Exploring the Antecedents of the Gender Pay Gap in U.S. Higher Education

• Date: 01 May 2018
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12827
• Author: Thomas Rabovsky,Hongseok Lee

Exploring the Antecedents of the Gender Pay Gap in U.S. Higher Education 375

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 3, pp. 375–385. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12827.

Exploring the Antecedents of the

Gender Pay Gap in U.S. Higher Education

Hongseok Lee is a PhD candidate in the

School of Public and Environmental Affairs

at Indiana University. His research interests

include public management, representative

bureaucracy, and workplace inclusion.

E-mail: lee675@umail.iu.edu

Thomas Rabovsky is assistant

professor in the School of Public and

Environmental Affairs at Indiana University

Bloomington. He earned his doctorate

in political science at the University

of Oklahoma. His research focuses on

accountability, performance management,

managerial values and decision making,

and higher education policy. His work

has been published in the

Public

Administration Review, Journal of Public

Administration Research and Theory, Public

Administration, Policy Studies Journal,

and

Social Science Quarterly.

E-mail: rabovsky@indiana.edu

Abstract: Organizational behaviorists have long argued that inequity in worker compensation is problematic. The

authors use data on 254 public and private nonprofit research universities to evaluate the antecedents of salary

differences between male and female full-time assistant professors. Drawing on representative bureaucracy theory, they

hypothesize that female representation among the associate and full professor ranks, as well as in executive management

positions (including the university president), will be negatively associated with gender pay gap differences. Findings

support the hypotheses, although the impacts for many of the variables differ between public and private institutions.

Important effects are also found related to a variety of institutional characteristics, including funding from state

appropriations.

Evidence for Practice

• Despite recent efforts to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, gender-based inequity, including unequal

salaries and pay, persists in both public and private nonprofit research universities.

• Representation of women in positions of seniority and power is an important mechanism for reducing

disparities between men and women in academia. The effects of representation, however, are more

pronounced in private nonprofit research universities, where women make up a majority of managerial staff

and senior faculty.

• Greater reliance on public sources of revenue (such as state appropriations) is associated with lower pay gaps

between men and women, while reliance on funding tied to competitive research funding is associated with

larger pay gaps.

Thomas Rabovsky

Hongseok Lee

Indiana University

T he gender pay gap has been much discussed

in both public and private organizations

(Alkadry and Tower 2006 , 2011 ; Ng et al.

2005 ; Riccucci 2009 ; Sneed 2007 ; Stivers 2002 ).

Dating back to Adams ’ s ( 1963 ) seminal work

on motivation, organizational behaviorists have

consistently found that inequity in wages and

compensation among employees has harmful effects

for morale and results in a variety of problems related

to job satisfaction, turnover, and overall performance

(Cho and Sai 2013 ; Choi 2011 ; Hassan 2013 ).

Despite the enactment of legislation such as the Equal

Pay Act of 1963 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

of 2009, female workers in many fields continue to

face hurdles in securing equal pay in the workplace

(Gooden 2015 ; Guy and Fenley 2014 ; Riccucci

2009 ). The 2014 median annual income of full-time

working women was only 79 percent that of full-

time working men (AAUW 2016 ). Moreover, several

studies have found that women are often paid less

than their male counterparts for doing similar work,

even after accounting for other factors such as age,

education, and experience (Alkadry and Tower 2006 ;

Blau and Kahn 2007 ; Choi 2015 ; Guy and Fenley

2014 ; Stivers 2002 ).

Given the significance of the topic, there is a

critical need for more research that investigates the

antecedents of the gender pay gap in organizations.

Most public administration literature on the

antecedents of the gender pay gap has focused

on sociodemographic and human capital factors

(Alkadry and Tower 2006 ; Lewis and Oh 2009 ;

Naff 1994 ). When it comes to organizational

factors, many empirical studies have been limited

in their examination of organizational factors,

including agency type and sector (Choi 2015 ; Guy

and Newman 2004 ; Kerr, Miller, and Reid 2002 ;

Sneed 2007 ). This article attempts to fill this gap

by examining the gender pay gap among full-time

assistant professors in U.S. public and private

nonprofit research institutions, where these disparities

have been salient for several years (Bellas 1993 ; Curtis

2010 ; Umbach 2006 ). More specifically, this study

explores the role of organizational factors, including

representation of women in upper-level management

Research Article