Gender

The salary gender gap has been on the radar for a number of years. Apparently, it hasn't gone away.

Figure 14 shows the difference in average salaries between males and females in advancement. Although average salaries for females have increased by 9 percent since 2005 and for males 7 percent, the discrepancy in compensation levels is still large.

How to account for such a gap? Variables that might contribute include age, experience in advancement, amount of education, and level of management responsibility. If that were the case, then removing the effects of those variables with respect to salary differences might show that men and women are actually paid the same.

That is, everything being equal, how do salaries for men and women compare with each other?

To test that notion, research consultants Sammis and Wylie built a statistical model that let them remove the effects of the variables listed above, allowing them to compare model-adjusted salaries for men and women. Figure 15 shows the adjusted difference.

What figure 15 means is that the salaries for men are actually $8,543 more than you would expect when the effects of the model variables are removed. The salaries for women are actually $3,342 less than you would expect when the effects of the model variables are removed.

While the difference shown in figure 15 is less than the raw difference between average salaries for men and women (fig. 14), it is still substantial. The raw difference is $18,270, and the model-adjusted difference is $11,885.