The gender pay gap
My analysis of the salaries of the 7,735 full-time or full-time equivalent instructional faculty at public Louisiana colleges and universities found that at nearly every rank at nearly every school, men are paid more than women.
The schools with the overall largest gender pay gaps are Southern University New Orleans, where a man on faculty is paid on average 61.25% more than a woman is, the University of New Orleans (34.73%), the University of Louisiana Lafayette (28.57%), LSU (26.86%) and Louisiana Tech University (24.66%).
These figures are averages across all faculty ranks.
Within faculty ranks, there can be smaller or larger inequities. Across Louisiana, the rank most likely to have a gender pay gap is the full professor rank. Far more men hold this job title than women.
At some universities, the inequity at the professor rank is significant enough to skew the institution’s overall average. For example, Nicholls State University employs more women in instructional roles than men. At the instructor, assistant professor and associate professor ranks, there is either no overall gender pay gap or one that skews in favor of women. But among the 35 full professors, men earn on average 22.57% more than women professors, which makes the average pay gap at the Thibodaux campus $7,000.
At many schools with a huge gap between the number of women and men who are full professors, the numbers are much closer in the assistant professor ranks. These faculty members are usually early-career academics who have not yet been awarded tenure.
Studies show this is indicative of a major problem: retention.
Becoming a parent is something that can put women at a disadvantage in academia. Within the past few months, most higher education institutions in Louisiana have adopted paid parental leave policies that allow employees to take up to six weeks of leave when they become a parent.
Typically, it’s younger faculty members who become parents, often before they are awarded tenure. While many universities have long had policies that allow faculty to pause their tenure clock due to pregnancy, birth or adopting a child, these policies are gender-neutral, and studies show they can actually hurt women.
A 2018 American Economic Review analysis of assistant professor hires at top 50 economics departments from 1980-2005 found adopting gender-neutral tenure clock policies actually reduced women’s tenure rates while substantially boosting men’s.
A 2020 study of biological science Ph. D. recipients from Harvard economist Stephanie Cheng found similar gaps.
“There is no gender gap in salary among individuals who do not have children. Fathers face no child penalty in their salary compared to their childless peers,” Cheng wrote. “However, mothers experience a $5,000 lower annual salary than fathers and their childless peers. Women lose approximately 7% of their salary from having children; this salary gap grows by approximately 2% each year, even as their children grow older and mothers return to the labor force.”
Because moving up in the ranks is one of the few ways to get a meaningful pay increase, women remaining in each rank longer than men compounds the gender pay gap.
In a series of interviews, higher education leaders say one of the primary factors that leads to the overall gender pay gap is the underrepresentation of women in high paying fields.
“The gender pay gap has in large part been perpetuated by both structural and individual forces,” Maria Seger, an English professor at the University of Louisiana Lafayette said. “Those structural forces that, you know, in a capitalist world, most people would call them market forces, right? You know, English and history are just less valuable disciplines than business and engineering.”
“But there are also individual forces that we have control over,” Seger said.
The most highly paid faculty at universities are in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, law, or in business and economics-related fields. In almost all cases, the most highly paid professor at a school is a man.
For example, the 15 top-paid LSU full professors are all men. With the exception of 13th-ranked John Hamilton, former dean of the school of mass communication, the professors are in law, business and STEM fields. The 15 top-paid professors make between $248,500 and $359,324.
The 15 lowest-paid LSU full professors are split between gender, mostly in art and music. The 15 lowest-paid professors make between $71,773 and $84,534
The higher-paid professors tend to be compensated more because universities have to compete with the private sector for top talent, several faculty senate leaders pointed out in interviews. If universities can’t pay competitively, lawyers, economists, engineers and doctors will tend to practice their profession rather than teach it.
But equalizing these fields is not an easy task.
“A single institution can't overcome generations of tradition,” said Louisiana Tech University President Jim Henderson, who was previously head of the University of Louisiana System.
Addressing a culture that pushes men to be engineers and women to be teachers has to start early, Henderson said.
“Those are some cultural norms that have been deeply rooted, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that if those decisions are made from an informed basis,” he said. “Educating students early on in their education career that there are opportunities that they may not have thought of, I think that's going to be a very important part of the process.”
LSU president shares anti-trans misinformation
LSU President William Tate shared a video Thursday from an anti-transgender advocacy group on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that amplified misinformation about an Olympic athlete.
The video was from an Olympic boxing match earlier Thursday in France between Imane Khelif of Algeria and Angela Carini of Italy. It shows Carini backing out of the match after being struck by Khelif. Carini’s actions and tearful comments reignited controversy related to Khelif’s gender.
“This is illegal in Louisiana,” Tate wrote. “We have established guidelines in our laws. Why don’t the Olympics go to two divisions — Open and Women? It allows everyone to compete. Will it take a death to stop this at the Olympic level?”
Khelif is not transgender. According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Khelif was born a woman, has always lived as a woman and has a female passport. Khelif was previously disqualified from a non-Olympic competition after the International Boxing Association, which in 2019 was stripped of its status by the IOC, identified high levels of testosterone in her system, which can occur naturally in cisgender women, who are born and identify as women.
The competition between the two women would not be illegal in Louisiana, as Tate later conceded in a subsequent X post. Louisiana’s law that bars transgender athletes from competing in accordance with their gender identity requires athletes to compete based on the sex listed on their birth certificate.
Tate’s post falsely implied Khelif is not a woman and that she is transgender. Khelif is from Algeria, which does not have any legal protections for LGBTQ+ people. Algeria does not allow people to change their legal sex.
When Louisiana passed its transgender athlete ban in 2022, several legislators and LGBTQ+ advocates predicted the law could be weaponized against women who are not transgender but do not conform to gender norms or traditional beauty standards.
Tate was not the only public figure to post about the boxing match. Ultra-conservative politicians such as former President Donald Trump, Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill amplified misinformation about Khelif.
Peyton Rose Michelle, executive director of Louisiana Trans Advocates, speculated Tate’s comments were made in an appeal to the arch-conservative governor.
After multiple people pointed out his error, Tate later dialed down his comments.
“I apologize for the error and any harm caused,” he wrote later on X. “I am committed to a solution that allows for broad, fair and safe participation. We can get there.”
Tate’s follow-up post did not acknowledge that Khelif is a woman. His original post, containing misinformation, was left up.
Tate’s comments contradict his own espoused beliefs about institutional neutrality. In a speech to the LSU Faculty Senate last fall, he spoke of his belief that university presidents shouldn’t be engaged in political speech.
“I believe [faculty] and the students should be free to make any statement you want to about any matter and we should defend your right to do that,” Tate said at the meeting. “I don’t believe that the president should be making statements that squashes your ability to have free speech.”
It also puts him out of step with an LSU Faculty Senate resolution passed in April calling for institutional neutrality on social and political Issues.
“To empower and protect academic freedom and inquiry for faculty and students, when a social or political issue arises that does not directly concern the academic mission of LSU, leadership at or above the college or school level will not issue a position statement on that issue and will refrain from any other actions that could constrain faculty discourse,” the resolution reads.
What I’m reading
How will LSU adapt to new scholarship limits? Brian Kelly's still trying to sort it out. By Reed Darcey | The Advocate
UL Lafayette on-campus housing extends to local hotels By Layne Miller | KLFY
‘A Stunning Failure’: Latest FAFSA Delay Will Hinder the Most Vulnerable Students By Eric Hoover | The Chronicle of Higher Education
Gov. Landry reauthorizes paid parental leave for state workers under his authority By Julie O’Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
Louisiana media outlets sue over police buffer law, citing First Amendment violation By Alyse Pfeil | The Advocate
Which Colleges Have Produced the Most Individual Olympic Medals in Paris? By Amelia Benavides-Colón and Nell Gluckman | The Chronicle of Higher Education
One idea to curb the invasive Asian carp: Eat them By Elise Plunk | Louisiana Illuminator
Notice me!
All government bodies — including all of the higher education governing boards — must send email notices of their meetings to anybody who requests them under a new law that went into effect Thursday, Aug. 1.
House Bill 446 by Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-New Orleans, now Act 617, expands an existing provision of the state’s open meetings law. Previously, public bodies were only required to send notices to members of the news media who requested them, but Hilferty’s law now requires they be sent to anyone who asks.
Open meetings laws ensure the public’s right to know what governments do. They’re part of “sunshine laws” that every state and the federal government have put in place to ensure transparency.
Sunshine laws apply to all public bodies in Louisiana, though broad exceptions are granted to the Legislature and now the governor’s office. The Legislature already allows members of the public to sign up for email notices for committee hearings.
Any body that derives its power from another is also a public body. For example, the LSU Board of Supervisors delegates authority to the LSU Faculty Council, making it a public body. The council then delegates authority to the Faculty Senate, which delegates authority to committees and subcommittees, making those organizations public bodies as well.
“All of these bodies make decisions that are important to someone,” said Steven Procopio, president of the good government group Public Affairs Research Council. “The smaller the board, the harder it is going to be to get information, which makes it even more important that people can get that information easily.”
The law specifically requires these notices be sent out to people “in the same manner as is given to members of the public body,” which is usually by email. It must include the agenda, date, time, and place of the meeting, which cannot be changed within 24 hours of the meeting.
Bodies are also required to physically put up notices at the site of the meeting and to place them on their website, if they have one.
Members of the news media typically sign up for these emails with the communications director for the government agency, as these officials are usually in charge of sending the notices. Some agencies might set up new protocols now that the noticing requirements are expanded.
These policies are likely to be different for each organization.
For example, the Southern University Board of Supervisors will soon set up an email sign-up form on its website for the public, but the Louisiana Community and Technical College Board of Supervisors will send notices to anybody who emails boardmeetings@lctcs.edu to request them.
The LSU System and the University of Louisiana System boards have not yet decided how to handle these requests, but email addresses for their media relations officials are on each of their websites.
If an organization does not have any media relations staff, the public can also email the head of the organization, who usually has a title such as chair, director or president.
Other higher ed happenings
Tomorrow is James Genovese’s first day as president of Northwestern State University.
The Chabert family created a scholarship at Nicholls State University for mothers studying nursing. This scholarship will be awarded to a mother attending Nicholls full-time as a nursing major of any classification with at least a 3.0 GPA. The recipient will receive $2,000 for the academic year beginning in fall 2024, with $1,000 dispersed in the fall and spring semester. Read the news release here.