Female researchers paid 14 per cent less than men, says study

BERLIN: Females only represent 4.2 per cent of all inventors in industrial research, and earn about 14 per cent less than their male peers, even after taking into account possible differences in jobs, potential parenthood, and other characteristics, a new study has found.

The difference in earnings persists in spite of the fact that the quality of research of females does not differ from that of males, the study found.

Researchers from Bocconi University in Italy and Mannheim University in Germany studied a sample of 9,692 inventors from 23 countries.

They found that the relationship between having children and income is negative but was not statistically different for males and females. Still, females earned 14 per cent less than males.

Furthermore, they matched females with males that had similar characteristics, and investigated whether within this group of similar males and females there is any difference in wage. Even then, females earned a statistically significantly lower income.

Part of the wage gap between male and female inventors remained even after accounting for a large amount of personal characteristics that might differ on average between male and female inventors, researchers said.

The findings were published in the journal Management Science.