Blogs > Cliopatria > History and Gender Equity

Jun 23, 2007

History and Gender Equity


by Cliopatria


The anonymous blogger, PhDinHistory, has been producing a long series of interesting posts about the conditions of academic historians. The most recent,"Gender, Salaries, Workplaces, Rank, and Status," strikes me as particularly worthy of attention and discussion. Here is the blogger's summary of some of its remarkable highlights:
At the full, associate, and assistant professor of history levels, the difference in average base salary for women and men is now no more than 2 percent.

Among assistant professors of history, women now earn, on average, nearly $700 more than men. Across the academy, full-time male history faculty receive, on average, around $8,500 more than full-time female history faculty.

Part-time female history faculty are paid, on average, about 8 percent more than part-time male history faculty.

The gender gap in salaries for history faculty has almost vanished at two-year schools.

There is a direct proportional relationship between the selectivity of a school and the inequities in its average base salaries for male and female history faculty.

Male history faculty at private doctoral institutions are paid, on average, 54 percent more than female history faculty.

Among tenured history faculty at all doctoral institutions, women earn only 83 percent of what men earn.

Several of these findings are fairly astonishing; but assuming that PhDinHistory has read the data correctly, what are we to make of them? There's evidence there that is both encouraging and discouraging about gender equity in the profession. Again, however, if PDH has read the data correctly, gender equity has largely carried the day in the lower and less prestigious ranks of the profession. At the higher ranks and in the more prestigious places, it lags fairly dramatically.

I'm not certain that these data are the final word on the matter. I'm reminded of the claim of the late Elisabeth Fox-Genovese, for example, that on the whole female historians have been less productive of the kind of work that makes for professional stardom and prestigious appointments than their male counterparts. It's the kind of claim that few, if any, male historian would whisper in public. But can Fox-Genovese's claim be measured for its truthfulness and, if it bears out, would it explain or justify the disparities that PDH finds in the higher ranks and prestigious places in the profession?


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More Comments:

Ralph E. Luker - 6/24/2007

Rebecca, If the Fox-Genovese observation is correct (a big "if" in my book), there would still be two different ways of reading it: 1) as an observation about female members of departments in prestigious private institutions; or 2) as an observation, not so much about them, but about why relatively few other female historians have apparently not been invited to join them.

Rebecca Anne Goetz - 6/23/2007

This is a really neat set of articles, Ralph. Thanks for making me aware of them. If indeed this blogger has read the data correctly, this means women are catching up (and that I might have to amend my recent public statements about equal pay for equal work).

I am concerned about the implications at big, private, doctoral institutions. I'm not sure how much to credit Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's comments. As a recent grad of a Big PhD-granting private university, I can tell you that no women among the faculty seemed substantially less productive than the men, and among junior faculty, I might even say (though without data to back this up, but just my general observations), women are more productive.

I'll also say that I think it's interesting that this conversation on gender and the profession is taking place in the blogosphere. It seems to me that the web has a way of moving a discussion forward and producing data that our main professional organization does not.