ASIDE from telling us that the Darden Dean makes more money than the entire media studies department combined, the published salaries of our faculty can tell us what trends we can expect in the future. One is the rising recruitment of female professors. By looking at the salaries of the politics, philosophy, sociology and anthropology departments, we can see a disparity in pay between the sexes. Relative to each department's mean salary, more female professors earn less than the average when compared to males. But rather than being solely expressed as underlying discrimination, the pay inequality can more accurately be explained by a positive factor: More new female professors are being hired by our school.
In the politics and philosophy departments 100 percent of the female professors earn less than their department's average salary. The six women in politics and the three women in philosophy all earn less than the mean: $93,370 and $92,193 respectively. When these averages are put up against the males the results are quite different. Of the 31 men in politics, 17 of them earn less than the mean and only four of the twelve male philosophers earn less than the average. With their female peers at 100 percent, the men in politics and philosophy who earn less than the mean amount to only 55 and 33 percent.
This inequality is less pronounced in the sociology and anthropology departments, but it is still apparent. Five out of seven women in sociology and six out of eight women in anthropology earn less than the average. At first look this appears grossly unfair. But these disparities should not be seen as purely dependent on sex. The critical factors in determining pay are a professor's tenure and title. Of all the women counted so far, only four of them are full professors. The other 20 women across the four departments are either assistant or associate professors. They have either not completed their tenure track -- six years of teaching and a completion of a book -- or have not received prominence in their field with the publishing of a second book.
This qualification helps to explain the disparity in pay since in these departments, 83 percent of female professors are in the earlier stages of their academic career. But even if this points to higher female recruitment, should we ignore the fact that so few female professors actually teach here? And, even with the explanation of tenure and pay, the three highest earning professors in all four departments are all men. Even amongst tenured, published, full professors, the highest paid are always male.
In a phone interview with interim College Dean Karen Ryan, she acknowledged all of these inequalities. Ryan focused on two critical problems. The first is the fact that the University did not start hiring women "until relatively late." Because so many of our University's female professors are early in their career, they "still have to work through the ranks." Ryan said that although more women are represented within the assistant and associate professoriate, "as you go up the ranks the picture is worse." Ryan is saying that although pay inequalities exist, they are mostly a function of time. But as more female professors are hired, the pay disparity between the sexes will gradually disappear. The second problem she identified is also linked to the shortage of female professors. Many of the tenured women are called upon to serve as advisors and committee members in addition to their teaching. And since there are already a small number of female professors, most of the tenured ones are "slowed down in their career trajectory," to serve in support roles. Although this benefits the University, these "sorts of things don't get you promoted," and create additional difficulty for women.
Another historical burden for female professors has been the University's policy for parental leave. It was only with the passing of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 that the University allowed mothers to stop their tenure clock while they took time to raise their children. Before this law, mothers were expected to work on publishing even while taking time off after a birth or an adoption. Now, new parents can take up to a semester off and can stop their tenure clock for up to one year.
According to Ryan, the University has hired more women than men in the past year. This represents not only the changing applicant pool, but it also expresses the University's desire to be more fair and balanced. Ryan said, "The student body is now more than 50 percent women. And we know it is important to have a professoriate that provides role models. We want a faculty body that reflects the student body."
Although inequality exists in both numbers and pay, it seems that the University is headed in a positive direction. Our University should continue to hire more women, and we should aim to bring the wage gap to zero.
Hamza Shaban's column appears on Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hshaban@cavalierdaily.com.
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