Survey Shows Salary Gap Between Men and Women in the Life Sciences

Male life scientists earn almost a third more than their female counterparts, according to a new survey by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A report on the survey doesn’t attribute the lower pay for women to discrimination, pointing out that men are often further along in their careers and that more men are in the high-paying field of medicine. The median salary for male life scientists is $94,000, compared with $72,000 for women.

The survey mirrors the discrepancies reported in other studies of science and engineering salaries, though the life sciences attract more women than do physics and chemistry.

Despite the salary gap, the survey found that all life scientists -- men and women -- are pleased with their careers.

The survey, based on the responses of about 8,700 life scientists, also showed that:

• Median salaries for the life scientists in industry are usually higher than for those in academe. In some fields, the gap is small. But in biotechnology, the survey found that those in academe are earning $63,000, compared with $100,000 in nonacademic settings.
• Two-thirds of the married or previously married female life scientists reported that their spouse’s career had limited their career “at least a little,” and one-fourth said their careers had been affected “a lot.” In contrast, less than one-third of the male scientists said their spouse’s career had limited their own.
• The academic gender gap is most pronounced at the full-professor and administrator levels. Men who are full professors, for instance, earn 14 percent more than women of the same rank. At the assistant-professor level, the gap is 9 percent.

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