Trailblazing women in academia: Representation of women in senior faculty and the gender gap in junior faculty's salaries in higher educational institutions

Abstract

This study examines how women's representation at different levels of an organizational hierarchy predicts gender equity in assistant professors’ salaries at four-year universities. This study suggests that women's proportion at the full professor rank is positively associated with improved gender equity in assistant professors’ salaries, while women's proportion at the associate and assistant ranks is not significantly associated with improved gender equity. Institutions with a female president, however, have a greater wage gap. Overall, the results imply that the presence of women who blazed the trail of tenure and promotion contributes to the improved gender equity for their junior colleagues.

Keywords:

• Representative bureaucracy
• Wage differentials
• Women in academia
• Tenure system

Notes

1 Except at doctorate-granting institutions, women outnumber men in the assistant professor population.

2 Research suggests that smaller institutions may act differently from larger institutions (Kezar, 2006), rather than that there exists a linear (or an exponential) relationship between enrollment size and institutional behaviors. An enrollment of smaller than 5000 students has been used to categorize small colleges or universities in other empirical studies (e.g., Hyman & Jacobs, 2010; Klee & Rogers, 1989; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).