BOULDER, Colo. — Thursday is Equal Pay Day in the United States, and a University of Colorado Boulder professor is sharing her story with Denver7 about being paid significantly less than her male colleagues.
Equal Pay Day marks how far into the current year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, women currently make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.
In 2024, CU Boulder settled a class action lawsuit brought against them by a group of 386 female faculty at the university.
The lawsuit stated that CU Boulder conducted an Equity Review in 2021 and determined that 386 female identifying faculty members were being paid less than similarly employed male faculty members in violation of the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.
Professor Katie Little was a part of that lawsuit.
“I went up for promotion to full professor in 2015. As part of that situation, there were some irregularities, and so I had requested, through my lawyer, some of the salaries of the other full professors, and I became aware of large gaps in the payment of full professors,” Little said.
She told Denver7 that she learned she and other female faculty members were making — in some cases — $20,000 to $50,000 less than their male colleagues in similar positions.
“I was told that all of those disparities could be explained in terms of merit, because our salaries and our raises are supposed to correspond to our achievements in research and teaching and service," Little said. "Every year, we do these performance reviews, and so a lot of effort was put into explaining to me why I wasn't as excellent in these areas as these male colleagues. And so, you can imagine my surprise when in 2022, I got a very large raise.”
Little said the raise came after the university did an equity analysis in compliance with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.
“In 2022, I got an automated email. It was just basically a chart that said, 'You have been identified for this Equal Pay for Equal Work raise.' And then there was the number, and then that was it. And there was no personalization. There was no 'We're sorry that a mistake had been made.' It was just, 'Here's your money.' And so, I started asking around, you know, what was this? Where did this come from? And I didn't really get any of the answers that I wanted,” Little said.
She contacted an attorney who told her several other female faculty members had contacted them as well with similar concerns.
“We got together as a group, because I wasn't the only one who had raised concerns," she said. "The concerns had been dismissed, and then all of a sudden — this raise,” Little said. “We were seeking back pay because the raise that we would receive was going forward, and the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act had also in it that … They were required to pay two years of back pay."
The lawsuit was settled for $4.5 million.
“When you think about some of these women, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars they've been underpaid over the years, right? If you think about that, I've been at CU since 2011 and I only got a couple years — 18 months — of back pay. And you just think about how much they've been underpaying me for that long. It adds up,” Little said. “What was really important to us was not just the back pay. Actually, the money was, for many of the women, really the least of the concerns. What we really wanted were cultural changes. And we did get a very important non-monetary award, which was that the salaries would be made public — public to us, to the faculty.”
Little said many of the female faculty members who were a part of the lawsuit also wanted an apology but the university did not admit to any wrongdoing.
