Enhancing Gender Equity in Academia: Lessons from the ADVANCE Program

Women are underrepresented in U.S. tenure-track faculty positions, and institutional interventions are key to creating greater gender equality and accessing women's potential. This study examines the effectiveness of one "transformational" intervention, the ADVANCE Institutional Transformation initiative, implemented at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in 2001. We compare data on women's representation in faculty positions before and during the UCI ADVANCE Program (1993-2009) to that of seven other campuses in the University of California system, where no initiatives of this scale were implemented. Using descriptive figures, T tests, and regression analyses, we find that UCI had a higher percentage of women faculty and hired a greater percentage of women during ADVANCE years, but did not retain women at a greater rate. We describe the UCI ADVANCE program and its structure, including its "Equity Advisors," who we suggest have been important in improving women's representation among faculty at UCI.