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Originally published Aug. 21, 2000 on studentadvantage.com. This is the third in a series of articles and columns on the lives of women in college today.
When we are assertive it's bad behavior," said Anahid Kassabian, "and when we are gentle, we're unprofessional or too mild-mannered to move up the ranks." Kassabian, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, is not alone in her aggravation. Women are increasingly moving up the ladder in higher education, but the trip has not been an easy one: Their stress levels are generally higher, their paychecks are generally smaller, and their upward progress has been slow, often hindered by subtle prejudices and outright discrimination.
The Hiring GapMore women are entering college today than ever before: 57 percent of this year's freshman are female, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Not only that, but in 1994 women received 46 percent of all doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens — a 25-percent jump since the 1970s, according to the American Association of University Professors. Peculiarly, although these numbers appear increasingly promising for women, the number of women teaching at the college level has remained despairingly low. In 1998, 36 percent of all college faculty members were women, according to a report by the Higher Education Research Institute. It is an improvement from 1989 — when only 29 percent of university faculty were female — but many feel the number is still far too low. "At my university, women are only 22 percent of the ladder-rank [full-time, tenure-track] faculty," said Martha S. West, Professor of Law at the University of California-Davis School of Law and author of many articles on gender issues. This, even though over the past seven years academia has made an effort to close the gap. HERI notes that, since the early 1990s, 49 percent of all recent professorial hires were women.
Starting from Lower GroundMore female faculty than ever before are gaining the position of full professor: 20 percent in 1998, up from 16 percent in 1989. But when compared to their male counterparts, women remain far less likely to be tenured. Sixty-three percent of male professors are tenured, according to HERI; that number drops to 43 percent for women. The problem, according to some, is prejudice inherent in the faculty hiring system. "Women professors face the routine discrimination all women professionals experience," Kassabian said. "Our ideas are not taken as seriously, are often credited to male colleagues, and so on." West agreed. "When a man walks into a university lecture hall, we assume he will be a competent professor," she said. "When a woman walks into that same lecture hall, she must prove her competence. Thus, women start out the hiring process two or three steps behind similarly qualified men in this hiring competition." It is also no secret that one is far less likely to come across a female professor in the science and math fields. According to a 1996 NCWO study, women received approximately 26 percent of all graduate degrees in computer science. Fourteen percent of physics degrees went to women, and 16 percent of engineering degrees. Students are keenly aware of the dearth of female professors in these fields of study. Sonia Inamdar, a senior economics major at Harvard University, said she knows of only one professor in Harvard's economics department, even though it is one of the largest departments on campus. Inamdar said having more female professors would encourage female students to further pursue studies in their field. "It's discouraging," she said, because most of the field research people hear and read about seems to come from males. Inamdar has also noticed that men are more likely to use their econ majors to find jobs in the field. "None of the women I know seem to be interested in following up with their economics major," she said. "But many of the men in my field plan on pursuing a career in economics." The wage gap between female and male professors is on the decline, but remains significant. In 1989, the average full-time male professor earned $67,500 per year, according to HERI. The average full-time female professor earned $60,500 — $7,000 less than her male colleague. A decade later, the overall difference in salaries has changed very little: By 1999, that salary gap had dropped to $6,000. Some professors attribute the sizeable gap to a feeling prevalent within academia that qualified women are simply valued less than equally qualified men. "In our salary study at UC-Davis," West said, "we found women were hired at lower ranks than comparable to men. Thus, women's prior experience and qualifications were being evaluated as less worthy than men's similar qualifications. And once they are hired, West continued, the men often get preferential treatment. "Women receive less support from their department chairs and faculty colleagues," she said. "It takes longer for women to progress up the salary ranks." "Every study I've seen shows that there are still noticeable discrepancies, at every level, in women professor's pay," Kassabian said. "But more than that, our access to resources such as lab space, important committee positions, and so on, is often clearly skewed."
Extra-Curricular PressuresOne possible cause of these inequities may lie with professors' roles advising students. Many female professors have observed that their advising load is much more strenuous than their male colleagues' tend to be. As a result, many have had to sacrifice their upward mobility so they can help students under their charge. Cynthia Harrison, a professor of history and women's studies at George Washington University, has also found advising loads to be heavier for women. "It is my impression — although perhaps my male colleagues would demur — that students tend to expect more personal attention from women faculty than from male faculty, and women faculty want to fulfill those expectations," Harrison said. "Since women faculty still tend to have greater family responsibilities, they are juggling more roles." "Many of us take great pride and pleasure in our careful advising practices, the consequence of which is that we often are advising up to twice as many students, and taking up to twice as long with each one," Kassabian said. "Unfortunately, I've never known anyone to get promotions, raises, or sabbaticals for being a great advisor." West agreed. "Women faculty often have higher teaching and advising loads than comparable with men," she said. "Therefore, they often have less time to do research then their male peers." In addition to heavier advising loads, studies show that female professors also experience more stress outside the classroom. According to a recent HERI study, the personal pressures female professors face are generally more strenous than for their male colleagues. Women, for example, are more likely than men to interrupt their career for health or family reasons. Mothers have an especially tough time working as professors. "Mothers of young children have terrible juggling acts to perform — beginning with the fact that most universities have neither maternity leave nor child care," Kassabian said. "Women continue to find it very difficult to maintain full-time faculty positions and have families," West said. "Because women must seek tenure at colleges and universities during their first six years of teaching, the tenure process comes at exactly the same time as normal child bearing," West said. "Consequently, many faculty women continue to decide not to have children because universities have not accommodated the need for additional time to complete tenure requirements."
MIT Study Exposes InequitiesBoth West and Kassabian refer to the landmark March 1999 report by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology committee on how its female science faculty had been systematically discriminated against for decades. The report acted as a call to arms for many female faculty members across the country displeased with the conditions under which female professors were often forced to work. "The numbers show it," said Professor of Management Lotte Bailyn, MIT's Faculty Chair when the report was published in March 1999. "The reasons are complicated." The MIT report concluded that its female science professors "were given a lesser salary, ... allocated less space and fewer resources, received few rewards, and were included less frequently on important committees than their male colleagues," according to a press release. The report also found that, from 1974 to 1994, the number of female faculty in MIT's School of Science remained largely the same, hovering at around 8 percent for 20 years. Since the MIT report was issued, the number of women hired in the School of Science has increased, Bailyn said. "We have committees in all the schools looking at the data," she said. "Any inequities found would presumably be fixed, as happened in the School of Science."
What the Future HoldsThere is some disagreement as to whether the unequal treatment female professors typically receive will stick around. West was optimistic, foreseeing change within the next five years as more women enter postsecondary education to earn their doctorates. "Women's percentage of Ph.D. recipients has gone up every year since the late 1970s," she noted. Kassabian, however, feels that the underlying problems are too deeply rooted for the playing field to level anytime soon. "I don't imagine there will be dramatic difference [in the next five years], since the gender patterns for degree-seekers are not changing substantially," she said. "All of these more hidden discriminatory practices make it very difficult for women to stay on a serious academic career path." Love this article? Hate it? Tell us all about it. The
copyright to this article is held by Student Advantage, Inc. The Women in College series: The
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