This study examines how women's representation at different levels of an organizational hierarchy predicts gender equity in assistant professors’ salaries at four-year universities. This study suggests that women's proportion at the full professor rank is positively associated with improved gender equity in assistant professors’ salaries, while women's proportion at the associate and assistant ranks is not significantly associated with improved gender equity. Institutions with a female president, however, have a greater wage gap. Overall, the results imply that the presence of women who blazed the trail of tenure and promotion contributes to the improved gender equity for their junior colleagues.
Research finds that discrimination against women persists in academia despite the efforts made by both scholars and administrators (Roos & Gatta, 2009). One aspect of discrimination against women is tenure and promotion; studies report that female faculty members are less likely to be tenured or promoted compared to their male colleagues, and the proportion of women at the same faculty rank decreases as the rank increases (Bain and Cummings, 2000 and Winkler, 2000). While 52% of the doctoral degrees awarded in the United States in the 2009–10 academic year were conferred on women (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2012) and female assistant professors outnumber male assistant professors in many higher education institutions1, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), women still account for only about a third of full professors in universities and colleges as of the 2009–10 academic year (AAUP, 2010).
The fact that women account for at least a half of the junior faculty suggests that barriers against women's entry to academia have been removed; however, research finds that discrimination persists in terms of promotion and tenure (AAUP, 2010 and Dyer, 2004). For instance, women's share in tenured faculty decreased from 38.4% in 1976 to 34.6% in 2009 (Curtis, 2011), while the proportion of doctoral degrees conferred on women more than doubled, from 24% in 1976 to 53.5% in 2009 (NCES, 2012). The 2009 survey by the Modern Language Association (MLA) also reported that, on average, it takes up to 3.5 more years for women associate professors to attain the rank of professor than for men. What is more serious is that the gender gap in tenure and promotion is observed even when controlling for discipline and the quality of the doctoral institution (Buch et al., 2011 and Jaschik, 2011).
Another aspect of discrimination that has received much attention is the salary gap between male and female professors. Although the exact percentages vary, research finds that women are persistently paid less compared to their male counterparts regardless of the institutional type and faculty rank (AAUP, 2010, Barbezat, 2002 and Barbezat and Hughes, 2005). The overall average salary for female faculty members on 9/10-month contracts was approximately 81% of the salary for their male colleagues’ in the 2001–02 academic year. In the 2010–11 academic year, the gap remained unclosed, with female full-time faculty members earning approximately 82% of male full-time faculty members’ salaries (Clery, 2012). This gap persists after controlling for such factors as the productivity of faculty members and the type of institution (Jaschik, 2011 and O’Keefe and Wang, 2013). Even more serious, the salary gap also exists at the assistant level. For instance, AAUP (West & Curtis, 2006) reported that female assistant professors earned 91–97% of what male assistant professors earned. While the gender wage gap has narrowed to some extent over the years, given that most of the assistant professors were hired recently and faculty salaries increase by percentage points of the starting salary (Hearn, 1999 and Perna, 2001), an initial salary gap is likely to put women at a career-long disadvantage. While researchers and practitioners recognize discrimination against women in terms of both promotion and salary as problematic, what is less recognized is that these problems may be intertwined with the link between passive and active representation. The theory of representative bureaucracy posits that people have diverse values and beliefs according to their demographic characteristics and individuals can promote the interests of the group with which they identify both making direct impacts on policies and indirectly influencing the culture of the organization. This implies that demographic representation of women on the faculty and their active representation in achieving equal compensation are not distinct problems, and discrimination in tenure and promotion contributes to the gender salary gap for incoming members of the community. The present study investigates this connection between passive and active representation in academia by examining the relationship between the women who blazed a trail of tenure and promotion and the wage gap that their female junior colleagues face.
