[ 21 August 2006: Message edited by: Pride for Red Dolores ]

A friend of mine accepted a job in the humanities at an Ontario university two or three years ago. They offered her $55K. She had no counter-offers from any other universities. Before accepting, she had a meeting with the dean, where (after a lot of psyching herself up) she said, "I would feel better if you paid me $60,000 a year." The dean didn't even put up a fight: he said, "Done." Another friend of mine at another Ontario university had to be more assertive: over the course of two days of intense negotiating with the dean (lots of "I'll get back to you" on the dean's side), he got his salary from an initial offer of $53K to $55K to $60K to $62K.

What's the point? I wonder whether two of the factors contributing to the lower pay had by female professors than male professors are (1) that female academics are more commonly to be found in the lower-paying disciplines; and (2) female academics are less aggressive in salary negotiations than male academics. Hypothesis (2) would be consistent with the suggestion of the Reuter's article, and would explain the results. I might note that assertiveness with the dean has no serious negative effects: it gets you taken more seriously, and deans only last three to five years anyway. (If you get a dean towards the end of her or his mandate, it could be one or two years.)

Here's another experiment. Suppose that (1) Smith and Jones have initial salaries of $55K and $60K respectively; and (2) Smith gets a 5% raise every year and Jones gets a 4% raise every year. In their 10th year of employment, Jones will still be outearning Smith, despite the steady differences in raises, by $85398.71 to $85323.05.

This standard of women sitting at lower salaries became a problem as the salary gaps grew larger over the years and became obviously disproportionate to ability and position. To rectify the pay slide would mean handing out large increases to the women which would take up the entire department's annual budget and rival or surpass their manager's increase. Since the managers can see their employees' salaries, and the employees do not have this information, nothing changed. Anyone who could see the salary gaps in the reports provided were not overly concerned. It seemed prejudice to say it was the women's fault at hiring, so nothing was said about it at all.

After all, HR spent a lot of money on salary surveys to ensure our salaries were competitive. To keep things fair across the board, the HR department afforded the manager a salary range they must use when hiring for particular positions. What was obvious in our investigation was that the women were offered a salary on a lower portion of the range, compared to the men who were offered a salary in the middle of the range, which ended at the top after negotiations. During annual salary reviews, a managers' performance was based on project profitability, and no effort was made to address a hiring practice that perpetuated the salary gap. It was always 'just one of those things' my boss would remind me as I entered the salary increases and bonuses for the year. I always had to sign a new confidentiality agreement every year at that time and I was the only employee who had to do so.

During media opportunities, women employees were paraded past journalist to demonstrate our superior hiring practices that earned our Top 100 place. I hardly think our star female players would have grinned so much and said they were 'honoured to be among those chosen for the photo shoot' if they knew how their salary and bonuses stacked up. Too bad the criteria for the Top 100 award did not examine pay scales divided by gender.

I completely agree women must be aggressive in demanding more during salary and bonus negotiations, but managers' performance must reflect more then profitability as well. Rewarding social responsibility, like those modelled by the women veterinarians, is a good place to start. Salary gaps occur as part of the human process in any organisation. The consistent presence of gender-based salary gaps over a long period indicates the organization is happily ignoring the problem.

[ 23 August 2006: Message edited by: MoeNetAh ]