Teaching is fun, generally speaking, and the skills and talents it requires are more commonly available in the talent pool than the skills and talents required by serious research. Research is not fun, generally speaking, and requires a rarer group of talents.

Markets work.

The greater a discipline’s time spent on teaching, the lower its salaries … for men and women.

Even aside from feminism, this bothers me immensely (it’s certainly a factor in hiring as well–one beloved visiting professor who was an excellent teacher didn’t even make the interview cut for tenure-track at my undergraduate college largely because his research wasn’t flashy enough–yet he strongly influenced many students in a very positive way). Isn’t a large part of the purpose of universities to train the next generation? Teaching is good and valuable and not inferior to research.

Surely even the antifeminists could agree that rewarding good teachers as well as researchers is a good policy.

I agree, blind review would be much better for any variety of reasons. I’ve also seen papers get trashed on the basis of old and bitter rivalries rather than on the basis of the work itself, and yes, some papers get passed with barely any review at all because of the name attached. It’s stupid, and you’ve put your finger on it.

There is another paper from around January this year which I am trying to find again, which demonstrated that there is a gender-bias in peer-review as well; a paper submitted to peer reviewers with the author’s name stripped off was almost always rated as better and more competent than the same paper submitted to similar reviewers with a female author’s name attached (we’re talking almost 90% of the time, here). This will slow down the publication schedule of a female academic, as she is faced with a choice between multiple revisions to satisfy reviewers, or publishing in a less prestigious journal. And publications have a BIG effect on academic salary, as we all know too well.

But it takes some looking to see how those effects feed in….

arguably that there’s a “parenting wage penalty” at all is a sign of sexism

It’s not just a parenting wage penalty. It’s a caring-for-aged-parents penalty, or caring-for-grandchildren-in-the-absence-of-affordable daycare penalty. Everyone, regardless of sex or reproduction or marital status, deserves a fair payment for work and no penalty for human involvement. Of course, it’s much cheaper to demand that women look after the old, the young, and the sick and pay for it out of their own pockets.

Secondly, the big unanswered issue is which pay gaps are morally justifiable

Are any? Since most companies have instituted a “rational” system for determining job requirements and skill sets, for hiring, promoting, and figuring appropriate pay levels, is there any pay gap which doesn’t suggest undue bias?

I think we’d all agree that if Jill spent 40 hours stacking shelves and James worked for 60 hours at the same rate then a pay gap would be justified.

Most attempts at comparing wages would not compare 40 hour weeks with 60 hour weeks. Although, in your example, the employer is getting quite the deal if James is earning the same rate, and not getting paid at time-and-a-half overtime for that extra 20 hours per week.

I feel kind of dumb not being able to answer this myself, but is there a way to accomodate for somebody having children? Even if both parents play an equal role in taking care of the child, wouldn’t that still effect the number of hours the parent will be able to work? How else can the system be done?

I don’t think that assumption is a necessary part of the study - the goal of such studies is (or should be) to find out where and how gender discrimination occurs, not just to verify its existence. If you assume “rank” is an independent variable, and you still find gender bias, you know that there’s work to do beyond just reexamining the tenure process; that’s a useful finding.

The study’s authors may have made that assumption (I haven’t yet read the report, just skimmed the tables at the back looking for my discipline) but if they’ve done a decent job of publishing their data we should be able to ignore that and argue fruitfully amongst ourselves :)

Great. As a public interest attorney, I thought my one-half government lawyer and one-fourth (if that) private lawyer salary was due to the fact that my clients have no money. Now it looks like I might be a victim of discrimination against women as well.

That cruise to Europe may be even further off than I thought.

And here you have a persistent problem in several fields. It’s not just full professor, but making it from assistant to associate. Browse the Chronicle of Higher Education, PS: Political Science and Politics, or any other disciplinary publication in traditionally male dominated fields. Women get PhDs, women get tenure track jobs, and then don’t get tenure.

And then someone says “because they don’t want tenure!

And then steam comes out of my ears.