By and large, biologists embrace their jobs. But across the board, a survey shows, one unhappy trend persists: Women still earn less money than men. Released on 11 October, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of ScienceNOW) survey represents the first time AAAS queried 19,000 of its life scientist members, nearly 8700 of whom responded. The survey includes salary data for scientists inside and outside of academia, along with information on job satisfaction, mobility, and what scientists wish they'd done differently in building their careers.
According to the survey, median salaries rose 7% between last year and this--about double the average increase for all U.S. workers. Highest-paid are full professors at medical centers, with a median salary of $145,000. Lowest-paid (not counting the vast postdoc population) are non-tenure-track university researchers, who pull in around $42,000. Academic life scientists (tenured and untenured) are earning a median salary of $80,000 this year, compared to $96,000 for nonacademics, including those from industry to nonprofits.
The gender difference in academia is striking: $94,000 for men versus $72,000 for women. The median for nonacademics hovers around $96,000, with the sex discrepancy most pronounced at the CEO level, one sparsely populated by females. How much of the salary discrepancy can be tied to discrimination is unclear, according to the AAAS, which notes that females are more likely to be recent entrants into the scientific workforce, and males tend to choose higher-paying fields such as medicine.
Science also seems to take more of a toll on the personal life of women: two-thirds of all female scientists who have been married say their careers were limited to some extent by their spouses' careers. And more women scientists are divorced or childless than the men.
But most life scientists are clearly in the game more for love than money. Asked about the most desirable factors in a job, 79% put top priority on intellectual challenge. "We get to think about the things that interest us the most," says Columbia University researcher Stuart Firestein, "and we have a significant amount of control over the direction of our lives, more so than many people who make a lot more money."
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