Study: Wage differences between male and female university professors

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More women are teaching full-time in Canadian universities, and although they still earn less on average than their male counterparts, the difference in salaries has narrowed, according to a new study.

Among full-time professors who began their jobs in the 1960s, men earned approximately $10,000 to $15,000 more per year than women depending on their age. Among more recent cohorts starting work since the mid-1980s, men were earning approximately $5,000 more than women.

The difference in salaries narrowed because successive cohorts of male faculty earned less throughout their career than their predecessors did.

In other words, female professors gained ground relative to male professors because new male faculty members were earning less. The earnings profiles of men for each birth cohort studied were lower because entry salaries, adjusted for inflation, were falling.

In contrast, the earnings profile of female academics born between 1930 and 1934 did not differ greatly from that of women born between 1965 and 1969.

The study also found that the male-female differences were smaller in schools with seniority-based pay systems than in those with merit-based pay systems. Salary differences between men and women were larger for faculty up to 50 years of age in schools with a merit-based pay system.

Differences between men and women in areas such as rank, country in which their degrees were obtained, and the fields in which they teach, accounted for most of the difference in average salaries. But not all of it.

These differences accounted for less of the salary difference for more recent birth cohorts, although the earnings gaps among these cohorts were smaller.

The study also noted that the number of women teaching full-time in Canadian universities has increased. Between 1970 and 2001, the percentage of women teaching full-time at Canadian universities more than doubled from 13% to 29%.

The study "The evolution of male-female wage differentials in Canadian universities: 1970 to 2001" was prepared by Casey Warman (Queen's University and Statistics Canada) and Frances Woolley and Chris Worswick (Carleton University). The study is part of the NewRealitiesof Gender in Canadian Society project, organized by the Family and Labour Studies Division, and featuring work conducted in Statistics Canada's Research Data Centres and is available for free online (http://www.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1099.pdf).

For more information about this study, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Gustave Goldmann (613-951-1472), Research Data Centres program.