Despite a quarter century as one of the most distinguished full professors in the University of Oregon’s Psychology Department, Jennifer Freyd is paid substantially less than her male colleagues who hold the same title and do the same job. She is not the only one: the psychology department’s own studies show that female full professors earn an average of $25,000-$30,000 less than their male colleagues. Today, Freyd filed a lawsuit against the university challenging its sex discrimination in pay.
Freyd is a pioneer in her field, the psychology of trauma, and an outspoken advocate for sexual assault survivors. She is also well known for her betrayal trauma theory and research on institutional betrayal.
According to Attorney Jennifer Middleton of Johnson Johnson Lucas & Middleton, P.C. Attorneys of Eugene who filed the suit, the Psychology Department has known about its gender wage gap for years. In 2014 and 2015, Freyd and her colleagues sent analyses of the department’s full professor salaries to department leadership. While they showed statistically significant gender disparities in pay, no corrective action was taken.
In late 2016, Psychology Department Head Ulrich Mayr sent a memo to College of Arts & Sciences Associate Dean Hal Sadofsky and Dean Andrew Marcus, discussing the considerable gender inequality among the department’s full professor salaries and explicitly requesting that Freyd receive a retroactive raise. The deans said they would not address the sex discrimination in Freyd’s pay, justifying their decision by saying that “only” three men were paid more than she was in her department; this makes it seem like the department has a large number of male professors, but there are only six male full professors in the department and all are junior to Freyd.
“For years, I have tried to work within my department and the College to help the UO live up to its own policies of non-discrimination,” said Freyd. “Women all over the country and in all kinds of jobs earn less than their male counterparts. It’s past time for the UO to recognize and address this problem in its own salary practices.”
Freyd’s lawsuit makes 10 claims for relief, relying on a large body of laws and statues that prohibit a gender-based wage gap. One of her claims is under Oregon’s new Equal Rights Amendment, which voters enacted in 2014.
“The University of Oregon should be a model of equality and non-discrimination. But when Professor Freyd challenged it to live up to those principles, it failed,” said Jennifer Middleton, Freyd’s lawyer from Johnson Johnson Lucas & Middleton in Eugene. “This case should spur the UO and other employers to re-examine their pay practices across the board.”
Jennifer Middleton, 541-484-2434, jmiddleton@justicelawyers.com of Johnson Johnson Lucas & Middleton, P.C. Attorneys of Eugene.
