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Women's Salaries Rising Faster Than Men's

Published: Oct 07, 2010

 Salary & Benefits       

Is the salary gap between men and women starting to narrow? It certainly appears to be at the higher end of the salary scale: the number of women earning salaries in excess of six figures has jumped 14 percent in the last two years, while the number of men in that category rose just 4 percent over the same period. (Even better news: apparently a lot of people make more now than they did two years ago: who'd a thunk?)

However welcome that news may be, census figures—reported by The Washington Post--suggest that there's still a long way to go to equalize salaries, especially in light of the fact that women are now more likely to hold an advanced degree than men.

As the Post points out, just "one in 18 women working full time earned $100,000 or more in 2009," compared to one in seven men. In case you're wondering, that works out to around "2.4 million working women and 7.9 million men" in the six figure (or better) category.

A couple of other points worth noting about the data:

First, it seems like it wasn't all that long ago we were reading stories that, for the first time in history, the number of men and women in the workforce was roughly equal. While that had come largely as a result of the fact the recession hit male-dominated industries much harder than female-dominated ones, it turns out that it's also nowhere near the truth when you factor out part-time employees. As the Post reports "[t]he full-time workforce remains predominantly male, with 56 million men and 42 million women."

And, second, the most likely place for women to secure a decent salary is in Washington, D.C.—the capital "had the highest median pay among all full-time working women," while ranking second on the scale for the number of women making six figures or higher. Apparently one in six Washington women currently pull down a minimum of $100,000, second only to San Jose, CA.

--Phil Stott, Vault.com

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