A cover story in the new edition of the Arkansas Times credits UCA President Lu Hardin with rapid and dramatic progress toward achieving gender equity in faculty tenure and salaries.
Excerpt:
“Of Arkansas university presidents, Lu Hardin of the University of Central Arkansas at Conway is the most eager to talk about gender equity. When he was a professor himself (at Arkansas Tech), he wrote papers on Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination in athletics. The goal and the principles of Title IX carry over to the elimination of discrimination in the employment of faculty, he said.
“In a 2003 speech to the UCA faculty, after being hired as president in 2002, Hardin listed certain of his goals. One was to improve the lot of female faculty. According to UCA data, he’s delivered. In the fall of 2003, the average salary of a female professor was 93.3 percent of a male professor’s. In the fall of 2005, it was 94.5 percent. A female associate professor’s salary went from 93.4 percent to 94.6 percent of a male’s. A female assistant professor went from 97 percent to 99.9. Still not good enough, Hardin said, but he added that in all three ranks, the difference between female and male at UCA was less than the national average difference.
“More UCA women have gotten tenure under the Hardin administration. In 2002, 29.8 percent of the tenured faculty at UCA were women. In 2006, the percentage was 34. The national average was 35. …
“Sondra Gordy of the history department and Franci Bolter of the writing department agreed there’s been progress in gender equity at UCA. They said that some faculty members had received not only the across-the-board pay increases that everyone gets, but also merit increases, based on the recommendations of the department chairman and the dean of the college, and equity pay. A standing university committee on gender equity has been established, too.”
