Letter
to the editor
Equal
pay for equal work still an issue
We
are very grateful for the extensive coverage
over the years by the Daily 49er to issues
facing female students, staff, and faculty
on our campus, including your story May
3, 2004, “Women, men staff at CSULB
differ in income and position.”
As
your story notes, three gender pay equity
studies have been conducted in recent years
on our campus. The most recent, conducted
for us by Dr. Paul Bott, showed no statistically
significant evidence of pay inequities between
current male and female administrators,
faculty, or staff, while two earlier studies
documented what appeared to be troubling
pay inequity. None of these studies has
addressed broader issues of great concern
to many women on campus, and we have turned
our attention to those for further study.
For
example, are women given fair consideration
in hiring for faculty, administrative, and
staff positions? Proposition 209, of course,
prohibits hiring preferences for women,
but it also prohibits hiring preferences
for men. Pay equity for women doesn’t
mean much, if they can’t get hired
for good positions in the first place. We
are also concerned with equity in setting
the starting salaries for women, the classification
of newly hired women in staff positions,
the fairness of methods used for setting
the pay of department chairs, and equity
in access to the resources and other support
women need to succeed in their jobs.
We
encourage the university community to review
the most recent study and our comments on
the web site of the President’s Commission
on the Status of Women: www.csulb.edu/org/women/pay_equity.html.
We welcome the advice of the university
community as we continue to address these
important issues.
—
Julie Van Camp, professor of philosophy
and Sharon R. Guthrie, professor of kinesiology
and physical education
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