Pay gap outrageous
As a woman working at a New Zealand university, I’m likely to earn $400,000 less than my male colleagues over my lifetime. That’s according to a new study by University of Canterbury associate professors Ann Brower and Alex James.
The evidence that science and academia are sexist is overwhelming – so much so that five years ago associate professor Nicola Gaston wrote a book about it. But in a world-first, Brower and James looked at research quality in relation to salary. Their study was possible because in Aotearoa every research-active academic has the quality of their research assessed every six years.
This exercise is called the Performance Based Research Fund. In fairness, it should probably be called the Pa¯ keha¯ Based Research Fund, as it’s long been argued that it’s not able to judge the quality of Ma¯ ori research.
That argument aside, Brower and James took the PBRF scores of about 6000 academics together with their academic rank. They then asked the simple question: were high-scoring women as likely to be a professor or associate professor as high-scoring men?
Guess what? Despite having identical scores, women were more likely to be working at a lower rank and so earning less money. Hence the shortfall. I think these figures are probably an underestimate. They don’t take in to account that many academics aren’t paid the base salary and because of yearly salary review processes are not transparent.
The study got me reflecting on the barriers I’ve faced throughout my career, and how they have probably impacted on my salary. They’ve included direct sexism – like being treated differently for being a woman and mother – and being given bad advice from men in positions of power.
And they’ve included structural sexism, like being appointed at a lower position and salary than my experience deserved.
Behind all these barriers is one universal truth: we all under-value and under-appreciate women. And we under-value and under-appreciate those of different ethnicities even more.
I’m looking forward to hearing how our universities propose to remedy this inequity. A good start would be for each one to do a thorough salary review. So far, their silence on the issue has been deafening.