<p>Previous literature has shown that women are less likely than men to be promoted to full professor positions. The significant gender gap in career advancements in academia results from many factors, including discrimination against female researchers in recruitment and promotion. We use data on the Italian academic population to describe men’s and women’s career paths. Using a discrete-time event history model for the sub-sample of all associate professors who obtained the National Scientific Qualification (NSQ) for full professorship, we show that women are promoted later than their male colleagues with the same level of scholarly productivity: men always come first. A slower career for women results in a significant, but often disregarded, loss in life-long earnings compared to men, leading to a 6.4% unadjusted gender pay gap even in a university system with a fixed wage scale, such as the Italian one. We also empirically estimate the life-long income loss resulting from different career speeds of male and female professors conditional on productivity, thereby quantifying the cost of gender discrimination in Italian academia. Interviews with a sample of 34 Italian female professors, some with fast careers, others with a slow career or not (yet) promoted full professor, show a weak collective awareness of the systematic gender discrimination highlighted by the data and a total lack of reporting of economic issues in terms of gender inequality.</p>