Are Women Elders Paid Less than Men? A Brief Report from the North Carolina Statewide Longitudinal Survey of United Methodist Clergy

Abstract

Background

Research has established that salary disparities exist between men and women pastors in the United Methodist Church. However, little work has been done examining the root and trajectories of these differences within the denomination.

Purpose

In this report, we explore systematic salary differences between United Methodist men and women elders (i.e. ordained clergy) serving in one of the two Annual Conferences in North Carolina.

Methods

We used six rounds of survey data the Duke Clergy Health Initiative collected as part of the Statewide Longitudinal Study of United Methodist clergy serving in North Carolina between 2010 and 2021. We restricted our analysis to elders serving in active, full-time appointments. We ran four models to assess salary differences between men and women elders. First, we calculated the average salaries by year and gender among all elders. Second, we did the same for elders with five or fewer years of experience. Third, we modeled the average percent salary growth between survey waves by gender. Finally, we modeled elders’ salary trajectories based on the year they started in ministry, their years of experience, and their gender.

Results

Although we found a gender salary disparity among all elders—women do not earn as much as men—the gap is slowly closing. However, this disparity did not exist among elders with five or fewer years of experience. When we considered the average salary growth respondents experienced from one survey wave to the next, we found that, on average, women receive slightly larger (but not statistically significant) increases than men. The final model assessing elders’ salary trajectories suggested that salary disparities between men and women were more prominent several decades ago. Assuming a career span of 30 years, the model projects that a woman starting in ministry in 1990 will have earned an average of $6,200 a year less than a man starting in the same year. This gap narrowed to $3,600 among those starting in 2000 and disappeared completely by 2010. And yet, the same model predicts that salary disparities still exist between men and women in the United Methodist Church—a decade after the denomination reached a point where our model projects no gender disparities between the salary trajectories of new pastors.

Conclusions and Implications

Our analysis suggests that, while male elders have significantly higher salaries than their female counterparts, these two groups have been equitably compensated for the past decade. These two phenomena can both exist because past gender disparities reverberate long into the careers of clergy. This is because, even though salaries across genders may be treated equally now, they are not making up for lost ground. For example, women starting in ministry in 1990 may have experienced the same rate of salary growth as men from 2010 to 2020, but earned less during this timeframe because they entered this period with lower initial salaries than men. For this reason, our model predicts that, although the salary trajectories for men and women were equal starting ministry in 2010, it may be another decade before there is no difference between the average salaries of men and women pastors. Nevertheless, this projection assumes that recent trends persist—something that remains to be seen. Only time will tell if this continues or if women will hit a glass ceiling as their careers unfold.