April 2008
Surveys abound showing that women in academe (and the rest of society) earn less
than men. Likewise theories abound for why this is the case, so many years after
it ceased to be acceptable for deans (or other bosses) to automatically assume a
woman could make do with less.
A
scholar at the University of Iowa who has been mining national data presented
his latest findings Monday at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association. The results in short say that — even using the most
sophisticated possible approach to take into consideration non-sexist reasons
for pay differentials — a pay gap remains, based on gender. And while this can’t
be definitively tied to sexism, there aren’t a lot of likely alternative
explanations.
But
the study also found that some of the explanations that do exist — in particular
based on disciplines and the types of institutions where women are more likely
to find jobs — suggest that the salary gaps may be here to stay, unless higher
education thinks very differently about reward structures.
“Higher education in general is going to have to consider how we reward people,
and how our awards differentially affect men and women,” said Paul D. Umbach,
assistant professor of education at Iowa.
In
fact, Umbach’s analysis finds a greater share of the salary gap in these general
reward policies than in the unexplained category that could be blatant sexism.
That’s why he said Monday that women face “a double hit” in what they earn — an
average of $3,200 when he has controlled for all factors. Generally, controlling
for all factors, he found a gap of 4 percent remained between the salaries of
men and women. Controlling only for discipline and institution type, the gap is
larger (14 percent) and part of Umbach’s concern is that the larger gap may be
the one faced by most women.
Generally, Umbach’s research has not been quick to proclaim sexism as the cause
for salary gaps. He has devoted much of his work to exploring the various
explanations for salary gaps that may or may not be directly related to gender
and that may or may not be fair. His latest analysis is based on data from 472
four-year colleges and universities, broken down not only by gender but by 87
disciplines. Nearly 8,000 faculty members were studied.
In
controlling for all possible factors, Umbach said he wanted to look at the
interrelationship of discipline and institution. He said that many salary gap
studies are flawed in that they focus on institutions only or disciplines only,
when the two are related. In addition, he applied an approach in which faculty
members were ranked on productivity and other factors, so that the final
comparison (in which only a 4 percent gap remained) compared faculty members on
equal ground with respect to those factors and numerous others (seniority,
classes taught, etc.).
One
of the theories Umbach said he wanted to test was whether — as departments
attract more female faculty members — their relative pay level goes down. Here,
he said that his findings were ambiguous. He did find a clear correlation —
disciplines that have more women have lower average salaries. The complication,
he said, is that he found other factors as well. Those disciplines also tend to
be teaching-oriented disciplines. Similarly women were disproportionately
employed at teaching-oriented institutions, which also pay less. So professors
who are women, teach in a field that cares about teaching and work at a college
that really cares about teaching face a “triple hit” on salary, he said, “and it
adds up to real money.”
It’s not sexism alone at play, he said, because men who teach in those
departments and at those institutions also earn less than men elsewhere
(although the teaching-oriented men still earn 4 percent more than the
comparable women).
In
terms of what to do about this, Umbach acknowledged in an interview that there
weren’t easy answers. “There are pure market forces we can’t ignore,” he said.
And that explains in part why universities tend to favor professors in fields
where they might be recruited outside of academe or have the potential to
attract outside support.
But
he said that the study suggests that, at the very least, colleges need to
continue to study their salary gaps, and not to assume that this is a problem
that has been solved.
And
if colleges care about the gender gap, it may be time to question assumptions
about why people in some disciplines earn more. “Is it fair to reward people who
can earn grants from outside over people for whom there aren’t grants?” Added
Umbach: “At the very least this is something to observe. It perpetuates
inequities.”
The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/25/salarygap
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