepped on Auburn’s campus 124 years ago, they had no freedom to participate in social life, and only were allowed to step foot in their classrooms. Today, women at Auburn are taking longer strides, but their journey to equality is far from over.