How do organizational catalysts do this? They spot gender issues when they come up
and make sure they are the subject of explicit discussion. They put issues affecting
women’s participation on the agenda. They help create multiple constituencies for
change—constituencies who otherwise wouldn’t see their interests as overlapping. For
example, they frame issues so that faculty concerned about the quality of the graduate
student experience and about faculty retention join with those concerned about the
climate for women and people of color to push for change. They arrange meetings with
high level administrators so that they can hear the arguments from influential faculty
together with advocates for improving the institution’s involvement of women and people
of color. They use the evidence from the data to demonstrate the existence of the
problem and construct a case for action. They use their social capital and that of others
who they have brought into the process to make it more costly to do nothing. Perhaps
most importantly, the organizational catalysts help figure out what to do, and then they
do the leg work to maintain the momentum so that these proposed changes actually
occur. Their sustained attention to the issue and their follow-through with concrete
action plans makes it much easier for high level administrators to take action. It also
provides that crucial link between system-wide reforms and the micro-level contexts in
which those changes must be actualized.