Salaries and Advancement of Women Faculty in Atmospheric Science: Some Reasons for Concern

Abstract

Zevin and Seitter's analyses of the 1993 American Meteorological Society membership survey indicated that university/college employees had the largest difference in salary by gender when controlling for experience and age. Further analyses of the membership survey presented here indicate that a large salary discrepancy exists for female full professors in atmospheric science. In addition, the small number of women at the associate professor rank suggests a "leaky pipeline" for female atmospheric science faculty. A comparison of tenure-stream faculty to Ph.D.-level atmospheric scientists outside of academia suggests that female Ph.D.'s have fared better in nonuniversity positions in terms of senior-level salaries and advancement from entry-to midlevel positions. Possible explanations for the salary differential at the full professor level and for the small number of female associate professors in atmospheric science are explored, although no conclusive explanation can be given at this time. Possible actions to remediate the salary differential and poor advancement of faculty are proposed. These remediative actions are directed to heads and chairs of atmospheric science departments who are often in a position to initiate change within their departments and universities.

Faculty Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion: Barriers for Women

“…Disturbingly, salary differentials by gender within academe may be considerably larger than those outside of academe. For at least one discipline (atmospheric science), the salaries of PhD scientists holding senior level positions in private industry, federal research laboratories, and government positions were equitable by gender, whereas the average salaries of women full professors were substantially ($18,000) less than those of male faculty (Winkler et al 1996).…”

“…Previous research has shown either that there is little or no relationship between publication rate and marital and parental status of female faculty (Cole and Zuckerman 1987;Sonnert andHolton 1995a, 1996), or that, counterintuitively, single women publish less than married women faculty (Davis and Astin 1990). Also, male faculty, women faculty with children, and women faculty without children spend a comparable number of hours on their jobs (Winkler et al 1996). It is also difficult to explain the difference in publication rate by differences in how faculty allocate their time between different tasks or in their career motivation.…”

“…Salary discrepancies have been found for every category of US academic institution and for institutions with and without collective bargaining agreements (Sosin et al 1998). Discrepancies exist at all professorial ranks, although the largest differences occur at the rank of full professor (West 1995;Winkler et al 1996;Sosin et al 1998). Even within the distinguished professor rank, where academic honors are based on research achievement, large salary discrepancies are found between men and women (Olsen et al 1995).…”

Gender Issues Among Academic AMS Members: Comparisons with the 1993 Membership Survey

“…We use the survey responses to update a previous analysis of the salary and advancement of women faculty in atmospheric science (Winkler et al 1996;hereafter, WTS96). The earlier study investigated the large discrepancy in salary by gender for the "university/college" employment sector shown by the 1993 AMS membership survey (Zevin and Seitter 1994).…”

45 Beacon

“…After much discussion-and the sup- We use the survey responses to update a previous analysis of the salary and advancement of women faculty in atmospheric science (Winkler et al 1996;hereafter, WTS96). The earlier study investigated the large discrepancy in salary by gender for the "university/college" employment sector shown by the 1993 AMS membership survey (Zevin and Seitter 1994).…”