Equal Pay Day 2019 (April 2nd) is an important time to reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go when it comes to fair pay. A complex issue with much nuance, the gap between what men and women earn is significant: according to recent estimates, full-time female workers make about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20%. Indeed, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research predicts that women won’t achieve pay parity with men until 2059, and equality will come even later down the road for women of color.
Hoping to shed light on the dynamics contributing to the gender wage gap, Comparablyput together a snapshot of the experience of women in the workplace. The data comes from the anonymous responses of hundreds of thousands of employees from small, midsize, and large public and private U.S. companies.
Respondents were asked:
- Do you believe you’re paid fairly?
- Do you feel you’ve been held back in your career because of your gender?
- Would you feel confident asking your boss for a raise?
- Did you negotiate your salary?
- How much has your annual compensation increased in the last 7 years?
- Hypothetically, if you were to quit your job tomorrow what would your reason be?
- If you were the boss, what’s the first thing you’d change?
The results:
Less than half of women feel they are paid fairly
- Many people feel underpaid, especially women. Just 44% of women say they feel they are paid fairly. Fifty-one percent of men say the same. This represents a drop in compensation satisfaction from 2018, when 56% of men and 50% of women felt their pay was fair
- People of color feel most underpaid. Workers who identified as African-American (44%), Hispanic /Latino (43%), or “other” (44%) had the lowest rates of saying they feel they are paid fairly. Caucasians had the highest (52%). All racial groups in 2019 report in greater numbers that they don’t feel they are paid fairly when compared to 2018 numbers. Last year, African-Americans were at 50%, Hispanic/Latinos and “Other” were at 49%, and Caucasians were at 50% on the same question.
- Women in legal are least happy with their pay; women in HR are most happy with their pay. Just 27% of women in legal say they believe they are paid fairly. In HR, that number is 64%. For the Executive branch, 13% more men than women say they are paid fairly – a major gap. Conversely, there is apparently less inequality in certain tech roles: men and women in the IT and Product departments responded similarly, with male and female responses divided by only two percentage points in either case.
Women are nearly four times more likely to say they’ve been held back in their careers because of gender
- Women say gender has held them back. Thirty-nine percent of women say gender has held them back in their careers, compared to 12% of men. Both groups say gender has been an issue more often today than in our 2018 study, when just 20% of men and 51% of women agreed with the statement.
- Gen Z report the highest rates. Thirty-two percent of all respondents between the ages of 18 and 25 say they’ve been held back in their careers because of their gender. It’s possible that this generation has also been raised with more cultural awareness of gender inequities.
- Women in IT, engineering feel most held back. Looking at a snapshot by department, women in IT (54%) and engineering (53%) have the highest rates of saying they feel most held back by their gender. Women in admin (25%) and customer support (30%), by contrast, feel the least held back by their gender.
Men feel more confident asking for a raise; education also matters
- The confidence gap is real. When asked whether they’d feel comfortable asking their boss for a raise, 54% of women said yes compared to 60% of men. In 2018, our data showed that 63% of men and 55% of women felt confident approaching their boss for more money.
- Confidence peaks for Millennials. Confidence appears to peak just as people near the age of 30 (59%) and appears to largely maintain at that level through their early 50s.
- The more educated you are, the more confident you are. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or above were most confident in asking their boss for a raise.
Women and minorities aren’t negotiating their salaries as much as men
- Women are less likely to negotiate their salary. When asked if they negotiated their current salary, 44% of women and 53% of men said yes. This represents a major drop from 2018 responses, when 67% of men and 64% of females responded positively to the question.
- Less than half of African-Americans and Hispanic/Latinos feel confident negotiating their salary. 47% ofHispanic/Latino respondents and 41% of African American respondents say they negotiated their current salary. Asian/Pacific Islanders feel confident at 52%, which is one percentage point higher than the Caucasian bracket.
17% of men vs. 10% of women have seen salary more than double in the last 7 years
- Women don’t see the pay jumps that men do. When asked how much their salary has risen in the last 7 years, the No. 1 answer among respondents was “5 to 20%.” Upon closer look, an interesting finding emerges: while 17% of men say their salary has more than doubled in the last seven years, just 10% of women say the same. Numbers are slightly down from 2018, when 19% of men and 11% of women reported seeing their salaries double.
Men and women are equally concerned with feeling underpaid or unappreciated
- Identical views. Men and women had nearly identical views, ranking this as reason No. 1 and “difficult coworkers” as the least likely reason they would quit their jobs.
- Asian/Pacific Islanders and those who work in product were the only groups to rank “lack of career advancement” higher. Workers in every racial group chose “underpaid or unappreciated” first, except for Asian/Pacific Islanders, who cited “lack of career advancement.”
Women are torn between wanting to increase pay and wanting to improve strategy
- A tale of two priorities. When asked what they would do first if they were boss, 28% of women say they would have better vision and strategy and 26% say they would increase employee pay. While men had similar rankings, the percentage of men who chose “better vision and strategy” was higher (34%) and the percentage who chose “increase employee pay” was lower (21%).
Methodology
- A total of seven survey questions were included. They were in Yes/No and multiple-choice format. Results are from a total of 150,393 employees who answered the below questions from March 1, 2018 through March 28, 2019.
- Do you believe you’re paid fairly?
- Would you feel confident asking your boss for a raise?
- How much has your annual compensation increased in the last 7 years?
- Did you negotiate your salary?
- Hypothetically, if you were to quit your job tomorrow what would your reason be?
- Do you feel you’ve been held back in your career because of your gender?
- If you were the boss, what’s the first thing you’d change?
- People of all ages, educational backgrounds, ethnicities, and experience levels were included.
- Employees hail from small, mid-size, and large tech companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) to household brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
About Comparably
Comparably is an online career destination for compensation and workplace culture data with a mission to make work dramatically more transparent and rewarding. Employees can anonymously and publically rate their company culture and access salary data through the lens of specific demographics, including gender, ethnicity, age, location, years of experience, company size, title/department, and education. With the most comprehensive and structured data in the industry, it has accumulated 10 million ratings and hundreds of thousands of salary records by employees at 50,000 U.S. companies, from startups to Fortune 50 businesses. The company’s data-driven approach has quickly made it a trusted media resource for salary and workplace culture, and one of the fastest-growing SaaS solutions for employer branding. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For workplace culture and salary studies, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs awards, go to Comparably.com/blog.
