Sex Discrimination among University Teachers: A British-American Comparison

In recent years great concern has been expressed in the United States about opportunities for women in the universities and this has led both to government intervention and to internal measures to stamp out sex discrimination. In the United Kingdom such concern as has been expressed has not yet been translated into action.l In this article we attempt to discover whether the difference in the degree of concern and activity in the two countries is justified or not. We examine for both countries the proportions of university staff who are women and consider whether rewards in the profession in terms of pay and promotion to senior grades are distributed to men and women equally. Where this is not the case, we consider how far it can be justified in terms of the differential qualifications or performance in their jobs of women compared with men. Finally, where the qualifications and performance of women are different from those of men, we put forward some tentative ideas to explain why this occurs. The evidence on which the ariicle is based is drawn from national surveys of academics in both countries undertaken in Ig6g.2