One high-paid occupation where the gender wage gap has disappeared: Vice Chancellors of the UK’s universities

The gender wage gap tends to be larger among high earners, and is particularly acute among academics. But for one occupation, this trend no longer holds – the gender gap among Vice Chancellors running UK universities has disappeared. This column finds no evidence that the quality of women entering the profession has risen. Instead, hiring practices have changed. A university’s success is increasingly reliant on attracting and retaining top talent, and the visibility of Vice Chancellors’ pay makes unequal treatment in the top jobs transparent, resulting in substantial disadvantages for institutions that discriminate.