What decade are we in?

I am aware that gender-based discrimination does occur today.  However, I assumed that most of the time it was restricted to inappropriate comments and other more subtle acts.  Recently I attended a meeting where the gender pay equity results were presented for my university.  It turns out that women are paid less then men regardless of school, rank, and year post-degree (and some other time correction factors).  This data was 1 year old.  I was shocked!!! Now depending on the school and department you may not be able reach statistical significance (given small departments and small number of women in many cases)  but when the residual difference between men and women is always negative in every model for every school, that is a problem.  And when the residual difference has tripled in the last 10 years, that also seems like a bad sign.

The big question is what to do.  We are a private university and salary info is supposed to be secret.  We aren't supposed to share it with others.  I will preface this by saying that my school actually had the least difference (percentage wise) thanks to a great previous dean who corrected problems.  My chair is very fair and tries to have a standard rate for a given rank (corrected for time at rank).  Also, having a spouse at the university gives me localized data.  But as a university how do we fix this?  Clearly the chairs are setting the salaries so they have control, but how do we hold them accountable when the data is private and often cannot be release on a department level to the public given the number of individuals at a rank?  Deans should be overseeing this, but clearly this is not happening.  This is just part of a climate problem at our university but this is a clear sign.

What as women can we do to change this?  Seek guidance for our professional societies?  Set up to model based calculator to guide negotiations for women on campus?  Riot in the street?  And why does this happen?  Do women just settle for less?  Do the chairs push them harder to accept less?  Are we less likely to get outside offers to push our salaries up?

How can it be 2010 and well educated, highly-qualified women are still paid less than men?

Inclusive leadership

It seems that many conversations I have had recently are converging on a topic.  How can we be inclusive and open in developing talent for the future?  When you want to get involved in planning and service how do you do it?  Here are some thoughts and discussions...
In some professional societies there are open mechanisms for participating in conference planning and sub-groups within the discipline.  In others, I have no idea how it happens, except that someone on high makes a choice.  How do you get to be on the list they are choosing from?  Some of those career building experiences can be much harder to come by in some groups compared to others.  Are there open calls for a special symposium?
Likewise, at your university how do you get to be selected for positions of leadership or groomed for them?  Or does "the man" select the next chair of X?
I've realized that while this can be an issue for women and under-represented minorities, it's really an issue for anyone who isn't in the "old boy's network" .  If there isn't some important senior (read famous) person looking out for you, how do you break into the system?
So really transparent organizations make it easier for everyone to stand on a level playing field and participate when they wish.  This might hurt the future star hand picked by the old boys, but for everyone else it's a good thing.  So how can we strive for uniform and transparent organizations at both our universities and our societies?  Thoughts?

Inspiration

I recently saw an interesting talk at a conference about diversity.  It was by a white man who has fearlessly fought for women and under-represented minorities (URM).   His department has >50% women or URM faculty (in a STEM field).  It's a relatively new department, but there was still clearly a major effort to recruit women and URM.  The amazing thing is that their publications/faculty, annual research $/faculty, and annual citations/faculty member are outstanding and would be respected for any department in the field, so they are clearly not sacrificing quality to hire these diverse faculty.  While I don't envision my department ever approaching this, it make me think that I need to be a conscious advocate for other women/URM.  When I think back to faculty searches where we passed on women/URM who went on to be successful faculty at other schools it makes me sad that they could have added to the numbers in our department.  It also makes me remember that I should make a conscious effort to always look for a qualified woman or URM for opportunities (awards, session chairs at meetings, etc.).  I know that I've been the beneficiary of many little (and not so little) boosts of this type and I need to pay it forward.  It also reminds me that although life isn't perfect as a woman in academia, things have sure come a long way in 50 years.  Heck even in 10 years, the number of women in my fields has increased and the percentage of women faculty having kids before tenure is much higher than it used to be.  So, while I long for the day when F equals greater than or equal to two in my department, I'm feeling inspired to try to affect change through big and little ways.