The University of California, Davis, faculty has voted to suspend a review of salary equity among male and female professors. In a mail ballot counted today, members of the Academic Senate voted 527 to 503 to stop a review of personnel files intended to determine if individual faculty members merit a raise in pay or a promotion. (Eighteen invalid ballots and four abstentions also were received.) The review by the senate's Committee on Academic Personnel was to be the second phase in a two-part study authorized by the UC Davis administration last spring. The first phase -- a statistical study of men's and women's salaries taking length of career into account -- showed women faculty were paid less in 44 of 48 salary groups and generally were hired at a lower rank and salary. A group of 62 professors sought to block the personnel file review through a mail ballot, calling the initial study flawed and the review an intrusion into traditional personnel practices. The approved ballot calls for a new statistical study by a new faculty committee -- the Committee on Faculty Welfare -- though it's unclear whether it can be implemented, says the chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate. Bylaws governing the two faculty committees would have to be amended and questions about access to personnel files clarified before the ballot mandates could be enforced, said Academic Senate Chair Karl Romstad. Nonetheless, the faculty opinion expressed through the ballot "must be taken very seriously by the committees and officers of the Academic Senate and the members of the administration," Romstad said. Harvey Himelfarb, acting vice provost for faculty relations, expressed disappointment at the vote's outcome. "No argument about statistical methodology is likely to contribute to uncovering either fairness or unfairness in our system; only a careful review of the total career and cumulative contributions of each faculty member, reviewed one by one, is likely to do that. I am sorry that a majority of those faculty who voted seem to think that an additional statistical study is the next appropriate step." Ballot co-sponsor Kevin Hoover, associate professor of economics, said any roadblocks to implementing the ballot measure would be appealed "through every possible channel." A special meeting of the Academic Senate to discuss the gender equity study has been called for Thursday, Jan. 19, at 4:10 p.m. in MU II of the Memorial Union. Women constitute 20.4 percent (or 235) of 1,151 ladder-rank faculty at UC Davis. In 1993-94, women on average were paid $7,800 less as full professors, $3,100 less as associate professors and $1,800 less as assistant professors.