Here’s a recent article from Inside Higher Education about a new study examining the wage gap between female and male professors. The study itself sounds useful, but what interested me is all the dubious assumptions about the wage gap embedded in the article (and perhaps in the study itself).
Explaining the Gender Gap in PayWhy do female professors earn less than male professors? Some charge that gender bias is at play, while others insist that once factors such as experience are accounted for, the gaps aren’t consequential.
There may be truth to both views, according to research findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association by Paul D. Umbach, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Iowa.
An example of how the media misrepresents stories in order to seem “objective.” It’s not true that the study found “truth to both views.” The controversy is between those who say “human capital factors account for part of, but not the entire, pay gap” versus those who say “human capital factors account for all of the pay gap.” This study found that about two-thirds of the pay gap could be attributed to human capital factors, but almost a third could not be.
Far from finding “truth to both views,” as the article reported, this study supports the feminist view and refutes the “human capital accounts for everything” view. But saying that would have compromised the faux-objectivity news writers specialize in.
Umbach used a series of databases to calculate the gender gap in pay over all, and then to account for all kinds of factors other than gender bias that may contribute to the salary gap. In the end, he found that looking at those factors decreases the size of the gap, but that it remains meaningful.
Leaving all factors out, the mean salary for women in the professoriate was 21.8 percent less than that for men. Add all the possible explanations and their impact, and the gap shrinks to 6.8 percent.
Before anyone says “6.8%” isn’t much, imagine coming into work tomorrow and being told that they’ve decided to give you a 7% pay cut. And remember, that’s an average pay gap. But in practice, the pay gap tends to get larger over the course of a career (see the discussion of “cumulative causation” in this post); so what starts out as a small and relatively managable pay gap can grow very large by the end of a career.
For example, the mean differential favoring men was $12,649 in English literature, $24,845 in chemical engineering, and $23,294 in economics. But these comparisons included men and women at all stages in their careers … so the senior faculty members with higher salaries (and who are more likely to be men) tilt the sample significantly.
What’s not being counted here? Benefits. This arguably means that this study will underestimate any pay gap, because more seniority, and higher rank, is commonly linked with higher-value benefits.
So then Umbach ran a series of analyses designed to compensate for that and other factors. Years of seniority were factored in, as were books and articles written, career patents, whether the person was receiving outside support for research, professorial rank, and the general job market in the discipline (based on percentage of new Ph.D.’s who are employed), among other factors. When all of those factors were added, the gap still remained, at 6.8 percent.
There are not clear explanations for the gap, leaving open the possibility that bias is at play, Umbach said.
It’s true that bias is a possible explanation for part or all of the unexplained 6.8%. What bothers me is the implicit, unjustified assumption that the “explained” factors can’t themselves reflect bias. But if job discrimination against women exists in academia, is there any reason to assume that sexism has nothing at all to do with factors like who gets grants for outside support, and whose articles are published?
For instance, they list “rank” as one of the factors that explains pay. But if bias exists, one likely way for gender bias to be expressed is that men might be more easily promoted to full professor positions. By implicitly assuming that “rank” and other human capital factors are discrimination-free zones, this study’s design may overlook significant forms of gender bias.
Another example is the assumption that women get paid less because women spend less time working and accrue less experience. This is no doubt true, but causation also goes in the other direction: women work less because they get less reward for working. (This is called a “feedback effect.”) To some degree, then, women’s lesser experience is not only a cause but also a result of gender bias.
But he said that other parts of his study suggest that the bias may not be a simple preference for men, but may relate to biases based on disciplines and on how faculty members spend their time.
For instance, Umbach found that as the proportion of females in a discipline increases, the mean salaries drop … for men and women.
This is something feminists have long argued, and that many other studies support. Gender wage discrimination is not just (or even primarily) a matter of women being directly discriminated against, but instead a matter of work done primarily by women being undervalued. In this way, even men who work in underpaid female-dominated occupations could be said to be hurt by the gender wage gap.
Another factor that negatively correlates with salaries is the percentage of time spent teaching: The greater a discipline’s time spent on teaching, the lower its salaries … for men and women. The more outside research funding, the higher the salaries.
In one respect, Umbach said, those findings don’t suggest bias because male and female faculty members in the discipline are affected equally. But when these figures are coupled with other studies suggesting, for example, that female professors may spend more time on teaching, questions are raised about underlying bias.
“We know that women tend to be employed in disciplines with a lot of other women, in disciplines without as much funded research, in disciplines with more time teaching,” he said. “Is the reward structure more male? Are we creating structures that reward men?”
I’d say that worries about “structures that reward men” are legitmate, but have to be extended beyond what this article discusses. One major reason for women’s on average lower wages is that women who are mothers tend to spend less time in the workforce (both in terms of years in the workforce, and in terms of how many hours worked per year) while they take care of their children. As I wrote in an earlier post, many feminists believe that in a non-sexist society, fathers and mothers would share equally in childcare – or at least, that fathers would take on a larger degree of childcare than they do now. Therefore, any “parenting wage penalty” in a nonsexist society would be split more evenly among men and women. The fact that women are virtually the only ones hit by the parenting wage penalty doesn’t prove that sexism no longer exists; on the contrary, it shows that sexism still matters, and has a big negative impact on women’s wages. (It also has a negative impact on men’s contact with their families.)
But to take it a step further, arguably that there’s a “parenting wage penalty” at all is a sign of sexism. Why isn’t the workplace designed to accommodate parenthood? The American job market was designed for men – in particular, it was developed in a society in which workers were had a wife at home to take care of the kids. Society has changed, but our jobs haven’t, and that works to the disadvantage of all working mothers (and to mothers who would like to work, but can’t find a job that will give them the flexibility they need to combine work and motherhood). Isn’t it sexist to expect mothers to fit into a work system that was designed for a Father Knows Best family?
(This post has been cross-posted at Creative Destruction. If you have trouble posting comments here, try the cross-posted version.)
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For instance, they list “rank” as one of the factors that explains pay. But if bias exists, one likely way for gender bias to be expressed is that men might be more easily promoted to full professor positions.
And here you have a persistent problem in several fields. It’s not just full professor, but making it from assistant to associate. Browse the Chronicle of Higher Education, PS: Political Science and Politics, or any other disciplinary publication in traditionally male dominated fields. Women get PhDs, women get tenure track jobs, and then don’t get tenure.
And then someone says “because they don’t want tenure!
And then steam comes out of my ears.
For instance, Umbach found that as the proportion of females in a discipline increases, the mean salaries drop … for men and women.
…
In this way, even men who work in underpaid female-dominated occupations could be said to be hurt by the gender wage gap.
Great. As a public interest attorney, I thought my one-half government lawyer and one-fourth (if that) private lawyer salary was due to the fact that my clients have no money. Now it looks like I might be a victim of discrimination against women as well.
That cruise to Europe may be even further off than I thought.
By implicitly assuming that “rank” and other human capital factors are discrimination-free zones, this study’s design may overlook significant forms of gender bias.
I don’t think that assumption is a necessary part of the study – the goal of such studies is (or should be) to find out where and how gender discrimination occurs, not just to verify its existence. If you assume “rank” is an independent variable, and you still find gender bias, you know that there’s work to do beyond just reexamining the tenure process; that’s a useful finding.
The study’s authors may have made that assumption (I haven’t yet read the report, just skimmed the tables at the back looking for my discipline) but if they’ve done a decent job of publishing their data we should be able to ignore that and argue fruitfully amongst ourselves :)
as someone who works as a news writer, i am pretty bloody tired of being told “what news writers specialize in” because something is reported that doesn’t jibe with the particular worldview of the reader. even if the news writer in this case misinterpreted the facts of the story, that doesn’t make your shot at *all* news writers legitimate. i don’t think you like news writers telling you what bloggers are all about, or what their habits are, especially when it’s disparaging. as both a news writer and a blogger, i can tell you that 99% of the time one side is wrong about the intentions / motivations / capabilities of the other. tangential to your post, but i still felt the need to point it out.
What I took from Amp’s post was just how bankrupt this type of econometrics is. Firstly, there’s no way you can partition a pay gap into x% justified and y% discrimination, given the feedback loops that exist between pay and prospects. Secondly, the big unanswered issue is which pay gaps are morally justifiable. I think we’d all agree that if Jill spent 40 hours stacking shelves and James worked for 60 hours at the same rate then a pay gap would be justified. But beyond that I doubt there’d be any agreement, and without that I don’t feel these sort of studies are much use.
Society has changed, but our jobs haven’t, and that works to the disadvantage of all working mothers (and to mothers who would like to work, but can’t find a job that will give them the flexibility they need to combine work and motherhood). Isn’t it sexist to expect mothers to fit into a work system that was designed for a Father Knows Best family?
I feel kind of dumb not being able to answer this myself, but is there a way to accomodate for somebody having children? Even if both parents play an equal role in taking care of the child, wouldn’t that still effect the number of hours the parent will be able to work? How else can the system be done?
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One major criteria which you don’t take into account, Amp, is that if an academic is denied tenure at one institution, the “career response” for lack of a better term is to transfer to another institution. Women are more likely to be or feel tied to one location, particularly if they have children in school, and therefore less likely to be able to chase tenure where-ever it leads. We have a societial “story” which says that men are expected to relocate their families for a job, but women are not expected/not encouraged to do the same. And few places have enough universities to support transferring to an institution without moving ones family. I don’t have links to articles right now, but can get those in the next day or two if needed.
It’s not just a parenting wage penalty. It’s a caring-for-aged-parents penalty, or caring-for-grandchildren-in-the-absence-of-affordable daycare penalty. Everyone, regardless of sex or reproduction or marital status, deserves a fair payment for work and no penalty for human involvement. Of course, it’s much cheaper to demand that women look after the old, the young, and the sick and pay for it out of their own pockets.
Are any? Since most companies have instituted a “rational” system for determining job requirements and skill sets, for hiring, promoting, and figuring appropriate pay levels, is there any pay gap which doesn’t suggest undue bias?
Most attempts at comparing wages would not compare 40 hour weeks with 60 hour weeks. Although, in your example, the employer is getting quite the deal if James is earning the same rate, and not getting paid at time-and-a-half overtime for that extra 20 hours per week.
There are subtle gender-bias effects, too. A paper due for publication in May (” Profiles of Academic Activities and Careers: Does Gender Matter? An Analysis Based on French Life Scientist CVs” by Sabatier, M.; Carrere, M.; Mangematin, V., in The Journal of Technology Transfer) points out that in order to achieve the same level of promotion as men, women generally have to be members of more societies and professional organisations and take an active role in more events than men do, to demonstrate “competence”.
There is another paper from around January this year which I am trying to find again, which demonstrated that there is a gender-bias in peer-review as well; a paper submitted to peer reviewers with the author’s name stripped off was almost always rated as better and more competent than the same paper submitted to similar reviewers with a female author’s name attached (we’re talking almost 90% of the time, here). This will slow down the publication schedule of a female academic, as she is faced with a choice between multiple revisions to satisfy reviewers, or publishing in a less prestigious journal. And publications have a BIG effect on academic salary, as we all know too well.
But it takes some looking to see how those effects feed in….
I had actually assumed that academic papers were routinely sent to reviewers with the names stripped off. They are not really? Not having blind review is a horrible policy for many reasons, of which potential sexism is just one (very good) reason. Many academic specialties are small worlds – the peer reviewers are likely to know the authors of some of the papers they are reviewing. Also, an academic star’s paper is likely to get a better review just because of the name. Both of these factors would contribute to reinforcing the status quo academic hierarchies, which pulls past sexism and racism into the present.
Whether or not a paper is sent to reviewer’s with the authors’ names attached or stripped off seems to depend on the journal, actually; I have seen some journals do blind reviewing, but others seem to supply both names and contact details. It’s completely inconsistent, but my own experience is that having the names attached is more common.
I agree, blind review would be much better for any variety of reasons. I’ve also seen papers get trashed on the basis of old and bitter rivalries rather than on the basis of the work itself, and yes, some papers get passed with barely any review at all because of the name attached. It’s stupid, and you’ve put your finger on it.
Excellent post. Upsetting as always, but a thoughtful analysis.
The greater a discipline’s time spent on teaching, the lower its salaries … for men and women.
Even aside from feminism, this bothers me immensely (it’s certainly a factor in hiring as well–one beloved visiting professor who was an excellent teacher didn’t even make the interview cut for tenure-track at my undergraduate college largely because his research wasn’t flashy enough–yet he strongly influenced many students in a very positive way). Isn’t a large part of the purpose of universities to train the next generation? Teaching is good and valuable and not inferior to research.
Surely even the antifeminists could agree that rewarding good teachers as well as researchers is a good policy.
Teaching is good and valuable and not inferior to research.
Teaching is fun, generally speaking, and the skills and talents it requires are more commonly available in the talent pool than the skills and talents required by serious research. Research is not fun, generally speaking, and requires a rarer group of talents.
Markets work.
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