Female Life Sciences Faculty More Productive than Male Colleagues, Paid Less

Inside Higher Ed reports on a paper published in the journal Academic Medicine this week, which presents evidence that female life sciences faculty members work a greater number of hours and undertake more administrative and professional tasks than their male colleagues. In 2007, Catherine DesRoches at Harvard Medical School and her colleagues conducted a survey of more than 3,000 faculty members at 50 universities whose medical schools received the greatest amount of funding from the National Institutes of Health in fiscal year 2004. Their questionnaires interrogated the survey participants' total number of publications, papers published in the three years prior to the survey, work hours per week, professional activities, and annual income, among other things. When adjusted, the authors found that women worked a greater number of hours per week, performed a greater number of administrative and professional activities, and earned, on average, $13,226 less annually than men. The authors conclude that a "substantial salary gap still exists between men and women that cannot be explained by productivity or other professional factors," and suggest that professional "compensation and advancement policies should recognize the full scope of the roles that female researchers play."