Inequalities in women’s pay detailed by recent survey
Disparities in pay based on gender were found in a study conducted by Utah State University on faculty and staff of the school.
The results of the study were presented in 11 different categories. Female administrators were the group with the greatest differential. This category had 13 people with a difference of $5,600 in their paycheck when compared to their male counterparts.
The group with the second-highest dollar difference was female non-tenure track faculty. There were 84 people who fell into this group and had a $3,286 difference.
The third largest pay disparity had a range of $2,350 to $3,204. The group with this difference included 20 people within the category minority female professionals.
Sue Guenter-Schlesinger, assistant executive vice president for Affirmative Action and Diversity at USU said this was a very specific type of pay equity study which purpose was to try and ascertain whether a person of a certain race or gender is being paid equally, compared to peers in similar positions.
The university hired Lois Haignere, a national expert who does gender and race salary equity studies. In the USU study, Haignere compared similarly situated employees. Variables such as tenure and non-tenure track, discipline, rank, like years of service, highest degree earned and years at the university were all controlled.
Under the affirmative action program, higher education institutions are asked to periodically conduct these types of studies, Guenter-Schlesinger said.
USU, and particularly President Kermit L. Hall, took an big step when the study was initiated.
“Most gender and race equity studies look only at faculty, in higher education, we don’t really know of any where the study also looks at employees, usually it just looks at faculty,” Guenter-Schlesinger said. “It is to President Hall’s good credit that he said he wanted a baseline for everybody, over 2,500 employees.”
Last March, roughly the same time USU completed it’s salary equity study, former Gov. Mike Leavitt signed a bill requiring the state to study inequality in wages paid to state workers.
“I commissioned the equity study in large measure because my first pass over the numbers suggested that there may be some problems,” Hall said. “My experience in higher education has constantly reminded me that equity issues relating to matters of gender are very real. I have a very strong sense that in order to keep good female faculty and staff that we have, it’s really critical to address these issues.”
The study took about 14 months to work through. Hall said the reason for the lengthy process was USU didn’t have very good data and one of the real tasks they had was to pull together the data on salaries, time and rank.
Inequality with men and women’s pay is a widespread problem throughout the country.
According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, “In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed, women made 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men. By 2002, women earned 77 cents to the dollar, a narrowing of the wage gap by less than half a cent a year. Over a working lifetime, this wage disparity costs the average American woman and her family an estimated $523,000 in lost wages, impacting Social Security benefits and pensions.”
Hall said possible causes of the disparity might include that historically women have been brought into the higher education market, whether at the staff or faculty ranks at lower salaries.
“Second, the careers women follow in part because of issues following parenting and child birth and child rearing and such can deflect people into paths that aren’t necessarily going to reward them as constantly as they otherwise would be,” he said.
The university’s plan of action for the study is a commitment to address some of the disparities right away and then address all of them in the next three to five years while conducting a similar study every other year too see whether any of the initial adjustments have helped.
Associate professor Ronda Callister, who is part of the project to improve women’s wages at USU, said it’s going to take some time to correct the disparities that exist.
The first set of adjustments was, “not a huge amount but was a symbolic representation, we wanted people to have at least a $50 difference in their paycheck to say, hey look we’ve done this study” Guenter-Schlesinger said.
Approximately 90 tenured and 84 non-tenured women received adjustments in their pay from the university. “It’s not a huge amount of people but it’s a good start,” Guenter-Schlesinger said.
Guenter-Schlesinger said those who received a little adjustment were thrilled and very appreciative.
Hall said they made a commitment of about $200,000 to $250,000 for the first round in improving the pay disparity.
Finding the money to address this problem is particularly hard, as the university is currently facing major budget cuts.
“We really got that money by squeezing a lot of other things,” Hall said.
“I want to underscore that doesn’t solve all of our problems or meet our goal for the institution. The inversion of salaries of male and female at the rank of associate and to some extent full professor is serious at Utah State, but again you have to have some place to start,” Hall said.
The study is being replicated again this year. “We will have some new results, we will certainly look at those and I think we have actually made progress at closing the gap,” Hall said.
Results for the next study are expected to be released shortly.
“Running the second iteration of the study will be interesting to see where things line up,” Guenter-Schlesinger said.
Emily Brunson, a sophomore majoring in early childhood and elementary education, said, “It’s great to know, particularly as a woman, that efforts are being made to change the inequalities that women face in the career field.”
Hall said, “Now that we know there is an issue and we have a plan to address it, I am very hopeful that over the next several years we will succeed in creating an environment for pay that at least on the basis of gender will be much better than it was when I came here.”
-gmblake@cc.usu.edu