While the gender gap at universities here and nationwide has tightened in the last decade, men still outnumber women in the field of higher education teaching by 76 percent and make almost $30,000 more per year than women simply because of their sex.
Family obligations, such as parenting and running a household, as well as an ongoing climate of negative stereotypes have resulted in fewer women than men working as full-time professors in higher education.
Dr. Lori Peek, a sociology professor at Colorado State University, said, “While more women are in the labor force than ever before, they continue to bear much of the responsibility for the domestic labor. It is very difficult to balance a professional career and the lion’s share of the (unpaid) domestic labor,” said Peek. “Sexism and discrimination continue to impact women’s chances in education.”
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) gender equity report revealed that women are not equally represented on higher education faculties, however community colleges are the exception to this rule representing total equity between men and women.
The Graduate Voice, a University of Massachusetts publication, suggests equity exists among community college faculty because these institutions offer less advanced degrees where instructor pay is lower.
There are a large number of women participating in graduate school compared to the few women enrolled 20 years ago. This shows that women are now more involved, and more readily accepted into higher education learning. In some cases women even outnumber their male counterparts.
In contrast to the balancing playing field college students face, women's involvement in full-time teaching positions in higher education is taking much longer for equality.
Professor Peek pointed out that, “Many people do not realize that it was only a few short decades ago that people of color and women were not even allowed to apply for certain jobs, much less ascend through the ranks of higher education.”
According to the CSU Institutional Research Fact Book, Colorado State University currently employs 1,033 full-time faculty members. Only 33 percent are women. This is slightly above the national average of 24 percent.
Lara Adamson, a senior Human Development and Family Studies major, and president of the CSU Campus Feminist Alliance, said, “It does not surprise me that over half of CSU’s professors are male. We are in the midst of a gender revolution and times will change, for better or worse.”
Every year since 2000 the percent of female faculty has steadily risen, according to the CSU Fact Book.
 | Dr. Tara Shelley talks to a student after her SOC354 class. Dr. Shelley is one of five female professors within the Sociology department at CSU. | |||||||
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In this year’s peer comparison with other similar universities from the AAUP Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, CSU ranked second best for the percent of women who are employed as full-time professors. This surpassed the University of Colorado which ranked sixth.
Of the 33 percent of women professors employed at CSU, most teach in liberal arts, applied human sciences and the library. Engineering, sciences, veterinary medicine, and business are still dominated by men.
“There is a social construction that somehow men are inherently better at math and science, said Nathan Dollar, a sociology graduate student at CSU. “This isn’t necessarily true as the chancellor at Harvard found out and later had to step down for comments he made about the inferiority of women. It is gender stereotypes.”
“Women and men find particular careers for many reasons: socialized expectations, educational opportunities (or the lack of them), family necessities, workplace and school environments (welcoming or not), role models, and personal predilections,” said Pattie Cowell, an associate dean and professor of English at CSU.
As of this year, only two women compared to 17 men teach in the business department at CSU and only four women compared to 52 men teach in engineering. Most women teach within applied human sciences with liberal arts leading a close second.
“I’m old enough to remember a time when homemaking, teaching, nursing and office work were pretty much the career options for women,” said professor Cowell. “Pushing those limits a bit, some women worked to become teachers and scholars in higher education, but given the pattern of our most commonly chosen disciplines, maybe we didn’t move as far beyond those influences as we like to think.”
As with most other professions, female professors are also being paid less money than their male counterparts for the same job done. According to the CSU Institutional Research Fact Book for the 2009-2010 year, male 12-month, full professors make an average of $148,703 per year compared to their female counterparts of the same rank who make about $120,832 per year.
“This is what sociologists study, and we have been tracking the pay gap for a very long time,” said professor Peek. “Does it surprise me? No. Do I hope something can be done about it? Yes.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women make on average 80 cents for every dollar that men earn. When the salaries of women in the combined assistant, associate and full professor ranks are compared to men’s salaries, women earn on average about 83 percent of what men earn, according to AAUP.
“Naturally, as a woman this trend of females being the minority in the working world saddens and angers me,” said Lindsey Horner, a junior psychology major at CSU. “I work hard for my education, but there are so many factors to worry about regarding employment that my head would explode if I worried over the fact that I am a woman.”
It is hard to say what the future will hold for women in higher education, but the history of progress and the continued rise in female presence among faculty may be a sign that the ceiling will keep rising for women and the gender gap may become just a small fracture.
“When I began working at CSU in the late 1970s, there were few female department chairs and no female deans,” said professor Cowell. Just now, 5 of 8 deans at CSU are women.”
