Gendered wage differentials


Women STEM faculty at UAF earn significantly less than their male colleagues do. On average, women STEM faculty earn 80.3% of what men earn. The mean annual salary for male STEM faculty at UAF is $73,990.81, while women STEM faculty earn a mean annual salary of $59,383.19. The gendered pay gap is not unique to UAF. Women in the STEM disciplines across the nation on average earn markedly less than men do, and women in other academic fields also earn less than men. STEM faculty do tend to earn higher annual salaries than other disciplines at UAF. Among all faculty, women's mean salary is $57,674.90, while men's mean salary is $71,472.28.

We applied for the GetPix grant because we wanted to get a clear picture of what's going on at UAF for women STEM faculty. Most other studies of women faculty focus on the individual characteristics of women that cause them to earn less than men, to be promoted later than men, and to be hired less often than men. But our study takes a different approach. We are examining UAF as an institution with an eye towards discovering and documenting the characteristics of the institution that create an inequitable situation for women. Please visit the blog repeatedly, as we will share our data with you as they emerge.

Thanks for visiting!

Raw data courtesy of PAIR, and reflect a snapshop taken on 10-22-08. Figures are standardized to 9-month salaries to enable comparison. Included in the data are all non-adjunct faculty, e.g. tenure-track and term-faculty are included, while adjunct faculty and graduate students are not included.

5 comments:

  1. Keep sharing data as you crunch! Love the colorful bars in your graph!

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  2. As I said, YOU ROCK!!

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  3. Is the disparity still so large if you compare faculty with the same experience, i.e. is that number biased due to a relatively large number of younger female/older male faculty? Thanks.

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  4. Anonymous--thanks for your question. The last time similar data were analyzed (2005), the gendered wage differentials remained when we controlled for rank and time in rank in some colleges but remained in others. The differences dropped out in the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Education, and CRCD. At that time, we did not have data by department, only by college. By early summer, we will have much more information on this blog, including an updated, statistical answer to your question that is specific to the STEM disciplines at UAF. Thanks for your interest! Please check back again!

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  5. After the NSF JAM meeting in DE June 8-11 we have a much better idea of how to collect the data we need for the project. We will conduct one-on-one interviews with selected department chairs, and women faculty. Then design some focus groups and a questionnaire for a large-scale survey. Results should be posted as they come in. Stay tuned!

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