Significant gender gap in earnings
HAVING a female boss at a company does not make it more likely for her female employees to be paid more equally to their male counterparts, a new study has found.
Research published in the European Sociological Review showed that even when women are in management positions at a company, there is often still a “considerable and significant gender gap in earnings”.
On average, the study found that the women analysed in the sample earned 7% less than their male counterparts, regardless of what gender their boss had, or what the representation of women in management positions in the company was.
The sample was made up of data from nine European countries and used data from manager-employee linked information across a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, higher education, transportation, financial services and telecommunication.
“There are very good reasons to believe women should benefit from having a female manager, so we were surprised to find that this is not the case,” said Margriet van Hek, the lead researcher of the study.
“I believe the next step is to dig deeper into the mechanisms of how this occurs.”
One reason for the results of this study according to the researchers could be that women in management positions often still lack real power, as they are often stuck in middle management instead of being able to rise through the ranks.
Despite the surprising results, the study was able to confirm again that there is “considerable variation of inequality between women’s and men’s earnings”, across sectors and organisations.