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

1999

Introduction and Summary

The Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women (CCSW) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) believes that the University would wish to be recognized as an all-inclusive institution of higher learning, one that could serve as a role model for its efforts in enhancing the position of women on campus.  In order to achieve such a goal, an institution must periodically look to see how it is doing; what is being done well; and in what areas improvement is needed.  With this goal in mind, CCSW began a study during 1998 of the professional climate and employment situation facing women faculty at the UIUC.  What the Committee discovered after a year of study was disturbing and disappointing.  We found that the status of women faculty at the UIUC in 1999 is not good and that improvement is needed.[1] 

We found under-representation of women in the faculty ranks relative to their already low representation at peer institutions.  Although representation of women faculty in each rank has increased over time, such progress has been limited, particularly at the full professor level.  UIUC faculty women represent only 11% of the full professors, 27% of the associate professors, and 36% of the assistant professors.  Among 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.  Among its twenty Illinois Board of Education (IBHE) peer group institutions, the UIUC ranks last in representation of women full professors, third from last in its representation of women associate professors, and ninth from last in its representation of women assistant professors.  

The under-representation of women faculty at UIUC has several consequences.  One of the most serious is that UIUC students receive inadequate exposure to and guidance from women faculty.  A comparison of student-faculty ratios between men and women showed that UIUC students are roughly four times less likely to have a woman instructor than a man instructor. 

Although representation of faculty women on influential committees at UIUC has increased since 1993, representation on such committees is still quitelow.[2]  Faculty women at UIUC are also less likely than faculty men to be members of influential research boards or to receive research awards in the form of endowed chairs and professorships.  In 1999, only one member of the nine-member Research Board was a woman (although the acting chair was a woman) and two of the seventeen member Center for Advanced Study were women.  As of 1999, women held two of the ten Swanlund Chairs, none of the other 50 endowed chairs, and five of the forty-two endowed named professorships.[3]  While it may be the case that endowed chairs and professorships reside primarily in fields with low representation of women, this should not be seen as an excuse for not recruiting women to fill these positions or for not seeking endowments in areas such as the social sciences where women are better represented.

             Administrative opportunities for women faculty at UIUC are also limited, though expanding.  Women now hold six of the seventeen dean or directorships of colleges and other major units.  This constitutes a major change from 1993 when only three out of fifteen deans and directors were women, and from 1969, when there were no women deans or directors.  Yet at the department level, only ten of the seventy-eight department heads or chairs are women.  While this represents an increase over 1993, when there were six women, or 1969, when only three women were department heads or chairs, it does not suggest proportional representation for women in department level administrative positions.[4]  

 Under-representation of women faculty at UIUC is accompanied by salary gaps for UIUC faculty women at all ranks.  The salary gap measures the extent of shortfall of women’s salaries relative to men’s salaries at a given rank.   For women full professors at UIUC, the salary gap of 14.5% is greater than the salary gap at all but two other CIC institutions and all but two other IBHE peer group institutions.  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.

Whereas there is substantial variation in the representation of women faculty across departments, we found that 57 of the more than 80 UIUC departments have no women faculty at one or more ranks, and that 6 departments have no women faculty at all.  A comparison of women assistant professor hires over the past five years with two measures of availability of women in the hiring pool showed that assistant professor hires in the majority of UIUC departments fell short of both measures.   Moreover, thirty-two percent of UIUC departments hired no women assistant professors in the past five years.

It may be tempting to take the position that time will solve this problem.  After all, the salary gap for women assistant professors at UIUC is “only” five percent.  Perhaps over time the salary gap for women full professors will fall to five percent as well.  Yet the salary gap for full professor women remains virtually unchanged over the past eight years.  To subscribe to the adage that time heals would be unfair to current full professor women, most of whom will retire to receive pensions substantially less than those of their male colleagues. 

The figures that follow speak for themselves and need relatively little commentary from us.  They demonstrate a problem in need of resolution.  It is our hope that this report is the first step toward the solution.

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