As universities continue to stress their commitment to gender equity programs, some are finding claims of inequality stem from an unusual source -- men.
Penn experienced this reality firsthand when it faced Andrew Medcalf in court.
Medcalf, who was an assistant coach for the men's heavyweight crew team from 1991 to 1997, filed a lawsuit against the University after being denied the position of head coach for the women's crew team in 1997.
Medcalf, claiming he had been discriminated against because the position was given to a woman after only female candidates had been interviewed, won the employment discrimination case in 2001. Penn appealed the $115,000 decision, but the judgment against the University was affirmed this summer.
While cases like Medcalf's are on the rise, they still remain relatively rare at colleges and universities.
Attorney Glen Lenhoff, who practices law in Michigan and has dealt with several reverse discrimination lawsuits, estimated that perhaps three out of every 10 gender discrimination lawsuits are brought by men.
However, according to attorneys experienced with employment litigation, reverse gender discrimination cases have been on the rise in the past six to eight years.
Gender equity programs on college campuses are both impacting and being impacted by this trend.
Many schools have begun initiatives to equalize their male-female ratios in the past decade.
One of the most successful and earliest programs began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nine years ago when biology professor Nancy Hopkins, in a constant search for a scientific approach to problems, began to compile data on professors at MIT.
The study, which showed a serious underrepresentation of women, led to the administration's open discussion of the problem -- as well as an aggressive initiative to try and fix it.
Change happened quickly, with the percentage of female faculty members in MIT's School of Engineering rising from approximately 8 to 13.5 percent in the last four years.
MIT worked to aggressively recruit female faculty members. The search led the school's administrators to pursue somewhat unusual steps, such as recruiting mainly from outside their university. Often, they had to specifically ask other institutions for female candidates.
"It just didn't come to the person's mind to recommend a woman for a job," Hopkins said. "They didn't just get sent to you automatically."
Also, the administration created additional positions for women to fill.
"All the things that could be fixed with a data-driven approach really got fixed at MIT," Hopkins said. But the school, much like others across the country, continues to strive for equality and now must tackle more difficult problems.
And looming on the horizon is the possibility of gender discrimination suits like the Medcalf case -- a possibility that, perhaps, is more likely in light of the school's mission to hire more women.
According to Hopkins, there "is a great deal of fear about" such cases, but "there are worse things than being sued."
Penn Biochemistry Professor Phoebe Leboy, who also served as co-chair of a committee on gender equity at Penn, is familiar with issues pertaining to women's equality on campus.
Leboy observed that many reverse discrimination lawsuits can be traced to "a fundamental misunderstanding."
"They arise from the assumption that we are all equal and we all have equal opportunities," Leboy said. "That is based upon the assumption of a level playing field to begin with, and I don't believe we have a level playing field."
In order to stay out of the courtroom, many universities are working to ensure that their hiring practices are fair to both women and men.
In fact, Hopkins said the women at MIT work actively to ensure they find the best candidate for any job -- male or female.
"The women themselves are probably the most critical when it comes to standards," she said of her colleagues.
