Academic women of color today aren't hindered so much by a glass ceiling, but one made of concrete, said Akanke Omorayo, the program coordinator of the University of Michigan's Women of Color in the Academy Project (WOCAP). She led a panel discussion April 12 in the Statler Hotel as part of Cornell's Women of Color Roundtable.

"I mean, people talk about glass ceilings," said Omorayo. "We have a cement ceiling here, and we're basically chipping away in the dark. Things need to change."

More than 150 women attended the daylong roundtable, which included sessions on challenges in the workforce, employment and family life among faculty and staff women of color. Sessions also addressed workplace strategies and action plans for career development.

Omorayo said that change is critical if universities are to retain women of color on their faculties.

"One of the more pressing complaints I hear from women of color faculty today is that no one takes their work seriously, or at best, it's viewed as a kind of public relations tool," Omorayo said. "If you're doing unconventional work, there should be people in positions of authority who understand what's at stake in your scholarship, people who can at least sympathize with it and see the value of it. Someone you can turn to, like a mentor, for instance. But for the vast majority of women of color in the academy, there is no such support, and it happens a lot that scholarship is dismissed outright because of these arbitrary reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the work."

One tool to help women of color, she said, is WOCAP, which was established in 1994 as a support network for women of color faculty at the University of Michigan. Its mission is to highlight the contributions made by women of color both to the academic community and society at large.

"When I joined WOCAP four years ago," Omorayo said, "I vowed I would do my best to prevent it from becoming just another bit of window dressing. There are serious problems to be dealt with, and as long as the dominant power structures aren't challenged, there won't be any real evolution. So yes, you could say I'm definitely pro-institutional change."

WOCAP, she said, is concerned about issues involving recruitment and retention. Six of the women who discussed their problems in a short WOCAP video shown by Omorayo have now left the University of Michigan, she noted. "Many women suffer from stress, mental health problems. They get into this place where they feel isolated and alone because no one understands the value of the work they are doing, and then they get fed up with the system and leave. But then it's a big problem at all the other universities too. Ultimately, they're in a no-win situation."

Margaret Washington, professor of history at Cornell, who was in the audience, agreed. "I hear the same thing from women here at Cornell all the time," she said. "Work being done by women of color just isn't given the attention it deserves."

Sponsors of the Women of Color Roundtable included the Office of Human Resources, Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality and the Statler Hotel.

Graduate student Joseph Murtagh is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.