Gender gap in returns to publications

Abstract

Abstract Gender equity in science depends not only on who participates in research, but also on how their work is rewarded. We examine gender gaps in monetary returns to research productivity, pay, and credit attribution using a novel dataset linking salary and publication records for professors at U.S. public universities. While our main contribution shows that there is no robust evidence of a significant gender gap in monetary returns to publications, we uncover substantial heterogeneity across disciplines and authorship structures. Women in medical and health sciences experience a negative gap in returns of 10.7% relative to men for equivalent research output. The unconditional gender pay gap averages 15.4%, with variation across disciplines, ranging from 5.5% in agricultural sciences to 20.9% in social sciences. It declines to 4.9% after controls. Finally, women earn higher returns to solo-authored work but lower returns to larger co-author networks than men.