Using the Compa-Ratio to Detect Gender Bias in Faculty Salaries.
Over the past twenty years, sex equity has been one of the most troublesome issues in academic salary administration. In analyzing salaries for gender bias, higher education has relied primarily on one tool, multiple linear regression. Despite progressive refinement, problems with its use remain: multicollinearity, inappropriate model specification, and improper use of step-wise procedures [13, 24]. For academic administrators, other difficulties impinge on the technique's utility. It is difficult to explain to faculty lacking background in statistics and it may mask organizational factors fostering discrimination [19] because it focuses on internal analysis of a single salary structure. Recent findings that there is still "a statistically significant effect of gender on earnings" [19, p. 56] and that women continue to earn less than men at all academic ranks [11], argue for additional tools to address salary problems in higher education. Howard W. Risher's suggestion [21] that tested corporate practices could be used to improve academic personnel administration led to a review of wage and salary tools available in that sector. To identify a technique that would be adaptable to the academic environment and the problem of gender bias, the following criteria were established. The compensation tool should: