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Education and outreach

Education and outreach

PhDs are worth more for women

01 Sep 2001

Studying physics is not only intellectually rewarding, it also makes good financial sense for women. Gillian Gehring explains how women undergraduates can boost their earnings - by up to £205 000 - if they stay on to do a PhD degree.

It makes sense

With the new academic year about to begin, undergraduate students will soon be thinking about whether to apply for a PhD. Doing a doctorate can, of course, be a very rewarding experience. It allows students to mature as independent scientists and to experience cutting-edge research – both within their own departments and at prestigious international conferences. However, it turns out that doing a higher degree is particularly beneficial to women in terms of their future earning power.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) recently considered the effects of education on the earnings of a group of individuals who were born in 1958. It looked at a total of 2529 people who had been to university and compared their earnings at the age of 33 with those whose highest qualifications were A-levels or Highers (R Blundell et al. 1997 Higher Education, Employment and Earnings in Britain).

The IFS found that, by the time they are 33, men with PhDs actually earn 4.3% less than men who only have a bachelor’s degree. This lower level of income was attributed to the fact that men with doctorates had spent less time in work by that age. In contrast, women with PhDs earn 2.6% more at 33 than women of the same age who only have undergraduate degrees.

The gender pay gap

The IFS also found that men generally earn more than women with identical qualifications, but that this “gender pay gap” narrows as women become more qualified. So while women who only have A-levels or Highers earn about 38% less than men with the same qualifications, this gap is just 20% for those with a bachelor’s degree, and under 11% for those with higher degrees.

Overall, the IFS estimated that the average salary at age 33 was about £23 000 for men but just £17 000 for women. Surprisingly, men who worked part time received, on average, 10% more per hour than all of those who worked full time, while women who worked part-time earned 10% less per hour.

The women’s unit of the UK government’s Cabinet Office has also looked at pay differentials. It grouped all graduates together and found that women were paid an average of 12% less over their lifetime than men – even if they did not have children. This would lead to a gap in lifetime earnings of £143 000, rising to £160 000 if they had children.

Salaries of women in physics

So what is the situation for physics? According to a salary survey carried out by the Institute of Physics in 1998 (Physics World November 1998 pp53-54, print version only), the pattern that was identified by the Cabinet Office – namely that women earn less than men over a lifetime even if they have worked full time – is also true for physicists whose highest qualification is only a BSc. As the figure shows, the salaries for male and female BSc physicists working full time are similar through their 30s, before a large gap opens up in their 40s and 50s. The same pattern has been seen in all of the salary surveys that the Institute has carried out over the last 10 years.

However, when the data for physicists who have an MSc or PhD are compared, the situation is totally different (see figure). There is now no gap between the earning of men and women for those who work full time and have either of these degrees. Indeed, the financial advantage over a working lifetime of obtaining a PhD is £35 000 if you are a man, but much bigger – £205 000 – if you are a woman.

We can also compare the “female deficit” for women physicists compared with the Cabinet Office’s estimate of £143 000. Women who only have a BSc in physics stand to earn a total of £190 000 less, over the course of a lifetime, than men with the same degree. However, if they go on to take a PhD, then the lifetime deficit (compared with men with a PhD) is tiny – just £20 000. It is also worth noting that although women physicists with a BSc earn less then men with the same degree, they still earn, according to the IFS data, more than the average female graduate (£25 000 as opposed to about £17 000).

The bottom line is that it makes good financial sense for a woman to study physics even if she stops at a BSc. It is even more worth her while to continue to a higher degree, where the rewards are better still.

Imperfect but reliable

Are the Institute of Physics’ data reliable? The party-goer looks for her house keys under the street lamp because it is only there that she has light enough to find them, not because that is where she thinks she dropped them. We are using the same principle here. The data quoted have not been collected with any degree of scientific rigour; it is just all the data we have. The size of the sample is small, it is self-selected and it has been taken only among the fraction of physics graduates who retain their membership of the Institute beyond their student years. Indeed, only a fraction of all physics graduates join the Institute and an even smaller proportion (particularly of women) retain their membership over their working lives.

A “steady-state” model has been assumed. We need to think like an astronomer here: the women of 50+ graduated from an “earlier universe”, where the Sex Discrimination Act had never been thought of. The returners’ schemes are also relatively recent, so the oldest cohorts would not have had this support if they had wished to return to a scientific career after a break. The situation should be very different for those graduating with a BSc or PhD in the 21st century.

We all know that a physics degree qualifies graduates to go into many different careers, some of which are not strongly related to physics. Many of us in university teaching have known many students who wanted to become bankers, accountants or software engineers because they hoped to earn much higher salaries this way. Unfortunately, any information about the salary levels of these physicists is not included if they cease their membership of the Institute.

However, although the data are imperfect, I believe that there is a clear message. Women physicists, on average, earn considerably more than other graduates and their average earnings can be comparable with those of men. So not only does physics provide an interesting education, it also leads to a variety of careers with high salaries. However, it is necessary for women both to have a PhD and to work full time to achieve such earnings.

A good choice

There are other reasons for well qualified women to do a PhD. In particular, a PhD gives a woman a chance to develop her independence and satisfy her intellectual curiosity. However, in spite of the fact that women do just as well in their undergraduate studies, only about 27% of women currently go on to take a higher degree, compared with 38% of men.

Some women students find that they feel happier when they are working in a group that already contains a number of women, although for others this is not an issue. Perhaps because of a snowballing effect, a number of research groups do have unusually large fractions of women. Such groups can be an option for women, who may find more support from their peers than they would elsewhere.

We should therefore ensure that good women students are given every encouragement to study for a higher degree. Not only is it good for their careers, but their presence in a research group may encourage other women to join, thereby forming a pool from which future academics will come. This may, in turn, encourage more girls to consider a career in physics, both to their own advantage and to that of us all. Women remain an underused source of talent for science and engineering in the UK.

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