To improve the gender pay gap, institutions should draw on the expertise of social researchers: Opinion

Institutions should provide social scientists with access to data related to the gender pay gap in order to progress towards gender pay equality, writes Sunil Mitra Kumar. Kumar writes that granular payroll data obscures information about the gender pay gap, and that choosing alternatives can allow scientists to better understand the relationship between pay, gender, and other variables. Kumar recommends that institutions take the appropriate steps to ensure privacy, such as non-disclosure agreements or hiring external researchers; set up statistical software that faculty can use to interact with models without accessing the underlying data; and use data simulation techniques to ensure anonymity. Times Higher Ed Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.