FEMALES PAID LESS THAN MALES AT SEMO

Women on the faculty at Southeast Missouri State University make less than their male counterparts on average, and there are fewer of them.

But university officials say the school is working toward gender equity, both in terms of numbers and salary.

Currently, 68 percent of the faculty are men, down from 74 percent in 1990. There are 252 men and 117 women.

The average salary for faculty this fiscal year is $43,696. But men make on average nearly $4,700 more than their colleagues who are women.

The average faculty salary for men is $45,178, compared to $40,504 for women.

Out of 369 faculty members, 109, or nearly 30 percent, make more than $50,000. But of those, only 18 are women.

"Women have been historically disadvantaged," said Provost Charles Kupchella.

Since Kala Stroup became president in 1990, more women have been hired for both faculty and administrative positions.

In three of the four faculty ranks -- instructor, associate professor and full professor -- the average salary for men is higher than that for women.

But for the assistant professor rank, the rank at which most new faculty members are hired, women have higher salaries on average than their men.

The average salary for women who are assistant professors is $37,737, compared to $36,168 for men, even though men on the faculty at that rank have four more years of service at Southeast on average than women.

Southeast administrators have made a concerted effort to hire more women in recent years, records show.

Seventy-seven of Southeast's faculty members have been hired within the last four years. Fifty-six percent of them are women.

"The recent increase in numbers of female faculty has been possible because of the university's interest in this issue, and because the pool of qualified female applicants with terminal degrees continues to increase nationally,." said Stroup.

At most universities, an individual must have a doctorate in order to be hired as an assistant professor.

Nationally, women receive approximately 44 percent of all doctorates awarded, up from only 19 percent in 1973.

Women constitute 25 percent of all newly hired assistant professors, nearly double the percentage in 1972.

Stroup said salary discrepancies within a given rank reflect factors such as length of service, length of time within that rank, and merit and market pay adjustments.

"Length of service and length of time in rank reflect the historic under-representation of women in academia, and it will take some time before the inequity disappears when comparing male and female salaries," said Stroup.

But she said Southeast's women faculty members are paid more equitably than at most comprehensive, public universities in the nation.

Southeast's faculty members who are women make on average 99.6 percent of the salary of their male colleagues, compared to 94.3 percent nationally.