You are a hiring manager at a business.

Behind door No. 1 is a candidate who has earned an associate degree from a community college. Behind door No. 2, a candidate without the degree. Whom would you hire? To whom would you give a larger salary?

According to findings in a new study conducted by members of Iowa State University’s Department of educational leadership and policy studies (ELPS), employers are more likely to pay more to the candidate behind door No. 2 – if it’s a man.

The six-year longitudinal study of nearly 1,800 Iowa community college students found that women with an associate degree in a business career made $27,377 on average in 2007 – five years after graduation – much less than the men without a degree, who earned $37,745. Women in marketing careers with an associate degree earned an average of $28,211, while men without a degree earned $35,354.

“The interesting thing to me was that even when women complete associate degrees, their earnings are still much less than male students who do not complete degrees. That at least suggests a gender disparity may still exist,” said lead author Jonathan Compton, a former ELPS doctoral research associate and current research analyst in Iowa State’s records and registration department.

The information technology field, however, was a bit more complicated. Although women who earned associate degrees earned 52.1 percent more in 2007 than in 2003 and men with the degree earned 41.5 percent more, women still earned less than men. Also, in the first year after graduating with an associate degree, women earned nearly $7,000 less than men without degrees.

“I think with IT, it’s a very complicated career cluster because of certification,” said Frankie Santos Laanan, an ELPS associate professor and the lead researcher for the project.

Compton said that the gender disparity might, however, be artificially inflated because the study didn’t consider part-time vs. full-time employment and previous studies have shown that a higher percentage of women turn to part-time careers when raising children.