In November 1997, the Faculty Senate Council established the university-wide Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee to review the progress of the University toward pay equity for faculty since the last study in 1990. The committee was chaired by Jean Ensminger. The committee completed the analysis of seven of the schools in the spring of 2000. The committee did not consider non-professorial tracks. The committee did not look at issues external to salary. Jean Ensminger reported the results to the Faculty Senate Council and to the Faculty Senate. The committee concluded that the data from those seven schools provided no evidence of gender bias in the setting of salaries. A summary report was posted on the Washington University website. After Jean Ensminger left the university, Joseph A. O'Sullivan was appointed chair of the Gender Pay Equity Committee.
The analysis at the School of Medicine was delayed for several reasons. First, a pilot study was not completed until December 1999. Second, the School of Medicine decided that a separate gender pay equity committee should be appointed by their Executive Faculty, and that committee should do the analysis, rather than having the Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee perform the analysis as was done in the other seven schools. Linda Pike served on both committees; Joseph A. O'Sullivan attended meetings of the School of Medicine committee. The Washington University School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee submitted a draft report to the larger Gender Pay Equity Committee in August 2001. Their final report was approved by the Executive Faculty of the School of Medicine on April 3, 2002, with minor edits completed April 10, 2002.
The final composition of the Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee was: Joseph A. O'Sullivan, Linda Pike, Nancy Berg, Edward Spitznagel, Martin H. Israel, Susan Appleton, Brian Suarez, and Lee Epstein. The composition of the Washington University School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee was: Philip Stahl, Ph.D., chair; Barbara Cant (Human Resources); Lynn Cornelius, M.D.; Diana Gray, M.D.; Linda Pike, Ph.D.; Michael Province, Ph.D.; D.C. Rao, Ph.D.; Marilyn Siegel, M.D.; and Charles Zorumski, M.D.
The recommendations in this final report were endorsed by the Faculty Senate Council on March 25, 2002. This document was finalized and presented to the Faculty Senate April 15, 2002.
The Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee requested that pilot studies be run in Arts and Sciences and in the School of Medicine to determine whether measures of productivity or merit added significant predictive power over summary variables such as Department, years at Washington University, years since degree, last degree (M.D. or Ph.D.), rank, track, etc. The School of Medicine selected a "pilot department" in which the pilot study would be run. In addition, they selected a faculty member at the School of Medicine to do the analysis. The methodology included entering detailed data extracted from the CV's of all faculty in the pilot department. The conclusion of these pilot studies was that the measures of productivity (or merit) considered in the pilot studies failed to improve the predictive power sufficiently to warrant inclusion in the analysis. Based on this result, the Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee requested in December 1999 an analysis of the salary data from all faculty at the School of Medicine, not using measures of productivity (or merit).
The School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee, chaired by Phil Stahl, was appointed at that time. The School of Medicine submitted a draft report in August 2001 using a methodology based on these summary variables. D.C. Rao and Mike Province from the Division of Biostatistics performed the analysis. Compared with models used in other schools of the university and with the models used in the studies approximately ten years ago, the new models had greater predictive value in the sense that the R2 value was higher (R2 = 0.77 with 22 degrees of freedom (DF)). The draft report found a statistically significant difference in pay between men and women, a large part of which is concentrated at the full professor rank on the investigator track.
The draft report was presented and discussed at Faculty Senate Council meetings and at a meeting of the Executive Faculty. Motivated by suggestive/borderline evidence indicating a potential gender difference at the Assistant Professor level on the clinician track, Dean Peck asked the School of Medicine GPE Committee to evaluate that group further and identify if additional recommendations were warranted. Further analysis of this group led to some anomalous findings, which in turn uncovered the existence of measures of performance (clinical income, relative value units or RVUs, and grant expenses) available through another administrative unit of the School of Medicine. Using the basic variables and these performance variables, a new analysis was begun in January 2002 and completed in March 2002 (while also using a refined methodology for performing the statistical tests). The new methodology started with smaller subgroups of faculty, recognizing several individual Divisions within two large departments. In the end, the new analysis yielded a model with fewer degrees of freedom (17 as opposed to 22) and a higher predictive value (R2 value of 0.86 as opposed to 0.77).
The basic finding of this second set of analyses is that the new performance-inclusive model finds borderline significant evidence indicating gender differences and, again, a large part of the potential problem appears confined to the full professors on the investigator track. Although the report finds the evidence not formally statistically significant, it recognizes that the evidence is borderline, thus requiring a careful review of compensation levels with particular attention paid to the full professors on the investigator track. The recommendations from the School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee are as follows:
At the same time that these studies have been active at Washington University, there were similar efforts and studies at other universities and nationwide. The following comments are extracted verbatim from the final report of the School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee:
Gender differences have been found in national pay equity analyses as well as in studies undertaken by specific institutions. In 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology admitted that their female faculty "suffer from pervasive, if unintentional discrimination" [1]. This discrimination took the form of differences in salaries, resources provided and the treatment of women faculty. The MIT report documented historical bias that is "subtle, but pervasive" [2]; over a career there can be "an accumulation of slight disadvantages." That report describes "differences in salary, space, awards, resources, and response to outside offers between men and women."
More recently, Ginther [3] used data from the national Survey of Doctorate Recipients to evaluate employment outcomes for women in science and engineering. Analysis of salary differences indicated that over time the differences in male and female salaries at the assistant and associate professor level can be explained by observable characteristics, including productivity. However, she found that substantial gender salary differences among full professors could not be explained by observable differences. In 1997, this amounted to a 15% salary gap overall for women in science and engineering but a 23% gap for women full professors at medical schools. She concluded that nationwide, "gender discrimination similar to that observed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accounts for unexplained gender disparities."
The Faculty Senate Council Gender Pay Equity Committee endorses the report of the Washington University School of Medicine Gender Pay Equity Committee and makes the following additional findings and recommendations:
We emphasize that the analysis of all schools focused on gender pay equity, and as mentioned above, excluded faculty at other than professorial ranks. The Faculty Senate Council should consider that this analysis had a limited scope, and that there are issues related to workplace environment university wide not necessarily revealed by a study of pay equity.