Gender Gap in Pay Widens Over Time

The salary gap between men and women emerges immediately after college and continues to widen throughout their careers, says a report released in late April by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.

The report, based on new research, says that women now make up the majority of college students. And women’s GPA’s are on average higher than men’s across all majors, including those in mathematics and the sciences. But women’s salaries still lag behind men’s, the report says, despite the significant gains women have made in higher education over the last three decades.

One year after graduation, women earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn, the report says. Ten years after graduation, the disparity is even greater, with women earning 69 percent of what men earn. But women are also more likely than men to complete some form of graduate education within the first 10 years out of college.

The research also shows that women who attended highly selective colleges earn less than men from either highly or moderately selective colleges, and about the same as men from minimally selective colleges.

The report suggests that some of the inequities originate with the choice of college major. Female students tend to be concentrated in majors associated with lower-paying fields, such as education, health, and psychology, while men tend to dominate the higher-paying fields of engineering, mathematics, and physical sciences. But wage gaps occur even within majors that attract similar numbers of men and women. Within the mixed-gender major of biological sciences, for example, women earn only 75 percent as much as men do.

http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 53, Issue 35, Page A21