School of Earth and Environment, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Te Pūnaha Matatini Centre of Research Excellence, Auckland, New Zealand.
PLoS One. 2020 Jan 22;15(1):e0226392. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226392. eCollection 2020.
We use a globally unique dataset that scores every individual academic's holistic research performance in New Zealand to test several common explanations for the gender pay gap in universities. We find a man's odds of being ranked professor or associate professor are more than double a woman's with similar recent research score, age, field, and university. We observe a lifetime gender pay gap of ~NZ$400,000, of which research score and age explain less than half. Our ability to examine the full spectrum of research performance allows us to reject the 'male variability hypothesis' theory that the preponderance of men amongst the 'superstars' explains the lifetime performance pay gap observed. Indeed women whose research career trajectories resemble men's still get paid less than men. From 2003-12, women at many ranks improved their research scores by more than men, but moved up the academic ranks more slowly. We offer some possible explanations for our findings, and show that the gender gap in universities will never disappear in most academic fields if current hiring practices persist.
我们使用了一个全球独一无二的数据集，该数据集对新西兰每位学术人员的整体研究绩效进行评分，以此来检验大学中性别薪酬差距的几个常见解释。我们发现，在研究成绩、年龄、领域和大学相似的情况下，男性成为教授或副教授的几率是女性的两倍多。我们观察到终身性别薪酬差距约为 40 万新西兰元，其中研究成绩和年龄解释不到一半。我们能够全面考察研究绩效的能力使我们能够拒绝“男性可变性假说”理论，即“超级明星”中男性居多解释了观察到的终身绩效薪酬差距。事实上，那些研究职业轨迹与男性相似的女性的薪酬仍然低于男性。从 2003 年到 2012 年，许多职级的女性提高了她们的研究成绩，比男性提高得更多，但在学术职级上的晋升速度却更慢。我们为我们的发现提供了一些可能的解释，并表明如果当前的招聘实践持续下去，在大多数学术领域，大学中的性别差距永远不会消失。
