Dive Brief:
- McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, will add an extra $3,515 to the salaries of female faculty in an attempt to close the gender pay gap it found via an internal study.
- The salary bump amounts to $2,900 U.S. and will cost the university about $1 million per year to pay out, Inside Higher Ed reports.
- The University of California at Berkeley recently found a 1.8% gender gap in salaries when controlling for rank and has committed to considering ways of closing it, though it has yet to make any payouts, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
Census data from 2013, the latest year available, show post-secondary female teachers making 85% of what their male counterparts make. Some of that inequity can be explained by aging male faculty who came up when women were not welcomed into the elite professor ranks. Their longevity skews the distribution. The McMaster study and UC-Berkeley’s control for rank still find gaps, however. While money considerations may prevent many universities from considering across-the-board fixes, the solution is not entirely unrealistic. According to Inside Higher Ed, McMaster is allocating just 1% of its base budget to fund its pay increases.