New Bloomberg research confirms the gender pay gap doesn’t diminish at the top of the ladder. The few women in the U.S who do manage to scale the corporate ladder are still being paid less than their male counterparts.
According to Bloomberg editors Carol Hymowitz and Cecile Daurat, women comprising the highest paid female executives of the S&P 500 companies take home around 18% less than their male peers.
M.J Tocci, director of the Heinz negotiation Academy for Women at Carnegie Mellon University gave a few reasons to account for the pay gap including the fact that women tend to start at lower salary levels than men and never quite catch up later in their careers.
This is compounded by the fact there is still such a small pool of women who make it to the top; of the highest paid CEOs in the S&P 500 just 8% are women.
Institutional barriers and bias – intentional and unintentional – also contribute to the gap but Tucci says the chief reason women’s pay is consistently smaller is because they are less likely to negotiate their salaries. She points to the findings that men are four times more likely to negotiate their wage than women.
“Women are more likely to advocate for opportunity for themselves than for money, even when they’ve accomplished so much,” Tucci told Bloomberg News.
“That’s not surprising given the backlash women can get when they seek higher pay. Even people who believe women deserve what they’re asking for often peg them as selfish and not likable, which isn’t the reaction men get when they demand more.”