Two State Universities Report Progress in Closing the Gender Pay Gap for Faculty

Two major state universities have issued reports on the gender gap in faculty pay. And the good news is that progress is being made.

A year ago, the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness at Colorado State University found that there was a gender gap in faculty salaries. However, the latest data shows that “there were no statistically significant between-group differences in salary identified at any rank by gender or minority status after controlling for department and years in rank.”

The report found that “in four of the last five years, the salary gap for female full professors was statistically significant but has narrowed and is no longer statistically significant.” The data also showed that salaries for assistant and associate professors showed no statistically significant gender gap.

At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst data shows that for men and women faculty members that hold the same rank for an equivalent period of time in their particular college, there is no gender pay gap. However, the study, conducted by the university’s Institute for Social Science Research, found that women make up only 29 percent of all full professors and even a smaller percentage of full professors in the colleges where salaries tend to be the highest. Thus, this fact “results in higher pay for men than for women when all faculty are considered in aggregate.”

John McCarthy, acting provost at the university stated that “the balance across ranks should improve as associate professors move up to full professors in the coming years, just as it has already changed among associate professors. To accelerate that process, I have urged departments to proactively review and identify associate professors who are ready for promotion.”