Last Updated November 19, 1999; comments to marshamiller@indstate.edu

The work of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund was featured in Friday afternoon’s C/U Symposium Plenary Session, "Discrimination in Higher Education."

Through the voices of two former sex discrimination litigants, symposium registrants learned first-hand the emotional, professional, and financial costs borne by courageous women who stand up and speak out for justice by challenging institutions’ discriminatory practices.

Cynthia Fisher, a former biology professor at Vassar College, spoke of her more than ten-year legal battle for tenure. Fisher sued Vassar when she was denied tenure arguing that the basis for the denial was that she was a married woman.

At the time Fisher sued, Vassar had never tenured a married woman in the hard sciences. Fisher won her trial. The judge awarded her more than $600,000 in damages and ordered her reinstated as a professor at Vassar.

That victory was short-lived. Vassar immediately appealed the verdict, although, by court order, Fisher was able to continue employment throughout the appeal. She was terminated in 1997 when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the original verdict. Fisher petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case but was denied in 1998.

Mary Elizabeth Oba is a former Education Foundation Fellowship grant recipient. She received an EF grant while in school at Columbia University for her master’s degree in architecture. After obtaining a master’s in architecture and urban planning, Oba took a job at another New York higher education institution. It was there that she faced sex discrimination. When she spoke up, she was fired. What followed was a six-year legal battle for her rights—a battle she fought so that other women and girls would not have to fight. Oba describes her battle as a link in the chain that defines and protects our civil rights.

After winning her trial, the university appealed; however, Oba was able to settle her lawsuit. She is unable to disclose the terms of the settlement, but she did make a sizable contribution to LAF - $16,000 – from the settlement money she received.

Both women stressed the importance of the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund that gives women the financial and moral support needed to maintain litigation.

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