The association of gender with academic accountant salaries

Abstract

Abstract This study investigates whether observed salary differences of accounting academics persist after controlling for personal differences in education, past academic employment, and professional achievement. We model salary as a function of gender, years worked, achieved rank, quality of both the individual's doctoral granting and current institutions, and individual productivity, as measured by both the quantity and quality of journal articles published. We calculate the unique explanatory effect and the indirect effect of gender in the salary model, arguing that if gender displays significant explanatory power, discrimination in hiring practices and/or in the subsequent allocation of rewards may exist. Our study contributes to the research on compensation and salary inequities in that we utilize publicly available data collected from the budgets of a large sample of public institutions as our measure of salary, thus enhancing the objectivity of the dependent variable. Also, the determinants of salary (specifically, research publication quality) are captured in a more accurate and comprehensive fashion than in previous studies. In contrast to previous research findings, our results suggest that gender is not associated with systematic differences in the salary of accounting faculty. Both research productivity and work experience vary across gender. Therefore, since males, on average, had a greater number of publications and more seniority, their salaries were higher than those of female faculty members. The results suggest that discrimination against either gender is not pervasive in the salary structure of the accounting academic comunity.