Jean D. Gibbons, Russell Professor Emerita of Applied Statistics at the University of Alabama

“Academic Salary Survey by Gender” notes that while there are only small discrepancies in salary between female and male statisticians in academia for comparable years of experience and academic rank, there are strikingly smaller numbers of females at the ranks of associate professor and professor. These findings are present in both statistics and biostatistics departments.

The results are consistent with the conjecture made in “Response to Olkin” that female professionals in academia simply do not publish to the same extent as their male counterparts in many situations. The salary survey data included only research universities, since the numbers of faculty at other universities and colleges are generally too few.

It appears that while female PhD statisticians may begin their careers at research universities and receive compensation commensurate with their male colleagues, many do not stay at those universities beyond the assistant professor level. They may be moving on to less prestigious universities and colleges, either because they do not choose to devote a large portion of their time to publishing in major refereed journals or they did not publish in sufficient quality or quantity to earn tenure at a research university.