Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992 TAG: 9203250353
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER and APRIL WITT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The equal-pay program, which has won praise from women's groups, has been operating for eight years - yet is so low-key that possible victims of bias often don't know about it.
Anthropologist Helen Rountree had no idea she was underpaid until she found a letter in her mailbox telling her she'd get a modest raise to bring her into line with other full professors. Her name had been reported to the administration by the University Women's Caucus.
"I stay so buried in my research that if someone else didn't watch out, it might be years before I noticed it - or never," said Rountree, an expert on American Indians.
But despite programs at places like ODU, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and the University of Virginia, equal-rights advocates say the ivory tower is no haven from the old-boy system.
"It's very comparable with the glass ceiling we keep hearing about - whether it's in the corporate world or the blue-collar world," said Helen Eigenberg, president of the ODU women's caucus, who speaks warmly of her own university's response. "There is this level at which women get shut out."
The American Association of University Women reported in 1989 that nationwide 49 percent of female professors held tenure, which guarantees job security for life, compared to 71 percent for men. And at every academic rank, women's average salaries were lower than their male counterparts.
Virginia Tech officials said they've had a program to examine salaries and make adjustments since 1988. "This is an ongoing process," said Tech spokesman David Nutter.
At Radford University, the staff has been tracking salary issues for 20 years, said spokeswoman Deborah Brown.
"We're confident that there's parity," she said. "Salaries are on track for men and women." Salaries are studied each year, she said.
In Virginia, female faculty members at four-year public colleges earn an average of $39,000 - $10,000 less than men. Much of that is because Virginia universities employ eight times more men than women at the highest-paid rank of full professor.
Men also dominate the highest-paying academic fields of engineering, business and law, where universities struggle to match lucrative private-sector salaries. Women tend to be concentrated in lower-paying schools such as education and nursing.
Such is the case at Tech, where men historically have dominated the College of Engineering, said Provost Fred Carlisle. Women are heavily concentrated in the lower-paying humanities and social sciences.
Officials compare the salaries in various colleges when they check for equity, Carlisle said. "If there is disparity, we try to make adjustments," he said. "But according to our statistics, there is no significant difference between salaries at the full professor level when you take these other factors into account."
Susan Reddy Butler, president of the American Association of University Women's legal advocacy fund, said much of the pay gap is explained by old-fashioned discrimination. Studies shows that young female academics frequently get less support from their departments in their early years - then are less likely to be promoted later, Butler said.
The fund has brought lawsuits against universities from New York to Hawaii that failed to promote women, but Butler says legal pressure, especially with an increasingly conservative federal bench, won't be enough.
"Some of it's going to be women recognizing their own worth and insisting on it," she said.
At the University of Virginia, administrators first examined salaries three years ago with an exhaustive computer analysis of more than 1,600 faculty members, but found no pattern of gender or racial gaps. About 150 professors were paid significantly less than average for their rank and academic discipline, but most of them had subpar performance records, said Stephen Campbell, the university's director of institutional planning. In only 10 cases did UVa raise professors' salaries. The process is being repeated this year.
Salaries for female faculty at UVa are lower primarily because the women are concentrated in lower-paying departments, Campbell said. But for disciplines in which women and minority faculty are in short supply, such as engineering or sciences, their salaries often are higher than those for white males.
Academics and advocates agree the pay-equity issue is going to nag universities into the next century.
"Historically on most campuses there has been statistically significant salary and rank discrimination against women and some minorities," said ODU President James Koch. "The real question is: What have they done about it? There are a lot of institutions that aren't doing much of anything."
Higher education writer Madelyn Rosenberg contributed information to this story.
\ DOLLAR DISPARITY
AVERAGE PAY FOR FULL PROFESSORS AT SELECTED STATE PUBLIC COLLEGES
\ COLLEGE MEN WOMEN
Old Dominion $59,000 $56,000 Norfolk State
51,000 48,000
Virginia 72,000 68,000 Virginia Tech
66,000 58,000
William and Mary 62,000 59,000 Va. Commonwealth
61,000 57,000
Radford 51,000 47,000 Source: American
Association of University Professors.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.