April 7, 1997

Equity in faculty salaries to be the topic of April lecture

By Jennifer McNulty

Are female faculty underpaid? The question quickly triggers a host of follow-up queries, such as how do you weigh productivity? How do you compare the productivity of faculty artists and scientists? Should faculty research be reviewed independent of teaching performance?

Ronald Oaxaca, a professor of economics at the University of Arizona, has been addressing these issues in his work on gender salary equity at the University of Arizona. Oaxaca will give a public talk about his ongoing research at 4 p.m. on April 16 in the Kresge Town Hall at UCSC. His talk is titled "Faculty Salary Determination: Do Gender and Productivity Matter?" Admission is free, and a reception will follow the lecture.

Oaxaca's talk is sponsored by the Economics Department, where he is visiting for two weeks at the invitation of Chancellor Greenwood, who appointed him to a Chancellor's Lectureship.

Oaxaca, who has spent years researching the broader issue of gender equity, began examining faculty salary equity at the University of Arizona two years ago when UA's Board of Regents requested information on the subject.

A "snapshot" examination of male and female salaries at UA revealed "a definite salary gap," says Oaxaca, but the findings lacked credibility because the comparison didn't adjust for things like field of study, college affiliation, prior experience, or rank.

In a more detailed follow-up study that attempts to control for productivity, Oaxaca estimates that the average salary difference between comparable men and women ranges between 7 and 10 percent.

Those estimates are the result of a year's work spent interpreting curriculum vitae, or biographical sketches, of faculty in the university's education and business schools, says Oaxaca, who has devised methods to weigh the relative value of journal articles, books, monographs, and other forms of research. The research has been carried out by Oaxaca and his graduate assistant, Iris Geisler.

Faculty at the University of Arizona have been supportive of the project, and Oaxaca has gathered CVs of almost all the faculty in an attempt to assess the quantity--if not the quality--of research produced by each professor. "We can't control for the quality of research--our assumption has to be that women publish the same quality as men--but we do control for the quantity," he said.

Despite his discovery of apparent disparities, Oaxaca urges universities to consider each case individually. "No matter how sophisticated the statistics are, ultimately it comes down to individuals and the merits of individual cases," he said. Oaxaca believes settlements or salary adjustments should be based on individual accomplishments.

One avenue is for universities to offer faculty members an opportunity to request a salary equity review if they feel they are being paid less than colleagues with comparable accomplishments. Oaxaca said it would be a mistake to follow in the footsteps of Northern Arizona University and Virginia Commonwealth University, however, which conducted studies without adequate controls a few years ago and concluded that women faculty were underpaid. Salaries for women at Virginia were increased across the board, but the action triggered a lawsuit by five men on the faculty who charged discrimination, according to reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"I've cautioned my deans here to make any adjustments on the facts of each case," said Oaxaca. "To give everyone a set increase does an injustice to those men and women who should've gotten more."

Ideally, faculty comparisons would weigh all aspects of faculty performance, including teaching and public service contributions, said Oaxaca. But there are problems with every scenario, he noted.

"What if salary formulas are the same for women and men in given fields but women choose to specialize in areas that don't pay as well? How do you handle that?" he asked. "A university does make judgments about what it considers important. At a research university, research will always be considered primary. If women concentrate on teaching, they're going to get paid less. So do you change the institution?"

"Let's air these issues and get them on the table," concluded Oaxaca.

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