A Significant Gender Pay Gap For Students With New Ph.D.s in STEM Fields

A new study by researchers at Ohio State University, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the American Institutes for Research finds that for students who earn a Ph.D. in a STEM field, one year after earning their degrees women earn 31 percent less than men who earned a Ph.D. in a STEM field that same year. If the figures are adjusted to account for the fact that women tend to concentrate in STEM fields where pay is the lowest, the gender pay gap shrinks to 11 percent.

The gender pay for Ph.D. graduates in STEM fields totally disappears if the figures are adjusted again to account for women who were married and had children.

Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics at Ohio State University and a co-author of the study, stated that “there’s a dramatic difference in how much early career men and women in the sciences are paid. We can get a sense of the reasons behind the pay gap, but our study can’t speak to whether any of the gap is due to discrimination. Our results do suggest some lack of family friendliness for women in these careers.”

Professor Weinberg added that “some women may consciously choose to be primary caregivers and pull back from work. But there may also be some employers putting women on a ‘Mommy Track’ where they get paid less.”

The study will be published in the May issue of the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings.