Glass ceilings and gender pay gaps abound at Texas Tech, especially at the administrative level, according to an Avalanche-Journal analysis of more than 4,500 university salaries.

Although Tech’s gender-based pay and achievement gaps reflect a broader societal trend, gender equity advocates at Tech say the university’s imbalanced pay scales could threaten to derail its tier-one ambitions.

Tech President Guy Bailey said the gender gaps could be symptomatic of the university’s low salaries in general. When compared with other schools in Texas and the Big 12 Conference, Tech’s pay levels are at or near the bottom.

Bailey is already working to boost salaries, which he hopes will remedy gender gaps, but looming state budget cuts don’t bode well for any near-term fixes.

“Certainly, any time there is potential for inequities, it’s something that’s on our mind,” Bailey said. “On an ongoing basis we’re concerned about equity for all of our employees. Of course, it helps to have money.”

Martha Smithey, a Tech professor and chair of the President’s Council on Gender Equity at Tech, said administrators have expressed their desire to equalize pay before.

Only for such efforts to fizzle.

“We did have those conversations, but the conversations then just kind of faded,” said Smithey, who said administrators have also failed to heed the council’s calls they at least tackle the “most egregious” instances of pay gaps.

According to data obtained through an open-records request, women comprise 48 percent of the more than 4,400 full-time employees listed across all areas — from coaches to lab personnel to custodians — but they collectively receive 39 percent of the $227 million Tech is spending this year on salaries.

The average male employee at Tech earns $60,045 and the average woman earns $42,315, according to university data. The median salary is $49,000 for men and $35,000 for women.

A separate set of salaries for Tech’s administration shows yet larger salary gaps between the 97 women and 55 men who oversee the system’s operations. The average female administrator makes $56,000, or half of the $105,000 earned by the average male.

Median female administrator salary: $42,000. For men, the median is $77,000.

The top-paid male administrator is the system’s chancellor, Kent Hance, who makes $420,000. The highest-paid female administrator is Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement Kelly Overley, with a salary of $284,000.

Women also lag in rank.

Strictly on the faculty front, according to the most recent report by Tech’s internal equity council, women comprise 42 percent of Tech’s faculty.

That ratio earns Tech the No. 1 spot among Texas’ seven so-called emerging research institutions, the runners in the race for newly created tier-one research funding.

But, according to committee data, Tech’s faculty employment rates don’t translate to advancement. Women comprised about 5 percent of department heads/chairs during the 2009-10 academic year, the lowest ratio among emerging research schools.

Smithey said such gender gaps could harm Tech’s push for tier-one status as a research powerhouse, particularly as it courts the nation’s top female researchers.

“To what extent are we not attracting really good female scholars who have a history of a lot of research dollars?” she said. “Part two is, how do we retain them? Are we losing good faculty because of this? It’s a recruitment and retention issue.”

Gender gaps and glass ceilings at Tech, of course, don’t occur in a vacuum.

Despite all the celebrated strides women have made since the ’60s and ’70s, the last decade of data shows stagnant growth in women’s salaries relative to men.

A 2007 report by the American Association of University Women shows education has failed to live up to all its hype as a great equalizer, even during a decade that saw women overtake men as the majority of degree earners.

According to the AAUW study, women working full time typically earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts make in the first year after college. The gap only grows from there, with that number shrinking to 69 percent a decade after graduation.

Strictly apple-to-apple comparisons of male to female college graduates with the same degree show that men consistently earn more than women during their first year with a bachelor’s degree, even in the women-dominated majors like education.

For instance, women teachers in their first year after graduation make 95 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Women with biological sciences degrees made 75 percent of men’s salaries. In mathematics, 76 percent.

Federal numbers tell the same story.

Estimates by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median weekly full-time wage for women at $669 in 2010. Median weekly wages for men, on the other hand, were $824 that year.

Michele Leber, chair of the National Committee on Pay Equity, says these numbers reflect a deeply rooted cultural bias — one that’s proven difficult to combat.

“There really hasn’t been much closing of the gap,” Leber said. “I attribute that to the historic discrimination built into the pay structure. In some occupations there were even efforts to hire women because they could be paid less.”

But “winning the hearts and minds” of society will take more time, she said, and in the meantime, legislations will have to pick up the slack.

On that front, too, equity advocates like Leber have found more frustration than victory.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate failed in November to obtain the 60 votes they needed to block a GOP filibuster of the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation, a reboot of 1963’s Equal Pay Act, would have enacted several changes, but most notably it would have held employers accountable for wage gaps by making them prove disparities were not the result of gender discrimination.

Congressional opponents argued the bill would have led to a surge in frivolous employment lawsuits.

Leber said she expects the bill to resurface on Capitol Hill in coming weeks, though she said its odds of passage in a Republican-held House are admittedly grim.

To comment on this story:

matthew.mcgowan@lubbockonline.com • 766-8724

james.ricketts@lubbockonline.com • 766-8701