FEMALE FACULTY RETENTION LOW

The charts below were created and presented during "Diversity Week 2006" by UTMB's Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity and obtained by TFA through the Texas Public Information Act.  Click on the images to enlarge them:

UTMB did not provide any charts that focused solely on males, but we can make inferences by comparing these two charts concerning the School of Medicine. 

Now, even without having a chart for males only, we can see in the first chart that females are clearly leaving at a faster rate than any other tracked group.  As of June 30, 2006, the retention rate of the tracked cohort of females was 53%.  That is worse, and in most cases much worse, than any ethnic minority's retention as shown in the second chart, which includes both males and females.  As an ethnic group, only Asians come anywhere near the low retention rate of females, and Asians are still several percentage points higher than females. 

This data clearly supports the Blogmeister's own experiences in dealing with cases at UTMB.  I have handled three grievances at UTMB since April 2006.  Two of the three grievants were women.  (Only one grievance, one for a female, rose to the level of a formal hearing. The other two were settled informally to the satisfaction of the grievant.) As a part of one of the grievances, I put one of the faculty member's department compensation under a microscope and found that women suffered the largest cuts in their salaries (FY06 compensation minus FY07 institutional base) and, overall, women were paid less than men even when 100% of the highly theoretical incentive components were included. My experience with UTMB faculty aside, the data show a pay gap at UTMB, as well. Furthermore, two people on the SOM faculty contacted me because they wanted their stories of unfair treatment told on this blog even though TFA had nothing to do with their complaints and efforts for redress.  Both were women.  (To read their stories click here and here.)  

Female faculty are leaving UTMB at a faster rate than any other tracked group. UTMB has a gender problem, a big one.  The anecdotal evidence suggests it, and the data show it.  Meanwhile, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity has been weakened rather than strengthened to meet this challenge. 

Comments

Academic medicine has a gender problem, not just UTMB. Get real.

[The Blogmeister]

Dear "Get Real,"

Although I don't have the numbers for medical universities across the country, for argument's sake, I'll go there with you: academic medicine has a gender problem.

Let's just put this conversation into another context. Let's go back to segregated colleges and universities in oh, say, George Wallace's "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" Alabama in 1963. The entire higher education system in Alabama (and likely the Deep South in general) had an "African-American problem" in those days. Let's say you're the president of the University of Alabama in 1963. Do you say, "All the universities in Alabama have a race problem. Get real," or do you try to fix the problem one university at a time, starting with your own?

Because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right, something I learned on the playground a long time ago.