Every year as we work our way to Equal Pay Day (you know, the day that marks how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year), working women across the US reckon with the perplexing, incredulous reality that is the gender pay gap.
While Equal Pay Day only comes once a year, the national one at least, there are at least five equal pay days that reflect additional pay gaps by race, women’s pay is front and center every day for us at InHerSight. For 2017 and 2018, pay equality has been the top issue women in the InHerSight network want to see companies address.
Hundreds of thousands of women have rated their salary satisfaction in the US. Here are a few interesting findings from that data:
1. Salary satisfaction is one of the top 2 things women want most from a company. It’s second only to great paid time off on the list of women’s “must-haves” from their next workplace.
2. It’s one of the top 3 drivers of women’s overall happiness. How satisfied a woman is with her compensation is one of the top predictors of how happy she is at work in general. Access to equal opportunities and respectful, professional colleagues are the other two top drivers.
3. Women in tech are most satisfied with their salaries.Epic, Facebook, Procore Technologies, and Salesforce are some of the top rated tech companies by women for salary satisfaction. Women in government come in a close second for salary satisfaction (surprised? never underestimate the power of transparency and predictability).
4. Women working in the services industry, think restaurants and hospitality, are the least satisfied with their salaries. They’re also facing some of the toughest hurdles and working conditions when it comes to sexual harassment.
5. Company size doesn’t matter. Whether you at a startup or at a company with ten thousand employees, the number of employees a company has appears to have no impact on your overall salary satisfaction.
6. The more senior you are, the more satisfied you are with how much you make. You probably make more, so that doesn’t hurt, but for all you early career women out there, there’s a pot of gold at the end of the career rainbow...we hope.
7. Married women experience higher salary satisfaction. But having kids has no effect on your salary satisfaction. Read into this what you will, we just report on the data.
To see the companies where women are most satisfied with their salaries, click here.
And for more information on the wage gap, check out this handy guide.
