The gender pay gap has been stubbornly persistent, with improvements happening at a seemingly glacial pace.  One might imagine that women would be robust supporters of any measures to improve things, but research from the University of Dayton reveals that this isn’t always the case, especially if women are benefiting from the status quo.

The findings emerged from experiments whereby participants were asked to complete a 30-question quiz.  Each volunteer knew that their financial reward was dependent on the number of correct answers they supplied.  Around half of the quizzes were written in such a way as to give men a clear advantage, whereas in the other half the quiz was written to give women an advantage.

The results showed that in the quizzes with a male bias, men answered an average of 21 questions correctly, with women getting 13 right on average.  The researchers believe this scenario mimics the work environment today, with the cards stacked in favor of men.  The quiz that favored women produced almost identically mirrored results, with women averaging 21 correct answers and men 13.

Just rewards

At three points during the experiment, volunteers voted to be paid either $1 for each correct answer or to give the group that was at a disadvantage support.  If this second option was chosen, the disadvantaged participants would receive $1.25 for every right answer, with those boosted by the biased test getting just 85 cents.

Each time, similar results emerged, but interestingly, women were found to be less likely than men to vote against policies that would narrow the pay gap when they themselves were doing well on the test.  Indeed, just under 97% of women’s votes were against the proposal when they were more likely to correctly answer the questions.  For men, this fell to just over 90%.

When women were themselves at a disadvantage, they were more likely to vote in favor of more corrective policies, with nearly 80% supporting them as opposed to just 73% of men.

Closing the gap

Despite a lot of attention, the gender pay gap has shown little real progress in recent years, with women still earning 84 cents on the dollar of what men earn.  What’s more, a survey from Glassdoor revealed that men are likely to oppose policies to reduce that gap.

While it’s easy to portray that as sexist, and it quite possibly is, the Dayton findings suggest that women might act just the same if they were in men’s shoes (and vice versa if men were the ones discriminated against).

The authors hope that their work prompts us to think anew about the issue and explore how self-interest clouds the debate and hinders any attempts to remedy the situation in a more equitable direction.