Fixing a Gender Pay Gap Can Lead to Faculty Discord

Institutions that discover widespread pay disparities by gender, with female professors earning less than their male counterparts, and then try to remedy the gap can find themselves mired in a process that is fraught with tension and results in faculty discord.

Most recently some professors at Western Michigan University clashed with the institution’s provost over the issue as up to 300 tenured female professors awaited a promised pay increase meant to put their salaries on a more equal footing with those of their male colleagues.

At other institutions that have dealt with pay disparities, such as the University of Texas at Austin, discord has not been a problem, but limits on money have curtailed efforts to narrow the divide. <Read more.>

Via Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education.