The History

of

Johns Hopkins University

Committee on the Status of Women

The University Committee on the Status of Women (UCSOW) was established in Fall, 2002 with Dr. Linda Fried, Professor, Medicine, Epidemiology & Health Policy, appointed as chair.

The UCSOW was preceded by the Provost Committee on the Status of Women, the first University-wide committee on the status of women. This initial committee grew out of an action taken by the Women’s Forum, a University-wide organization for faculty and staff women that continues to exist today as the Women’s Network. The Forum’s Advisory Board adopted a recommendation from a 1987 report of the American Higher Education that institutions should prepare an annual status report on women. In response, then Provost John Lombardi, offered to sponsor and publish the report, which was issued in 1989 as the First Annual Report on the Status of Women at Johns Hopkins University.

The 1989 Report identified problems in a number of areas: recruitment, salaries, professional advancement of faculty and staff, curricula, programs, and organizations related to women’s issues, student admissions and campus security, child-care, athletic facilities, and even restrooms! It made a number of recommendations in each of these areas, but also urged that the Committee’s status be changed from an ad hoc to a standing committee and that it be charged with preparing an annual report published two years later. Since then several reports have been completed. The last report completed by the group is dated February 1, 1999 and is entitled Recruitment, Retention, and Professional Development of Women Faculty – A Report on the Academic Issues Subcommittee of the Provost Committee on the Status of Women.