Editorial: Gender equity study would be money well spent
One learns early on in life that there is never enough time and never enough money to study everything that needs studying. It is a problem of scientists and literature professors, students and university administrators. There are, however, topics of social import which demand that institutions and organizations take stock of themselves in hopes that historical injustices, from admissions policies to athletic opportunity, might be addressed and corrected. Among those topics is the continuing problem of pay inequity based on gender.
In a recent interview with the Arizona Daily Wildcat, University President Peter Likins called for a systematic analysis of this recurring problem and how it manifests itself at the UA. And, even at a glance, the problem does manifest itself: A recent faculty report showed female UA professors make an average of $7,000 less than their male counterparts. Nationally, an American Association of University Professors report indicates that the number of women in higher paid tenured positions has fallen 50 percent in the last 20 years. And so, it appears there is reason to question whether the salaries afforded to women in higher education are substantially equal to those of their male counterparts.
This issue remains of importance not simply in direct relation to higher education, but, moreover in relation to the general gender inequity in pay and standard of living among women. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nationwide the median income of female workers was 74.1 percent of the income of their male counterparts. It does not stand to reason that the pay gap has been alleviated in the past two years and thus it does stand to reason that the pay gap does exist generally. For that reason, the available statistics already suggest that Likins' assertion that the declared problem of pay inequity is based on "suggestive" data is probably false.
Those statistics, of course, are not, as Likins rightly suggested, an end in themselves. A system-wide study of Arizona universities and faculty pay, along the lines Likins and ABOR President Judy Gignac support, would transcend national statistics and create a functional paradigm in which university administrators and professors might function. The numbers already support what Gignac thinks "instinctively."
We are not in a position to rely on case by case assessments by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of different business. Those complaints are unlikely to address systematic problems. And, to be sure, those systematic problems include the still prevalent segregation of women into particular fields of work - fields of work that offer significantly less pay. In short, one cannot divorce the low starting salary of a female elementary school teacher from a specific instance of suspected gender based pay inequity. Therefore, it is imperative for the university system to find the relative pittance necessary to develop a study of gender-based pay inequity systemwide.
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