The Status of Women Faculty
at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign

1999

Highlights of the Report

  1. While women constitute 21% of the total UIUC faculty, they represent only 11% of the full professors, 27% of the associate professors, and 36% of the assistant professors.  These percents have increased over time, but still place the UIUC near the bottom in representation of women when compared with peer institutions.

  2. When compared with other Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Institutions, UIUC ranks second to last in the representation of women at both the full professor and assistant professor ranks and third from last in its representation of women associate professors.

  3. Among twenty Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) peer group institutions, UIUC ranks last in representation of women full professors, third from last in representation of women associate professors, and ninth from last in representation of women assistant professors.

  4. Fifty-seven of the more than 80 UIUC departments or units have no women faculty at one or more ranks, and six have no women faculty at all.

  5. Students at the UIUC are more than four times less likely to receive exposure to and guidance from women faculty than from men faculty. 

  6. Despite improvement in recent years, faculty women at UIUC are also much less likely than faculty men to be members of influential committees or to receive awards in the form of endowed chairs and professorships.

  7. Administrative opportunities for women at UIUC are improving but still are limited. Although faculty women hold six of the seventeen dean or directorships, only ten out of seventy-eight department heads or chairs are women.

  8. While UIUC salaries of men full professors rank third among CIC Institutions, salaries of women full professors at UIUC rank seventh.

  9. The full professor salary gap for UIUC faculty women of 14.5% is greater than the salary gap at all but two of the twenty IBHE peer group institutions and all but two of the eleven CIC institutions.

  10. At the associate and assistant professor level, the salary gaps between men and women respectively are 5.4% and 4.7%. While these gaps are comparable to or even less than those at other CIC and IBHE institutions, they are still disturbing and in need of further study.

  11. In 60% of UIUC departments over the past five years, the proportion of women assistant professors hired was less than the proportion of women Ph.D.s awarded in their disciplines.

  12. The Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women calls for the adoption of an  aggressive hiring policy aimed at increasing the representation of women faculty at all ranks and the assurance of a professional climate for all faculty that is both fair and supportive.

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