Available Studies
- Principal’s Salary Review Panel. Report of the Principal's Panel to Review Faculty Women's Salaries. Queen’s University. 1991.
The Queen's University's report from 1991 provides a detailed overview of the history of pay equity studies undertaken by the school. To our knowledge, since the 1970s, the University has undertaken four analyses.
The university undertook two regression analyses using 1972-73 and 1974-1975 data, and both studies found evidence of pay inequity. In 1978, the university undertook a study using data from 1976-77 using a match-pair approach and found no "demonstrable salary difference" in the pay of male and female faculty.
In 1991, Queen's University released a pay equity report based on regression analysis using data from 1989-90.3 The study excluded clinical staff in medicine. The natural log of a market-adjusted measure of salary was regressed onto several variables, including sex, a seven-year merit score average, department/faculty, and years of experience. The study used market-adjusted salaries, which accounted for the higher salaries paid in some departments. The market adjustment factor was based on Statistics Canada data on salaries earned by Canadian male academics and accounted for both the discipline and age of the faculty member. The study did not include rank in the regression.
Accounting for these factors, the study found that there was a 3.5% salary discrepancy between the sexes. When merit measures were excluded from the regression, the gender pay difference was 5.2%. The findings indicate the gap is due to pay inequities because additional regression results found that gender was a significant determinant of merit scores. Specifically, the study also undertook regressions of average merit scores against years of experience, sex, department, and gender, and found that gender was a significant covariate.
Based on the findings of the 1991 study, the "Principal's Panel to Review Faculty Women's Salaries" (the Panel) recommended a group-based salary adjustment based on the findings. It suggested an increase in women's salaries of 4.35% (the average of 3.5% and 5.2%). The Panel also put forward six additional recommendations related to administration, salary monitoring, and promotion/hiring policies. In response to these recommendations, the university offered a salary adjustment of 2.2%, based on the 3.5% pay inequity figure estimated in one of the two final, key regressions (administration argued that anomaly adjustments made in 1990 corrected for 1.3 percentage points in the 3.5% gap, leaving 2.2% to be corrected). The group remedy was made available to faculty who received at least 70% of the average merit award over the last 5 years.
Since the 1991 report, the university has undertaken annual pay equity reviews using regression analysis and have corrected for pay anomalies with respect to gender, as well as starting salaries for both genders. Remedies are established using a below-the-line process. To date, salaries from 2010-2011 have been reviewed and there is no evidence of pay inequity using this methodology. However, "market disciplines", Applied Science, Computing Science, Medicine, Business, Economics, and Law are not included in the anomalies process. Furthermore, an unresolved issue with respect to gender equity is the allocation of merit across the sexes, which has implications on pay and the determination of individual pay inequities using the below-the-line method.
3 Dean, James M. and Clifton, Rodney A.. An Evaluation of Pay Equity Reports at Five Canadian Universities. Canadian Journal of Higher Education (24:3). December 1, 1994: An Evaluation of Pay Equity Reports at Five Canadian Universities | Canadian Journal of Higher Education (sfu.ca).