The school is creating a $5 million fund to address the suit’s terms.
From Equal Rights Advocates:
BREAKING: Vassar College Agrees to Terms for Settling Gender Pay Discrimination LawsuitEqual Rights Advocates (ERA) and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein announced today that Vassar College has agreed to terms for settling a class action lawsuit brought by women full professors alleging long-standing gender-based pay discrimination at the historically women’s college.The proposed settlement, which must be approved by the court, will provide a $5 million settlement fund to compensate approximately 84 full professors for the alleged discrimination, and enhance transparency regarding decisions on pay, evaluation, and promotion over the next three years. In addition to the monetary fund, Vassar has agreed to several pay equity reforms in connection with the settlement, including:
- making transparent to full professors the methods and criteria Vassar uses to set compensation and to make promotion and performance evaluation decisions;
- commissioning annual pay equity audits of full professor compensation by an independent third-party consultant, sharing the model and results of that audit with Vassar’s Faculty Compensation Committee, and making pay adjustments based on the results, as needed; and
- reporting annually to ERA and Lieff Cabraser on its compliance with these commitments, including informing them of any revisions to relevant policies and providing summaries of the pay equity audit results.
The parties reached this settlement after years of both pre-litigation meetings and court filings during litigation, including Vassar’s unsuccessful attempts to dismiss the claims.“This step reflects years of efforts by women faculty members at Vassar, first privately and then in court, to get Vassar to eliminate a gender-based pay gap of which the college has long been aware,” said Catherine Bendor, Director of Litigation at Equal Rights Advocates and co-counsel for the plaintiffs. “Our clients worked hard to achieve justice not only for themselves and their colleagues, but for all future women professors. We hope the terms of the proposed settlement, and the experience of this lawsuit, will result in Vassar appropriately recognizing the contributions of all of its women faculty.”
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