AAUW Study Examines the Gender Gap in Nonprofit Organizations, Including Higher Education

The American Association of University Women recently released a new report on the status of women in leadership positions in the nonprofit sector. The report includes data on women leaders in higher education.

The report says that the nonprofit sector employs about 11 million Americans and women make up a large percentage of the workforce at these organizations. However the AAUW data finds that for nonprofits with a budget of at least $250,000, women make up 56 percent of the chief executives. But if we raise the budget level to greater than $1 million, the data shows that women are only 22 percent of the chief executives.

At these large nonprofits, there is also a gender pay gap, according to the study. At nonprofits with budgets of more than $1 million, women CEOs make on average 18 percent less than male CEOs.

If we look at the education sector, the data shows that while women have made up a majority of all college graduates in each of the past 35 years, today women are only 44 percent of tenured faculty and 36 percent of full professors. Women are less than 30 percent of college presidents and only 32 percent of the members of the boards of trustees at colleges and universities.

The full report, Broken Ladders: Barriers to Women’s Representation in Nonprofit Leadership, may be downloaded by clicking here.