Chancellor Richard L. Byyny and Vice Chancellor Phil DiStefano announced today they will step up efforts to correct gender inequities in salaries among University of Colorado at Boulder faculty by doubling the equity salary pool for next year and revising methods for distribution to ensure improved equity.
Last year, noting a 2 percent discrepancy between salaries of male and female faculty members, Chancellor Byyny announced a three-year program to rectify the differences and allocated $80,000 for the first year of a gender equity salary pool.
"We recognized that we had a problem, and we moved to solve it," he said.
As a result, salary increases for women faculty members last year were a median 4.6 percent, while men faculty members received a median 3.8 percent gain.
Although the equity pool resulted in larger average salary increases for women, other factors such as promotion seem to have diluted the effort, Byyny said.
"Therefore we must both step up support for the equity pool to $160,000 and examine the distribution to ensure that the result is an elimination of the gap," he said.
The most recent salary analysis showed that white female faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder still earn an average of 2 percent less than their white male colleagues.
"We will both increase the pool for distribution to women faculty and make important changes in allocating the funds to ensure significant progress in correcting this inequity," DiStefano said.
The correction will be a part of the salary-setting process this year. Vice Chancellor DiStefano said he will work with the chancellor, deans and faculty leadership to address this issue.