Kennesaw State computer science professor Mary Murray filed a discrimination lawsuit against the university in 2007, claiming that a male co-worker received a higher salary than her.
According to the AJC, Murray “filed a gender discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
She eventually lost her case, as a judge pointed out that the male co-worker received higher wages because KSU was trying to match a salary he would have received if he worked at a different university.
Despite Murray’s case being lost over a decade ago, today a pay gap between male and female professors at KSU persists. The AJC reports that there is an eight percent pay gap between male and female professors at the university, with full-time male professors being paid “an average salary of $94,173 and women $87,202.”
In November 2018, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness at KSU conducted a study titled “An Analysis of Faculty Salary Equity by Gender” to conclude if there was a significant statistical difference in pay between female and male professors at KSU.
One of the key results that the study found was “when additional work-related salary contributors were taken into account, there was no evidence that on average female faculty at KSU were paid less than comparable male faculty.”
A large contributing factor is a difference between the numbers of male and female professors within certain colleges. According to Dr. Marla Bell, associate dean for student success in the College of Science and Mathematics and graduate school professor of statistics, “the gap is mostly explainable by the fact that the higher paid disciplines don’t have as many women in them.”
Both the Coles College of Business and the College of Computing and Software Engineering have higher numbers of male professors in them. In general, STEM and business are higher paying professions compared to English and education.
“Somebody with a Ph.D. in history, literature, philosophy, theater, music, art, etc. might only earn a starting salary of $75,000 as an assistant professor, since their opportunity cost is much lower in terms of finding a job outside of academia that requires a Ph.D.,” said Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan-Flint.
“Likewise, professors in the law school, medical school or engineering school make high salaries since their opportunity cost is very high [since] they are very marketable outside academia, working in the private sector as a lawyer, physician or engineer,” he continued.
Even though the difference in pay can be explained by having fewer female professors in higher-paying professional fields and not women being paid less because of their gender, Bell explained that the contributing factors may still be related to gender.
“Why are [women] not there?” Bell asked. She mentioned that the problem may lie in early schooling with math and science being taught in such a way that it does not appeal to girls.
“The way science is presented, it may feel as if it is lonesome,” Bell said. “The best science is done in teams, but it is more difficult to see that when you are younger.”
Representation within the STEM fields is another issue that Bell noted, stating that women may be discouraged by not seeing other women there.
“It is about how they are taught, and who they see as their role models,” Bell said. “It’s society, it’s academia. There could be some things that are institutional here that we could do better.”
