Publication Date: Wednesday Mar 15, 2000

Board of Contributors: Bearing witness for a better workplace

This month Stanford University will be on trial in federal court, where Dr. Colleen Crangle will charge the university with retaliation against her because she filed a complaint about gender bias.

The trial is set to begin Friday in San Jose.

A Palo Alto resident, Crangle was fired from her position as a senior research scientist and consultant when she challenged the unprofessional treatment that she received from three men at Stanford: a Medical School dean, the head of the medical informatics unit where she worked and a colleague who was her peer.

When I asked Crangle why she sued rather than settle, she replied with quiet dignity: "I must bear witness. Stanford is a place where women encounter blatant and subtle inequities. If they take issue with them, they face swift and brutal retaliation, so that most women are terrified into silence."

Crangle's suit comes during a U.S. Labor Department investigation into Stanford's employment practices. Crangle is among several women who filed a complaint to the federal government that the university frequently violates equal opportunity laws, which are supposed to be observed whenever federal funds are received.

Their complaint is supported by statistics in a 1998 report generated by the Caucus of Women Faculty and Researchers: Although Stanford receives millions of federal dollars each year, the university ranks near the bottom for faculty gender equity, 19 out of 21, when compared with similar universities.

From the same report, as women become increasingly successful at Stanford, their opportunities decrease: Fifty percent of the undergraduates and 35 percent of the graduate students are women, but under 20 percent of the tenured faculty are women, despite a steadily growing pool of available professional women.

With this as background, here is Crangle's experience of gender bias and retaliation at Stanford:

In 1996, a Medical School dean wrote a supporting letter saying that he expected Crangle to take a leadership role in the medical informatics unit when she was hired. She did.

A year later, that same dean joined his male colleagues to undermine her success. For instance, instead of rewarding Crangle for obtaining a research grant on her own and helping to bring in another, or for increasing medical informatics' prestige through her achievements and professional recognition, her male colleagues marginalized and isolated her.

She was told she could no longer work with other scholars, even though the essence of medical informatics research is interdisciplinary, based on shared knowledge. She was told that funding for her research had run out. Crangle intends to disprove this in court.

In addition, the same dean told Crangle to be more sensitive to her peer's feelings. She had already been admonished by her male colleague for having "strong opinions." Further, Crangle was told to include his name in her grant applications so that he would receive part of her research funds, although the arrangement would not be reciprocal.

When Crangle asked why she should do this, inasmuch as she and her colleague were equals, the dean drew a new organization chart that instantly elevated her peer to a higher status, as if he were her superior. In sum, her new role was to be a traditional woman who subordinates her career to nurture a man's ego and assist him with his work.

Crangle protested that the dean wanted her to be a "girl Friday." He replied that she shouldn't be bothered because it could easily have been a "boy Friday." The message was clear: Men are also treated unfairly at Stanford. But the 1998 Women's Caucus statistics argue that unfairness does not happen to men with the frequency and intensity that it does to women.

When Crangle could not be intimidated into compliance, she was assigned to a programming position, for which she had no training and which was, effectively, a demotion. Then she was transferred to another department where she would have had no office or computer of her own.

After seeking redress, to no avail, through Human Resources, Crangle sent an e-mail to the dean of the Medical School, telling him that she would take legal action. Within 24 hours, she was fired.

In a recent letter to the Weekly, Bob Beyers, former Faculty Senate information officer at Stanford, wrote: "Retribution and intimidation have become widespread against faculty and staff during the Casper administration." Beyers told me the university gets away with this "by isolating people, and the degree to which they get away with it is extraordinary."

That observation fits the pattern that Crangle experienced. The men at the Medical School used the same tactics with her that were used by bigots to demean and suppress blacks during the civil rights movement. Crangle was marginalized, isolated, stripped of her rank, denigrated, rejected and scorned. Her funding was eliminated, and the final retaliation was to fire her. True to history, the men deny discrimination.

Why did this happen?

Crangle thinks it was because the men chose to see her professional success as a threat to their careers, instead of as a contribution to the medical informatics unit. Increasingly, she was sought after to give presentations at national and international conferences. She co-authored a book with Patrick Suppe, an eminent Stanford scholar, and wrote a score of professional articles. Crangle brought in federal money, and with it came prestige.

By any standard, Crangle is a serious professional. Perhaps it is even more irritating to her male colleagues that she accomplished these things while being married for 22 years, mothering two children and finding time for public service in her community.

What can we do? Surely we can do more than put the newspaper aside and go to dinner. Here are some possibilities:

Contribute to the Legal Action Fund of the American Association for University Women (P.O. Box 60653, Palo Alto 94306), which has contributed $23,000 to Crangle's legal expenses. Ask them to specify your donation for this lawsuit.

Communicate. Write, teach, talk about this case. Go to www.gender-equity.org for sample letters to the editor and for directions to the courthouse. Be there to "bear witness."

Solidarity has an honorable tradition. If you have been discriminated against, file a complaint. Help break the silence.

Although this lawsuit focuses on Crangle's charge of retaliation, it is not about an isolated incident at Stanford, nor is it about Crangle's singular courage to challenge a powerful university. Every once in a while, a trial transcends the facts. Crangle vs. Stanford is about the future.

Anne Rawley Saldich, an executive coach and licensed therapist, is a member of the Weekly's Board of Contributors. 

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