COMPARABLE WORTH IN ACADEMIA - THE EFFECTS ON FACULTY SALARIES OF THESEX COMPOSITION AND LABOR-MARKET CONDITIONS OF ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

Scholars of comparable worth have identified a negative bias against w ork typically performed by women, suggesting that the cultural devalua tion of women leads to the devaluation of the work women do. Previous studies have demonstrated that both male and female incumbents of jobs employing high proportions of female workers suffer a wage penalty, e arning less than those in comparable jobs with high proportions of mal e workers. I examine whether similar mechanisms operate in academia, a sking whether higher proportions of women in academic disciplines depr ess faculty salaries in those disciplines, independent of the effects of labor-market conditions and conventional salary predictors. Finding s from a contextual model show that faculty in disciplines employing h igher proportions of women suffer a wage penalty unexplained by differ ences in a number of disciplinary labor-market conditions or by variat ions in individual qualifications or job characteristics.