While it’s well-known by now that women consistently earn less than men even though they often attain better education — 77.4 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2010 — Bloomberg News’ Frank Bass reports a new development: this gap is widest on Wall Street.
Parsing census data, Bass found that the six jobs with the largest gender gap in 2010 were insurance agents, managers, financial clerks, securities sales agents, personal financial advisers, other financial specialists — all in “the Wall Street-heavy financial sector”:
The financial sector pays women in the six major jobs with the biggest salary gap from 55 to 62 cents for every $1 made by men, according to the census. Female bank tellers, with a median salary of $23,695, came closest to narrowing the gap in the industry, pulling down 96 cents for every $1 earned.
One reason female professionals make less money in the financial sector is that they tend to wind up in lower-paying positions such as in public finance rather than on trading desks, said Louise Marie Roth, a University of Arizona sociologist and author of “Selling Women Short: Gender and Money on Wall Street.”
Women often simply don’t know how much they’re being underpaid because a large percentage of Wall Street salaries are based on bonuses that are kept secret, she said.
The gap is hardly confined to the financial sector — wide disparities exist in many other high-education sectors, such as among doctors and lawyers — but it’s notable that all six of the job categories with the highest discrepancy are in a single sector.
Bass notes that “women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine,” where women make $1.02 for every dollar men make.
This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on March 19, 2012. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Alex Seitz-Wald is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Alex grew up in California and holds a B.A. in international relations from Brown University. Prior to joining ThinkProgress, Alex interned at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and at the National Journal’s Hotline, where he covered key senate and gubernatorial races. Alex also co-founded and edited the Olive & Arrow, a blog on foreign affairs for and by young progressives. At Brown, he contributed to several publications and served on student government.
