Four groups of faculty and administrators are being formed to carry on the important work of the Gender Equity Committee, Senate chair Stephen Yeazell told the Academic Senate Feb. 13.

While one group, headed by Judith Gasson, director of the Jonsson Cancer Center, will analyze salary data from the schools of Medicine and Dentistry, another, led by Roshan Bastami, associate professor of public health, will look at how data collection at UCLA can be improved "to enable us to answer some presently unanswerable questions about the rate of our women colleagues' progress through the academic ranks," Yeazell said. A third group, headed by Judith Siegel, associate dean of public health, will evaluate the gender equity climate on campus. An oversight committee headed by Letitia Anne Peplau, professor of psychology and sociology, will coordinate the entire effort and make recommendations.

The action followed the release of a gender equity report last August that raised concerns about the way payroll data are gathered, the hiring of women and their progress in reaching the top rungs of the academic ladder and the shortage of child care, among other concerns.

Chancellor Albert Carnesale said that work in these areas is moving forward.

A draft policy on salary information has been formulated to allow data to be analyzed statistically, but without jeopardizing an individual's right to privacy. That draft policy is currently being circulated, the chancellor said.

UCLA's maternity policy also has been under discussion. "We're in the process now of recasting it, not to revise the policy, but to make sure that it is clear to all and that it will be administered fairly and equitably across the campus," he said. Carnesale also said he has put campus child care high on his list of fund-raising priorities.

To make sure that the university recruits and retains the "best and brightest women" at levels that fairly reflect the number of women graduating with Ph.D.s and the highest professional degrees, Executive Vice Chancellor Wyatt R. Hume, working with the Senate's standing Committee on Diversity and Equal Opportunity, will be working on this charge, Yeazell said.