A Canadian university has announced that it will increase salaries for female professors in order to eliminate a gender pay gap.

Wilfrid Laurier University will increase wages for 33 full professors by 3.9 per cent and 119 associate professors by 3 per cent. The adjustments will be applied retroactively from 1 July 2016 and alter only the salaries of female academics employed by the university from 1 July 2014.

The changes were recommended by a committee that was jointly established by the university administration and faculty union to analyse gender-based salary differences at the institution.

The committee did not find a gender difference in salary at the rank of assistant professor. The university said that this was due to efforts by the university in recent years to monitor academic starting salaries.

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Deborah MacLatchy, president-designate of the university, said that gender equity with respect to wages and terms and conditions of employment is ¡°an important principle that Laurier must actively support to achieve its goal of enhancing and sustaining diversity within our community¡±.

In 2015, McMaster University announced that it would increase the salaries of its female academics by C$3,500 (?2,000).

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Similar moves have also been made by UK institutions in the past year, including the University of Essex and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com