$400,000 the cost of being a brainy woman
Some of the country’s smartest women are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars less than their male counterparts for doing the same work, an unprecedented study has found.
Published today in international journal Plos One, the study examined 6000 academic staff at every New Zealand university, revealing a financial chasm between men and women at the top of their fields.
It found that over the course of their career, the average female academic was paid $400,000 less than her male colleagues. About half this gap could be explained by differences in academic research prowess, age, and area of expertise. But this still left women $200,000 worse off than a man with the same level of expertise and experience.
Canterbury University associate professor Ann Brower, who co-authored the study, said it was well known that women faced barriers to matching men’s research output but the study found even women who achieved this were paid less. ‘‘It means that if I produce at the same level throughout my career as the guy down the hall, I can expect to get paid $200,000 less.’’
Brower said one possible explanation for the gap was the ‘‘double whammy effect’’, where women faced a greater expectation to administer and teach rather than research, while simultaneously being rewarded less for the research they did. ‘‘There is a lot of evidence that employers expect more from women, they expect them to serve on more committees and offer more pastoral care for students. There is also evidence that students evaluate women more harshly.’’
The research also found men were more than twice as likely to be promoted to professor than women. Even when women improved their academic performance faster than men, there remained less chance they would be promoted.
The study was only possible because of New Zealand’s performance-based research fund. In theory, the funding is awarded based on the research performance of every publishing academic in the country, giving them a score out of 700. The study examined the shift in these scores between 2003 and 2012.
Dr Isabelle Sin, a senior fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, said there was also some evidence that the scoring system, which typically gave women a lower score than men, may itself be biased against women. That would mean the gender pay gap could be even wider than the study suggested, she said.
Natalie Plank crammed time to speak to Stuff between student meetings and taking her two children for vaccinations. For the senior physics lecturer at Victoria University, the day is emblematic of what slows down many women’s academic career.
‘‘It is lots of compounding extra commitments that add up to slow you down.’’ According to the research published today, Plank is in one trickiest stages of her career as an academic. Senior female lecturers are more likely to be overlooked for promotion than their male peers despite making, on average, greater academic strides. Plank has had two children in the past five years and, as well as the time off and ongoing childcare commitments, she said the children directly affected her ability to research.
Advancement to an associate professor depended heavily on boosting one’s international profile, including attending international conferences and networking. ‘‘It is quite hard to build international peer esteem when you have to turn down conference invitations.’’