Gender pay gaps across academic disciplines and the returns to publishing in journals.
Coauthors: Karim Chalak, John Gathergood
The gender pay gap amongst research active academics remains high. Females are less present in higher paid disciplines and in senior positions, and women who make it into higher positions receive lower pay. Women also publish fewer academic papers. These two facts are well documented. What is less well understood is how important differences in publication are in explaining differences in pay between men and women working in the same discipline, and variation in the gender pay gap across disciplines. We construct new data on salaries and publication histories on the universe of research academics in the UK across all disciplines. We estimate the elasticity of salary with respect to publishing at the mean and at higher quantile. We can explain a substantial part of the gender pay gap with observable characteristics. Publishing histories are important for pay, more so in some disciplines than others. Publishing in prestige journals is particular important in economics, where the elasticity is high and the gender publication gap is large. We discuss the potential drivers of these differences across disciplines, and their implications for policy reforms
