UW-Madison is making progress in achieving gender equity in faculty salaries, partly due to a 2000-'01 pay review exercise that resulted in salary adjustments for 42 female faculty members, university officials announced Thursday.
But one UW-Madison professor who sued the institution in 1997 with claims of gender-based salary differences said UW-Madison still has much progress to make.
The university compiled a history of corrections made regarding gender-based salary discrepancies, conducting studies in the past 10 years to address the issue. A 1992 study revealed a \systematic difference"" in UW-Madison female faculty pay that ""couldn't be accounted for on the basis of subdiscipline, years since highest degree and so on,"" according to UW-Madison Provost Peter Spear.
Five years after completion of the study, Theresa Duello, an associate professor of medical science, obstetrics and gynecology, sued UW-Madison for gender-based pay differences. The court ultimately awarded her $311,000 in damages. Now, Duello said she awards UW-Madison little merit for its efforts.
""I don't give credit for their itsy-bitsy motions,"" she said.
In December, the university also reached a $127,500 out-of-court settlement with Kelly Cherry, a UW-Madison emeritus English professor who sued on the basis of gender-related pay inequity. The university denied her allegations.
To rectify the situation found in the 1992 study, there were 372 salary increases for a total of $830,000 issued to female faculty on an individual basis. Re-evaluations in 1995 and 1997 found no overall difference between male and female salaries.
Officials say individual instances of inequity might still exist despite these favorable findings.
""We know that individual salaries can be out of line, and it won't show up in a big statistical analysis,"" said Margaret Harrigan, a UW-Madison policy and planning analyst.
The 2000-'01 study therefore called for deans and department chairs to nominate female faculty for participation in a comparative pay review.
Individual women could also request placement in the study. As a result, 117 female members were included in the review; 62 were self-nominated and 55 were nominated by department deans. Forty-two faculty members eventually received adjustments in salary, increasing the university payroll by $200,000.
""I think this certainly is a big step toward establishing salary equity for women, but [it's] something we need to continue to monitor,"" Spear said.
Spear said the university hopes to make gender-based salary equity a focus of its annual pay-raise exercise.
Duello said she felt the university was unfairly optimistic in its descriptions of reduced pay inequity.
""Until it's gone, it's not gone,"" Duello said.
She also derided the methods used in the nomination-based 2000-'01 study. Since ""the same person who is deciding whether ... you should be included is also the person who sets your salary,"" the study is useless, Duello said.
When complete equality is achieved, Duello said she wants to hear about it. Until then, she said, ""I won't give them credit. I won't clap for this at all.\
