Women’s History Month is an excellent time to highlight the recently processed collection of Dr. Martha McCarthy, Chancellor’s Professor Emerita of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. Dr. McCarthy began her career at Indiana University as Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in 1975 and after a long and prestigious career retired in 2011.
In 1978, she served as the Project Director of a team leading to the creation and implementation of a workshop and training program for the Equity for Women in Higher Education Project sponsored by the University Council for Educational Administration. The project included a one-day workshop, the goal of which was to enhance women’s equity in education.
The program was the result of a two-year grant from the staff of the Women’s Educational Equity Act to develop six training modules in hopes that they would be incorporated into university courses.
The training materials state that, “The serious female academic confronts sexual barriers at every phase of her career, beginning with formal and informal socialization processes before she enters an institution of higher education and continuing even as she rises to a successful position in her field.” In order to combat these issues, Dr. McCarthy was responsible for creating an “Equity Goal Ranking Process” which sought to create a plan of priorities for raising awareness and creating solutions for gender inequalities in higher education. She also helped to create a casebook of reality-based scenarios about issues of discrimination faced by women in higher education. Audio tapes and slide tapes of these case studies are available in the Martha McCarthy papers in the University Archives.
The “Equity Goal Ranking Process” consists of a set of activities designed to help participants identify equity issues of major concern and devise strategies for attaining top 
priority goals that could then be used in reviewing institutional policies, programs, and resource allocation. Examples of some of these equity goals include the following: “Establish salary, promotion and tenure policies that ensure equal treatment of women;” “Revise course content, class activities and student support services to eliminate sex bias;” “Develop objective policies to ensure equitable working conditions for women;” and “Provide training experiences to sensitize personnel to equity issues and existing discriminatory practices.”
Training materials also include suggestions for using the Equity Goal Rankings and Case Studies in a university course, with ideas for incorporating them into a semester-long course to create awareness of gender-based equity issues and devise strategies for eliminating biases.
Appendices includes information about conferences dealing with equity issues, opinionnaires, and pre- and post-evaluation forms.
As always, please contact the IU Archives to view the collection!
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