Equal pay data: how commonly available is it?
Hi friends of women in science,
I was emailing with a woman scientist the other day and she asked me if I knew if Pomona College has good pay equity for women in science. I had to say I didn't know any more. When I was dean I did know, but didn't make the data public because in some departments, there was only one woman or just a few in very different ranks, so making the data public would in essence reveal particular people's salaries. I could look at them because the dean and president set them, in conference, based on annual reports. But I could not make them public to the rest of the faculty. I did release some average salaries in ranks, and at least once, those were released by men and women separated. But my administration today is not so open about pay, and we get almost no information about how salaries are decided and what the average for ranks might be.
I'm curious: do many of you have this type of information? Do R1 universities tend to make these data public so that faculty can respond to them and try to improve the situation?
cheers,
Laura
When I was looking at this from a job seeker perspective it really dependend on what type of institution. Public institutions do release aggregate data as they are required to by law. They are very careful to group departments with very few women in with a larger college of life sciences for example so that you can't identify any salaries. It's still very useful information when you can get to it!
But private institutions are under no such pressure. If they chose to release data it is their choice and they often will if the numbers come out balanced. But if they don't....the tendency of course is to hide them.
One thing that impressed me in reading one of Jill Ker Conway's books was her tenure up in Canada. She found out that the university she was working as an administrator at did collect data each year and analyze it by gender. But no one had ever asked to see it...and when she did see it she was able to see patterns of inequality that were blaring that she could then address.
So even when the data are available to a select few, those folks need to want change. The MIT example is a great one.
I will say from my own experience that even if you only see average data for a particular department that is not binned by gender you can look at the average, and if they provide it the SD. If someone offers you more than one SD below the mean...you know you're getting low balled! And if they offer you higher...well then you can feel pretty good about it.
What I would like to see more of for young faculty women is the full average packages by department. It's not just salary although that matters. It's sq feet, lab supplies, tech salaries, the whole kit and caboodle that together prepare someone for success.
I liked what hmcbride said in another track about using 100 million to set up monitoring of equality at NSF and NIH. Maybe if that happened, every institution would have to satisfy them as to their equality and if they lack it, would need to plan to gain it in the next 10 years. Great idea! But of course, we don't have the 100 mil.
MM
Hi everyone,
I know this is hard. I don't think I've ever asked a colleague what he or she makes, and for me it is part embarrassment and part based on not caring enough about money to make the embarrassment worthwhile. But in one school where I worked, there was a Subcommittee on Finance as a faculty committee. The administration gave that committee all the data and we trusted them to analyze and report, without the details that would reveal salaries. So a few people could have figured out the salaries for women and minority faculty members but they were sworn to keep it confidential, and the rest of us benefitted from their analysis.
It has been a long time since I've heard anything from AAUP's Committee W, but it used to be able to do similar things, Amanda. Maybe it is indeed time to bring it back.
cheers,
Laura
Yes, Postdoc cat, it is discouraging and you are not the only woman who finds it hard to get information on salaries by networking. Most women can't or won't ask others about money. Is it just embarassment or is money genuinely of less interest to women? Sometimes I think one way, sometimes the others. But women for sure don't like to feel they are undervalued, and that's what happens when no one asks. Personally, I prefer to pressure the administration to release at least a conclusion based on their study of the data, and preferably data to support the conclusion. But I don't want to have my salary released by accident, so I can sympathize with the desire to protect privacy. FBP
It's discoruaging to hear that this type of information is not generally open to the public. How can women know if they are being paid fairly? I guess they can network, but personally I would never ask another person for his/her salary so unless they just happened to mention it I wouldn't know what they make.
We collect and analyze that data for our university, but the special faculty committee that does that gets sworn to secrecy about the release of the data, although we are encouraged to release our overall conclusions. What I wish is that the administration would let us meet with them and ask questions that arise as we are examining the data. When one senior woman has a low salary, we cannot tell what kinds of causes there might be, for example, apart from sheer discrimination.
XD
Our women's group has asked for this information repeatedly but the administration does not release it. It says because of privacy issues, but big group averages would not invade privacy. I wonder if we need to reactivate committee W of AAUP?
