Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992                   TAG: 9203250334
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

PUBLISHED VCU SALARY LIST 1ST STEP TO MAKE UP PAY

It took an article in the student newspaper.

In December 1987, the Commonwealth Times printed a list of faculty salaries. Some professors were embarrassed, but many women were incensed to find that the man down the hall had a fatter paycheck.

Four years and two studies later, an all-female committee has handed out $321,000 in makeup pay to 168 female faculty members.

And while some male employees say the process went too far, others say it barely began to cover the fundamentally different ways men and women are treated.

"Either women are lousy workers across the board or something else is going on," said Diana Scully, associate professor of sociology who directs VCU's women's studies program. Unequal treatment, she said, "is indeed an endemic problem in this society."

The VCU raises were as dramatic as 40 percent and as pedestrian as 1 percent, plus compensation back to the start of the year. The rest of the faculty haven't even gotten cost-of-living increases since 1990.

But the Faculty Senate endorsed the pay boosts, and one of the provost-appointed groups that studied the issue was mostly male.

The first study found that male assistant, associate and full professors at VCU made an average of $7,308 per year more than females. When that was adjusted for rank, years of experience and various professions -- engineers, for example, are expected to make more than nurses -- the men still came out about $1,300 ahead on average.

That was 1989; an update last year put the gap at almost $2,000.

The study committees wanted to offer a 2.5 percent pay raise to all women in tenure-track positions, but the administration opted for the more time-consuming method of evaluating each case individually.

So Provost Charles Ruch appointed Scully and three others - all women - to conduct the reviews and dole out pay raises.

Of the 773 tenure-track faculty members at VCU, 205 are women. Last fall, each woman got a letter offering the chance to have her salary reviewed; all she had to do was give Scully's committee a detailed list of achievements and background.

One hundred sixty-eight answered the call, and every one of them got more money.

"One of the main objections is it didn't include performance as a variable," said a male professor who asked not to be named. "My guess is some . . . people deserved the [lower] salary they were getting."

Scully acknowledged that the process did not look at performance or merit, other than the extent to which those qualities are reflected in a resume.

"These were not merit increases, these were equity increases," she said. The committee evaluated each resume, looked at the pay of comparable males and compared each woman to a national average for her field.

"We worked hard on it. We spent many, many, many, many hours on it," said Scully, who described late nights and Saturdays spent reviewing cases. "I'm satisfied, given the data we had, that we've done the fairest job adjusting salaries we could."