Equal opportunity has still not arrived at Penn State.

Last month, a University Faculty Senate committee released a study revealing that male faculty members make almost twice as much as their female counterparts. Almost 98 percent of that difference is explicable, the compilers of the study said, while the other 2 percent is not.

Committee members said the main reason for the difference in salaries is that women generally hold lower positions and work in less lucrative fields of study.

Clearly the unexplained 2 percent difference in salaries should be investigated, but the explained difference creates enough problems of its own.

The reasons given by the University for the salary discrepancies are not justifiable. That men make 48 percent more than women indicates the University has been remiss in recruiting, hiring and promoting women for its faculty.

The most profound reason for this is that female faculty do not receive tenure at the same rate as male faculty and more women than men instructors are hired for positions that do not receive tenure, according to the 1987 Strategic Study for the Status of Women at Penn State.

Women also receive less pay than men because they tend to work in lower paying fields, like the arts and humanities, while the faculty in higher paying fields like engineering and science are predominantly male.

Active recruitment of women faculty in male dominated fields must be pursued, and the atmosphere for women studying in male dominated majors must be improved.

Only 10 percent of women in academia are full professors and about half of the women in the academic world are ranked assistant or lower, though more women than ever before are earning doctorate degrees. In 1986-87, 64 percent of the female faculty at University Park were not in tenure-track positions compared to 31 percent of the male faculty.

The fact that only a few women have earned tenure at the University indicates that there is a problem within the tenure process -- a problem of sexism. The University is not committed to hiring women faculty members, and the women faculty members it hires rarely gain promotion.