Gender Wage Gap in the University Sector: A Case Study of All Universities in Ontario, Canada

By analyzing salary data from the Ontario Sunshine List for the University Sector and combining it with productivity characteristics for research and teaching, we extend our understanding of the variables that contribute to the gender wage gap in Academia. Longitudinal analysis confirms that employees labelled as female are less represented in administration roles and full faculty positions. While the gender imbalance on the list is getting less extreme, with the proportion of women on the Sunshine List increasing from 11% in 1997 to about 40% nowadays, this increase in female representation is more likely to occur at incomes close to the access threshold of $100,000. While women do not achieve wage parity even when sorted by faculty position, within each academic rank the gender wage gap is smaller than the overall wage gap, which further confirms that, even in the ivory tower, men select into more lucrative positions than women. Controlling for productivity measures for research with h-index and for teaching with overall Rate My Professors (RMP) shows a modest effect of these productivity measures on wage formation and no effect on the wage gaps.