Abstract Gender pay equity for academics continues to be elusive. Adding to scholarship around structural barriers to gender equity in academic settings, we investigate the link between scholarly performance and compensation. We expect high research productivity to be differentially associated with compensation outcomes for men and women. Building on social role theory, we hypothesize that these relationships are contingent upon whether researchers are inside or outside of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Using the h-index, compensation, and researcher demographics for 3033 STEM and social and behavioral sciences (SBS) researchers from 17 R1 universities, we applied multilevel modeling techniques and showed that cumulative research productivity was more strongly related to compensation for men versus women researchers. However, these effects only held in STEM disciplines but not in SBS disciplines. Based on these results, we recommend that institutions consider changing how pay analyses are conducted and advocate for adding explicit modeling of scientific performance-compensation links as part of routine pay equity analyses.