A.A.U.W.

Everywhere there were women, mostly middle‐aged, middle‐class: club women, church women, union women, wearing buttons like “How Dare You Assume I’d Rather Be Young?” or “A.A.U.W. for E.R.A.”; women of eclectic causes and eclectic vanities; women in muumuus, tweed suits, gaucho pants; women drinking, laughing, talking; women doing grown‐up things and exhilarated to be doing them, things like tipping waiters, carrying suitcases, lobbying and caucusing to all hours of the night; women exhilarated, too, by their sexual indefiniteness, their sexual immunity in this temporary world without men.

Now, working in conjunction with the A.A.U.W., they plan to have negotiation workshops — called Smart Start — in place by spring in more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide.

Even so, the A.A.U.W. determined that one-third of the gap remained unexplained.

“The judge’s decision was pretty straightforward,” said Lisa Maatz, director of public policy and government relations at the A.A.U.W., a women’s advocacy group.

The 40 A.A.U.W. proposals offered last week lean toward such predictable remedies as improved teacher training or further studies and avoid bold proposals suggested by the research, such as sex-segregated math and science classes.