Gender Differences in Agency Head Salaries:The Case of Public EducationKenneth J. MeierDepartment of Political ScienceTexas A&M University4348 TAMUSCollege Station TX 77843Vicky M. WilkinsDept. of Political ScienceUniversity of Missouri – ColumbiaColumbia, MO 65211All data and documentation necessary to replicate this analysis are available from the authors.Financial support for the analysis was provided by the George Bush School of Government andPublic Service and the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University.Gender Differences in Agency Head Salaries:The Case of Public EducationAbstractThis study demonstrates a quantitative approach to assessing gender discrimination inpublic salaries at the individual level. Using data from 1000+ school districts in Texas over aperiod of 4 years, the results show that gender differences in superintendent’s salaries are subtlerather than systematic. Female superintendents who replace male superintendents receive lowercompensation. Local district wealth also interacts with gender to affect salaries.Gender Differences in Agency Head Salaries:The Case of Public EducationOver 30 years have passed since the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the first modernstatute directed at protecting workers against wage discrimination. The Equal Pay Act of 1963prohibits unequal pay for equal or “substantially equal” work performed by men and women.This legislation was quickly followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits wagediscrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. Together, these lawsrevolutionized the American workplace. Despite the advancements made by women in theworkforce, however, sex-based wage discrimination has persisted. Indeed, the Department ofLabor reports that in 1999 women earned approximately 77 percent as much as men did, up alittle more than a dime since 1963. African-American and Latino women fare worse at 65percent and 59 percent, respectively (Department 1999).1Although women are making great strides in certain labor sectors (Blau and Kahn 1994),many problems remain. A preponderance of studies on the employment distribution of womenand men provides evidence that women often face glass ceilings and glass walls at the federaland state levels (Baron and Newman 1989; Bullard and Wright 1993; Cornwell and Kellough1994; Crum and Naff 1997; Kellough 1989; Lewis and Emmert 1986; Lewis and Nice 1994;Mani 1997; Naff and Thomas 1994; Newman 1994; Pfeffer and Davis-Blake 1987; Reid, Kerrand Miller 2000). In this work, we extend the analysis to an examination of gender differencesin salary among a set of administrators who have reached the top of the organizational ladder,school superintendents.Researchers have predicted that as more women occupy line positions in school districts(such as assistant superintendents or directors), we would see more women join the ranks of the 1Raw comparisons such as these omit any controls for human capital or tastes for leisure and thusmay over or under estimate the actual wage gap.1superintendency (Schmuck 1982). This, however, has not been the case. Nationally only about4 percent of district superintendents are women, while more than 20 percent of line district officepositions are filled by women (Schuster and Foote 1990). In her study on the promotion ofteachers to administrative positions, Joy (1998) found that men are more likely than women to beselected for promotion during the school year, even when the teacher’s desire for promotions andcredentials are considered. Examining the explanations for the small percentage of womenholding superintendencies is beyond the scope of this work, but we take an important step inassessing sex-based wage disparities among individuals who become superintendents.2Two objectives guide this paper. The first is whether gender has any uniqueeffect on superintendent salaries above and beyond the effects of such suspected income-relatedfactors as human capital, local resources, and job performance. To address this question weassess the salaries of male and female school superintendents in Texas over time (1995-1998) todetermine whether sex-based wage disparities exist. The second is to illustrate how genderdifferences should be assessed, thus creating a template for future researchers seeking to examinethis question in other public organizations.Prior Studies of Gender Discrimination in SalariesNumerous studies of sex-based salary disparities have demonstrated unequivocally theexistence and persistence of salary disparities in both the private and public sectors. Althoughthe private sector has made some progress toward pay equity (Furchgott-Roth and Stolba 1996;O’Neill 1985; O’Neill and Polacheck 1993), significant sex-based pay gaps continue (Groshen1991; Macpherson and Hirsch 1995; Sorensen 1994; Hutlin 1999). These gaps remain even afterresearchers control for human capital differences such as education, years of experience, tenurein current job, and the education level of the employee. 2We considered using a Heckman selection bias correction in case some districts simply wereunlikely to hire women superintendents. The selection bias equation predicted poorly suggestingthat salary levels are not affected by whether or not the district will hire a female superintendent.2Similar research in the public sector has produced analogous results. Several studiesusing aggregate data on public sector wages provide strong evidence of sex-based pay disparitiesat all levels of government (Bullard and Wright 1993; Lewis and Emmert 1986; Miller, Kerr andReid 1999; Lewis and Nice 1994; Pfeffer and Davis-Blake 1987; Reid, Kerr and Miller 2000).These disparities have been linked to gender composition at the occupational level (Lewis andNice 1994; Pfeffer and Davis-Blake 1987), at the organizational level (Lewis and Emmert 1985;Blau and Kahn 1999), and at the job level (Treiman and Hartmann 1981). Pfeffer and Davis-Blake (1987) demonstrated in their study of college and university administrators that theproportion of female incumbents depressed the wages for both male and female administrators.In recent research on glass ceilings in U.S. state-level bureaucracies, Reid and Miller (2000)concluded that women are underrepresented in higher paying positions (in proportion to theirnumbers in the agency). This previous research provides a rich foundation for our inquiry ofwhether gender has any unique effect on