{"id":14723,"date":"2013-03-05T08:55:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T18:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=14723"},"modified":"2020-12-01T13:45:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T23:45:37","slug":"uh-commission-advocates-for-womens-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2013\/03\/05\/uh-commission-advocates-for-womens-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"<abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> commission advocates for women&#8217;s rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"676\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AeIg9WucZAs\" title=\"Youtube video player\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Times have certainly changed for women going to college. A glance through an old yearbook shows that female students at the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> in the 1920s and 30s, were mostly majoring in education, home economics or similar subjects deemed proper for women at the time.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1940s and 50s, campus beauty pageants were all the rage. Needless to say, change came slowly. <strong>Amy Agbayani<\/strong>, director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/diversity\/\">Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity<\/a> program, started going to <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa in the 60s.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We were underrepresented as undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and administrators, but we didn&#8217;t know it. We weren&#8217;t really aware of it. We were just trying so hard to graduate and keep up with the rest of the class. I was frequently the only female in some classes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Agbayani went on to get her master&#8217;s and <abbr title=\"doctor of philosophy\">PhD<\/abbr> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicalscience.hawaii.edu\/\">political science<\/a> and was one of the co-founders of the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa Commission on the Status of Women 40 years ago.  Reorganized in 1986 to include all 10 campuses, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/offices\/op\/csw\/\"><abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> Commission on the Status of Women<\/a> works to raise consciousness on issues like childcare, pay equity, domestic violence prevention, campus safety and promotion and tenure.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;All my mentors at the time were white male faculty members in political science. So I&#8217;m very grateful for getting their support and everything, but as a female graduate student, we didn&#8217;t really have any role models.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The 70s brought about major change, thanks to legislation named after a <abbr>UH<\/abbr> alumna, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Title_IX\">Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act<\/a>, more commonly known as Title <abbr title=\"nine\">IX<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We have come from, not having athletic programs for women, to having Title <abbr>IX<\/abbr> and ensuring gender equity in athletics,&rdquo; explains <strong>Kelly Oaks<\/strong>, <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> Hilo&#8217;s Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and a current commission member. &ldquo;We have come from not having as many women in leadership positions to having a president of our system who is a woman to having, in the past, chancellors of our campus institutions who are women. We have moved and evolved toward increasing the representation of women in all fields.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>However the work of the commission is far from over. There are still fewer tenure-track women than men, and women continue to earn less than their male counterparts. The <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/admin\/regents\/index.php\">Board of Regents<\/a> has been recently criticized for being mostly men.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Michael Hodges<\/strong>, an <abbr title=\"information technology\">IT<\/abbr> specialist for the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> System, joined the commission to better understand the challenges faced by his daughters. He agrees with the notion that there is still work to be done, and probably always will be.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We need to continue to focus on women and to help them flourish and to remove as many obstacles as possible. I think biologically, women tend to end up with the children, which is harder than if you don&#8217;t have children when you&#8217;re trying to make your way forward in the world. There will always be a need to help women, to help families moving forward. I don&#8217;t think that will ever diminish. It just should get easier and easier over time for women and families to be successful.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The <abbr>UH<\/abbr> Commission on the Status of Women works to raise consciousness on issues like childcare, pay equity, domestic violence prevention, campus safety and promotion and tenure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,3,12],"tags":[388,14,9,947],"class_list":["post-14723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-faculty-staff","category-video","tag-uh-commission-on-the-status-of-women","tag-uh-hilo","tag-uh-manoa","tag-uh-system","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14723"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131524,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723\/revisions\/131524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}