Gender Pay Equity Study
In 2008, the IU Indianapolis Office for Women and its Advisory Council asked the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs to undertake a new faculty salary equity study to compare to the benchmark study that was done ten years ago. In response, the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor charged the Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity with responsibility for conducting the study. The first step in the process was to appoint an advisory committee that included representatives from the Office of Equal Opportunity, the Office for Women, the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, Information Management and Institutional Research, IU Indianapolis Faculty Council, and the Dean’s Council. Dr. Paul Carlin, Chair of Economics, was also asked to serve on the advisory committee because he was the technical advisor for the 1998 study. The advisory committee helped define the parameters and scope of the study (i.e., who should be included, what variables should be included, etc.).
This study consisted of two phases. The first phase (data analyses) used a multiple regression analysis model that was conducted by staff from Information Management and Institutional Research. A total of 1,112 full-time faculty members were included in this study. The multiple regression analysis was used to create a model to predict faculty salaries at IU Indianapolis. As Oaxaca and Ransom (2002) observed, regression techniques have become a widely accepted method of testing for salary inequities.
The multiple regression model was further used to identify individual faculty members with salaries significantly below what was predicted by the model. Faculty members with standardized residual scores of -1.67 or less (i.e., actual salaries more than 1.67 standard deviations below their predicted salaries) hereinafter referred to as “Outliers” were considered to have salaries that were of concern.
The second phase which was the remediation phase required the participation of Responsibility Centers (Schools). This phase focused only on Outliers. As part of this phase, a review of merit (teaching, research or creative activity and/or service) of the faculty member(s) identified to be of concern was requested.
Four findings regarding salary equity emerged from the study:
- There was a statistically significant gap between the salaries of male and female faculty members ($1,683, representing 2.4% of the mean salary of faculty members) that was not explained by other faculty characteristics.
- There were not statistically significant differences in faculty salaries by race/ethnicity.
- Although there was a significant gap in the salaries of male and female faculty members, more men (26) than women (16) were identified as having salaries that are substantially lower than predicted. Thus 62% of the faculty members with lower than predicted salaries were male.
- The salary gap between female and male faculty members has declined since 1998. The unexplained salary gap was 3% of average faculty salaries in 1998 (year of last study), compared to 2.4% of average faculty salaries in 2009.