Prepared by John W. Curtis, AAUP Director of Research, for the Committee on Women in the Academic Profession. (Updated from the Fact Sheet 2000-01, prepared by Marcia Bellas.)
I. Full-Time Women Faculty in the Professoriate
Women account for 38 percent of faculty overall.
Women are most well represented at community colleges (both those with and without academic ranks) and least well represented at doctoral-level institutions. Women make up 50 percent of faculty at community colleges, 41 percent of faculty at baccalaureate and master's degree institutions, and 33 percent of faculty at doctoral-level institutions.
Women are most well represented at church-related institutions and least well represented at private-independent (non-church-related) institutions. Women account for 40 percent of faculty at church-related institutions, 38 percent of faculty at public institutions, and 36 percent of faculty at private-independent institutions.
Among full-time faculty, women are disproportionately represented at lower ranks and least well represented among full professors. Women are 58 percent of instructors, 54 percent of lecturers, and hold 51 percent of unranked positions. Women make up 46 percent of assistant professors, 38 percent of associate professors, and 23 percent of full professors.
Among men, 41 percent are full professors, whereas only 20 percent of women hold that rank. One-quarter of men (25 percent) are associate professors and 23 percent are assistant professors. Among women, 26 percent are associate professors and 32 percent are assistant professors. Instructors, lecturers, and unranked faculty are 22 percent of all women full-time faculty, but only 11 percent of men.
II. The Salaries of Full-Time Men and Women Professors
The salary advantage held by male faculty over female faculty persists across all ranks and all institutional types. On average, women earn 80 percent of what men earn.1
The earnings gap between men and women is largest at the rank of full professor and smallest at the rank of instructor. For all institutional types combined, women earn on average 90 percent of what men earn at the rank of lecturer, 96 percent of what men earn at the rank of instructor, 93 percent of what men earn at the ranks of assistant and associate professor, and 88 percent of what men earn at the rank of full professor. These ratios have changed very little over twenty-five years in the AAUP data.
The earnings gap between female and male faculty is largest at private-independent institutions and smallest at church-related institutions. For all ranks combined, women earn on average 84 percent of what men earn at church-related institutions, 81 percent of what men earn at public institutions, and 79 percent of what men earn at private-independent institutions.
The earnings gap between male and female faculty is largest at doctoral-level institutions and smallest at community colleges without faculty ranks. For all ranks combined, women earn on average 96 percent of what men earn at community colleges without rank; 93 percent at community colleges with rank; 89 percent at baccalaureate institutions; 87 percent of what men earn at master's institutions; and 78 percent of the average male faculty salary at doctoral-level institutions.
Among the ten public institutions with the highest overall average salary for full professors,2 the average salary disadvantage for women full professors ranges from 2 percent (at the New Jersey Institute of Technology) to 26 percent (at the SUNY-Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn).
Among the ten private institutions with the highest overall average salary for full professors,3 only at Rockefeller University do women full professors earn more than men on average-a difference of 3 percent. (However, Rockefeller has only four women full professors of 46 total.) At the remaining nine institutions, the average salary disadvantage for women full professors ranges from 6 percent at Stanford University to 12 percent at New York University.
Notes
1. The 2000-01 Fact Sheet indicated that "On average, women earn 91 percent of what men earn." That figure apparently was calculated as a mean of published average salaries by rank. The 2003-04 figure is a weighted mean of all faculty salaries, using complete information from the AAUP database. The comparable result for 2000-01 using this method would also be that women earned 80 percent of what men earned.
2. The ten highest public institutions, ranked by overall average full professor salary, are: University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; New Jersey Institute of Technology; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Maryland at Baltimore; Georgia Institute of Technology; Rutgers (Newark); University of Virginia; University of California, San Diego; and SUNY-Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn.
3. The ten highest private institutions, ranked by overall average full professor salary, are: Harvard University; Rockefeller University; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Chicago; Yale University; University of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Columbia University; and New York University.