Note: Research institutions pay the best.  In most states (but not
Alabama) junior colleges pay the worst.  In all states HBCU's tend to
pay very poorly compared to traditionally White institutions.

 

AAUP: Women Professors Lag In Tenure, Salary
By Shilpa Banerji
Oct 26, 2006, 03:36

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There are more women in full-time faculty positions than 30 years ago
but research institutions are still reluctant to hire women or pay them
in parity with their male hires, according to an annual report by the
American Association of University Professors released today.

           

The report, "AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006," highlights
data from individual schools for the first time in the hopes of
generating on-campus dialogue on employment and salary inequities.

           

"We hope to move from a perspective of national diversity and equity to
one of more local dialogue on campuses about these issues," says Dr. Ann
Higginbotham, professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State
University and chair of the AAUP Committee on Women in the Academic
Profession.

 

The report says that women have nearly reached parity and are 47 percent
of tenured full-time faculty at community colleges. The number of
tenured women faculty members decreases to a little more than one third
at masters- and baccalaureate-degree granting colleges. But doctoral
universities had only one-fourth of tenured faculty who are women. This
means that full-time women faculty are only half as likely as men to
have tenure, the report says.

 

Among historically Black colleges and universities that grant doctoral
degrees, at Howard University, for instance, 32 percent of tenured
faculty were women. That figure was lower at Auburn University, where 20
percent of tenured faculty were women. 

 

Among full professors at all institutions nationwide in 2005-06, women
held 24

percent of the positions and men held 76 percent, says the report. Women
comprised 19 percent of full professors at doctoral universities and men
81 percent. Baccalaureate and master's degree institutions were in
between, with 29 and 28 percent women respectively. 

 

"Basically, the more prestigious the institution in the layer, the fewer
the women there are," says the study's co-author Martha S. West,
professor of law at University of California-Davis. 

 

The report also compared salaries between men and women faculty, which
has remained unchanged since the 1970s. In 2005-06, across all ranks and
all institutions, the average salary for women faculty was 81 percent of
the amount earned by men. Among all full professors at all types of
institutions in 2005-06, women earned on average 88 percent of what men
earned. For associate and assistant professors, the overall national
figure for women was 93 percent. 

 

The authors say the salary disadvantage was due to two reasons: women
are more likely to have positions at institutions that pay lower
salaries, and they are less likely to hold senior faculty rank. 

 

"This doesn't have to do with science disciplines," says West. "Even if
there are more women Ph.D.s in English or psychology, the doctoral
institutions are not hiring them."

 

The authors also stressed the importance of academia to convey to women
that they no longer have to make a choice between raising children and
becoming tenure-track faculty members.

 

"We need to do a better job of publicizing the whole cultural shift [of
the work-family ethic] and graduate students have to be convinced
first," says West.

 

Higginbotham adds there might not be overt sexism, but some subtle
pressures at work on campuses.

 

"Even though there's a lot of progress, we're not sure what's going on
in terms of model programs [for work-family] and the picture may not
look as rosy," says Higginbotham.

 

The report concludes that unless institutions establish a centralized
review of all salaries at the time of appointment, salary inequities
will continue far into the future. 

 

"As long as women hold 57 percent of the lecturer and instructor
positions, but only 36 percent of the assistant through full professor
positions, these significant differences between men and women's average
salaries will remain," the report says.

 

- By Shilpa Banerji

 

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<http://www.diverseeducation.com/comment1.asp> . 


(c) Copyright 2006 by DiverseEducation.com

 

 

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