Women of Color in the Administrative Pipeline: Where are we?
By Vernese Edghill, Ph.D. Student, Howard University

Race, gender, and job location are integral variables in analyzing women in the higher education labor force. While this article addresses two critical questions that are essential to assessing gender equity broadly in the administrator pipeline in higher education, its focus is primarily black women.

• Is the current pipeline for women administrators filled with racially diverse women?

• If not, what new strategies need to be employed to ensure that racially diverse women are in the senior-level administrative pipeline?

To answer these questions, we must first have access to data that indicates where all women are located in higher education administration by race and position title/level as well as whether women are in mainstream positions or race or gender specific ones. Unfortunately, such data are not routinely gathered, and too many of the studies that disaggregate data by race and gender use only broad categories of administrative positions (executive, managerial, or professional staff). As a result, current research offers only a macro-level analysis of women’s occupational locations and career mobility in higher education, while erasing the complexities of the status of women of color employed in higher education. Until critical variables can be identified, researched, and analyzed we are unable to draw accurate hypotheses and findings about the progress of women across racial groups in the academy. 

Research has shown that the number of women in faculty and administrative positions has improved over time. Many studies point to the aggregate number of women compared to men by race now employed in higher education to draw these conclusions. These aggregate numbers help determine that women outnumber men in most mid-level administrative positions, although decrease dramatically at the highest levels. They also suggest that white women account for the majority of women employed as faculty and administrators on predominantly white college campuses.

But where are women of color? Previous studies indicate that many black women administrators are either employed at black colleges and universities, or they are in junior level in student affairs or specialized positions on predominantly white campuses. Most often, they are in positions that lack high level institutional authority and offer limited resources. In addition, they generally earn lower salaries than men in similar positions.

Florence Bonner, Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Howard University, published an article entitled “Addressing Gender in the Historically Black College and University Community: A Challenge and Call to Action” in the Journal of Negro Education in 2001. In her article, Bonner explores gender parity issues in higher education for black women employed as both faculty and administrators at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Using the 1997-98 National Center for Educational Statistical data, Bonner addresses issues of rank, tenure, and promotion of Black women faculty and their parity with Black men at HBCUs. Bonner found that 29 percent of the 3,720 male faculty members at these institutions were full professors, while 24.3 percent were associate professors. However, only 19.6 percent of the 3,301 female faculty members were full professors and 18.7 percent were associate professors. She discovered that female faculty members were less likely than their male counterparts to be tenured professors, at 37.1 percent and 43.4 percent respectively.

Bonner also found that twenty-eight percent of women and 25.6 percent of men were in tenure-track positions, which is hopeful for the faculty pipeline. Unfortunately, despite the slightly higher percentage of women in tenure-track positions, they were also more likely than their male counterparts to be in lower rank positions of instructor and lecturer or were in non-academic ranks. These data illustrate a distinct disparity among Black men and women at HBCUs.

In addition, Bonner found that Black women administrators shared similar hiring and promotion disparities with female faculty in general on these campuses. In 1999, black women held eleven top level executive positions. Only one of those eleven was at a Research I institution. The remaining ten led small HBCUs with student populations of one thousand or less. In addition to the eleven who held top executive positions, the data showed that 47 percent of the black women administrators in the sample were in student affairs.