Sorry for the delay.
I want to thank those who participated in the Dialogue on Disability and
Gender. I hope that questions and thoughts about the issues raised through
this discussion continue to be raised through the EdEquity list or through
private e-mail or telephone conversations. It is a busy time of the year
and with vacations, there weren't as many people participating as we might
have liked, but there is always progress when people communicate and
communicate we did.
I will clarify that there is affirmative action hiring at the Minnesota
Department of Children, Families & Learning but, there are fields in all
places of employment that have been been predominantly dominated by one
gender or the other. Leadership is more equally divided between the
genders, but among the workers there are the same discrepancies found in
elementary education, early childhood education and probably, in the field
of nursing. Some progress toward equality has been made in the past ten
years, but within the confines of hiring freezes, a strike, a near shutdown
or two in the past few years, it will be much farther into the future when
the workers are more nearly equally divided between the genders in special
education. No conspiracy, however! And there isn't data to say that
administering monitoring and compliance or policy development is biased
because of a gender disparity exists.
Enough on that. I learned a lot and I hope others did and that the
discussion will continue. I appreciate the hard work everyone is doing and
I
am glad I got to read the thoughts of my colleagues across the country.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Sue Sattel,
Facilitator
Equity Specialist,
Minnesota Department of Children, Families & Learning,
<Sue.Sattel@state.mn.us>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Aug 27 2002 - 14:50:15 EDT