Addressing the Gender Pay Gap: The Influence of Female and Male Dominant Disciplines on Gender Pay Equity

This study used Kanter’s (1997) Tokenism theory to analyze the relationship between gender and faculty salaries in Georgia higher education institutions to determine whether pay inequity existed between male and female professors in 2018. Two separate mixed-effect regression models were estimated on a 2018 cross-sectional survey dataset of Georgia higher education faculty members where faculty demographic characteristics (i.e., gender and academic discipline) were regressed on their annual base salaries. When controlling for demographics and occupational characteristics, female faculty received significantly lower salaries than their male counterparts. In addition, when controlling for academic discipline and grouping those disciplines vis-a-vis male dominant and female dominant, males in female-dominant disciplines earned significantly more money than females, and females in male-dominant disciplines earned more money than males. Additional findings support negotiable salaries as a significant contributor to higher pay.