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University of Regina

Available Studies

  • Compensation Equity Based on Gender Among Academic Staff of the University of Regina. 1987. 
  • University of Regina, Department of Economics. Gender and Faculty Salaries at the University of Regina. June 1993. 
  • University of Regina Faculty Association. The Gender Pay Gap on Campus. 2018. 

​The 1987 study was conducted to investigate the status of gender pay equity. A previous study in 1978 had found that when using a “matched-pairs” model, discrimination was found in 27% of cases, and subsequent salary adjustments were made. The 1993 report was requested by the Equity Fund Committee. There were two recent studies of salary pay equity at the University conducted by other researchers that both found systemic gender pay biases.  

The data used in the 1987 study was not made explicit, while the data in the 1993 study comes from personnel files and contained 327 total observations, of which 60 were female. In the 1987 study, a multiple regression analysis was conducted for both female and male salaries. There were multiple regression lines fit for each decision-making unit (by faculty) with at least 5 female and 15 male faculty. The explanatory variables used were years of service, years since last degree, and presence of PhD.

In the 1993 study, two multiple regression models were estimated, the primary difference between the two is the inclusion of additional variables in one of the equations. The first regressed salary against age, education, years since education, years at the University, and gender. The second regression added rank, whether a faculty member is on probation, faculty, years of admin service, the number of special increases, the number of sabbaticals, and the number of times a career growth increment was denied. Both models were also regressed separately for males and females, and a test on the separate coefficients was conducted to see if they resulted from the same population.

The results were presented graphically in the 1987 study. However, in summary the fitted regression lines for women faculty were consistently lower than that of men faculty. There was no estimate of a gender pay gap provided.

The 1993 study found that there were severe problems with the models as estimated, specifically omitted variable bias was detected. The study found that different techniques produced conflicting results. The researcher concluded that no evidence of gender pay inequity could be detected by the regression analysis. However, the researcher did produce an estimate that women faculty earn approximately $2,000 less per year, but that the margin of error was larger than that in the estimation.

The recommendation from the 1987 report is that a more thorough investigation of gender pay equity be undertaken. The 1993 report concluded with a recommendation to use “matched-pairs” methodology, where a female faculty is compared to the next closest comparable male faculty member for salary discrepancies.

In 2018, the faculty association undertook an unadjusted pay gap analysis using institutional faculty data from the Statistics Canada UCASS survey to raise awareness of issues.