Northwestern must work on increasing representation of women and minorities in upper-level faculty positions, according to a report released Friday by the Council of Women in the Academic Community.

But “overall, the picture is not bad at all,” said law Prof. Charlotte Crane, COWAC’s chairwoman.

“The hiring itself — we’re not doing a bad job,” Crane said. “We’re less sure about what happens to women if they are promoted, if they get tenure, proceed to their careers within the university.”

COWAC was established by University President Henry Bienen in 1991. Members are appointed by Provost Lawrence Dumas. They serve two-year terms and compile an annual report on the university’s progress in enhancing the role of women in the workplace.

This year, COWAC received 2,080 responses from 9,591 faculty and staff.

Faculty respondents overall were happy with their jobs. More than 71 percent of men indicated job satisfaction compared to more than 59 percent of women, but COWAC said this disparity could exist in part because more female than male respondents were not tenure-eligible.

Female faculty also were more negative than men about the university’s performance in recruiting and retaining women. According to the report, 90 percent of male respondents and 76 percent of female respondents thought NU was doing as well as or better than peer institutions in this respect.

The COWAC report also expressed concern about staff job advancement and career planning. Staff reported generally high levels of job satisfaction but were more dissatisfied with their salary levels and opportunities for advancement.

Faculty and staff prefer childcare services close to campus, COWAC reported. Crane said COWAC has emphasized childcare for four years and had “a fairly substantial impact on the university’s proceeding to designate a childcare committee.”

COWAC also recommended that NU expand data collection methods and regularize staff categorization. Crane said this year’s report probably will not result in many administrative changes because COWAC is “sort of a process” and did not finish processing all the data by the time the report was released.

“(It) is much more likely to lead to more self-examination and trying to make more sense out of regularizing some of the data-generating functions that COWAC has been involved in, and trying to understand a little bit better about what some of the survey results mean,” she said.

The report is available online at http://www.northwestern.edu/provost/committees/cowac/2003_2004report.htm.

Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].