WIM in the NEWS

Three Decades of Advancement, Carolyn Heine, who founded Women in Management, recounts the fight for rights at USC over 30 years.
By Ariel Carpenter

USC’s Women in Management turns 30 this year. Founding member Carolyn Heine of Academic Records & Registrar recalled how the organization helped mobilize change for women staff at the university.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Heine, the organization’s president emerita. “It used to be that women staff were mostly secretaries, and men were mostly bosses. And that needed to change.”

Heine should know. She’s spent a lot of her career fighting to abolish discrimination against women. While at USC Law School in 1967, Heine was appointed executive director of the groundbreaking legislative research arm, the California Commission on the Status of Women, by former President Ronald Reagan, who was then California governor.

For seven years, Heine led the commission in its work and lobbied women’s groups to appeal to the California Legislature to abolish laws which discriminated against women. When Heine left USC for Sacramento in 1967, she said there were probably not more than a dozen women in professional staff positions at USC and very few women faculty members.

According to Heine, the commission’s work helped sex discrimination in employment to be outlawed in California in 1970. That, and the federal mandate for affirmative action in employment had a big impact at USC and throughout the country during the ’70s.

Heine returned to USC in 1974, and in 1979, she and several other professional staff women were approached by the late Barbara Gardner, the USC alumna who founded USC’s Joint Educational Project, to help organize a group that would support women who held professional positions on campus.

“We needed to establish an organization for women to come together, share success stories and help each other,” Heine recalled. “We also needed to encourage the administration to adopt equitable policies and practices about hiring, promotion and equal pay for women.”

By 1979, Heine said, out of thousands of staff members, there were probably 50 or more women above the rank of secretary or clerk at USC – with job titles such as academic adviser, assistant program director or director, a couple of assistant deans and three women deans – law, dean of women (in Student Affairs) and library science (out of 18 schools).

In 1980, when USC President James H. Zumberge came into office, Women in Management met with him to discuss the organization’s agenda.

“We asked the USC administration to remember the interests of women when making decisions. He jumped right on it,” Heine said. “He asked us for assistance in forming an effective USC affirmative action committee, as recommended by federal law, appointed several WIM members to it and acted on many of its recommendations.”

“It was such a great feeling to actually get a place at the table. We made it known that women’s issues were important,” Heine said. “I think we were successful in energizing the campus.”

Today Women in Management, led by president Brenda Delong, continues to act as a support system to its more than 140 members. Its mission is to foster, promote and encourage the growth of women in professional and leadership positions at USC.

“We want to continue to be role models for young professional women, inspire them to extend their reach and increase the number of women in leadership roles at USC,” Heine added.

To celebrate turning 30, the organization will hold a special event during the next academic year in conjunction with a membership drive.

Women in professional, managerial, faculty and leadership positions are eligible to become members. To apply, visit http://www.usc.edu/org/wim/