2008 Woodie Awards
Equity report scrutinized
Women's forum asks for re-do of salary study
Chris Ankney
Issue date: 3/24/08 Section: News
The Women's Leadership Forum is calling for an outside contractor to go back to the beginning and re-do a recently released gender-equity study with which they have several problems.
The study, based on data from 2005, stated that though there were differences between the salaries of men and women at all levels of the university, the differences could be explained by factoring out the length of time a person has worked in a certain position and by taking into account the differences in market value of certain positions.
The group's objections to the study were detailed in a written response to Main Campus Provost Rosemary Haggett and discussed at a meeting between the group and Haggett on Friday.
The problems ranged from the bizarre nature of the study's incarnation (there was no written document, it was a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation) to the ways in which the study failed to make a qualitative analysis and focused only on out-dated quantitative data.
"A PowerPoint presentation is not a study; therefore, there are significant gaps, which render the analysis and results questionable," the written complaint stated.
Haggett agreed with the women at the meeting.
"This is very limited in its scope," she said. "And, it doesn't represent the institution as we are today."
The council and Haggett only wanted to spend a limited amount of time discussing the problems with the study.
"To focus our discussions on this doesn't help us understand the other issues at work here," Haggett said, adding that the group should instead talk about why UT has only 40 full women professors (as compared to the 200 full male professors on staff).
To that end, the council wanted to know what Haggett was going to do to meet UT President Lloyd Jacobs' stated goal of increasing the number of females with full professorships from its 2006 number of 34 to 100 by 2011.
Six women have been added to that number in the two years since the commitment.
The study, based on data from 2005, stated that though there were differences between the salaries of men and women at all levels of the university, the differences could be explained by factoring out the length of time a person has worked in a certain position and by taking into account the differences in market value of certain positions.
The group's objections to the study were detailed in a written response to Main Campus Provost Rosemary Haggett and discussed at a meeting between the group and Haggett on Friday.
The problems ranged from the bizarre nature of the study's incarnation (there was no written document, it was a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation) to the ways in which the study failed to make a qualitative analysis and focused only on out-dated quantitative data.
"A PowerPoint presentation is not a study; therefore, there are significant gaps, which render the analysis and results questionable," the written complaint stated.
Haggett agreed with the women at the meeting.
"This is very limited in its scope," she said. "And, it doesn't represent the institution as we are today."
The council and Haggett only wanted to spend a limited amount of time discussing the problems with the study.
"To focus our discussions on this doesn't help us understand the other issues at work here," Haggett said, adding that the group should instead talk about why UT has only 40 full women professors (as compared to the 200 full male professors on staff).
To that end, the council wanted to know what Haggett was going to do to meet UT President Lloyd Jacobs' stated goal of increasing the number of females with full professorships from its 2006 number of 34 to 100 by 2011.
Six women have been added to that number in the two years since the commitment.
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