Gender pay gap in the United States tech industry

The job search platform Hired.com conducted market research to determine the current statistics in regards to the pay gap in the tech industry.[1] Within the United States, the tech industry's gender wage gap can in many ways be linked to original offer sheets that women are presented; women receive salary offers less than that of men 63% of the time.[1][6] The distribution of offers is not equal with an average of 4% less for women than men, but some organizations offer up to 45% less.[1] However, the result of the gap is not just implicit sexism imposed by men. It has been found that on 66% of occasions, women ask for less money than their male counterparts.[1] Constructing employment systems in which employees must ask for their wages can lead to situations in which women are receiving less pay, despite the fact that they are completing the same job.[5] The pay discrepancy continues to manifest itself as careers proceed, and once women begin making less than men, it continues throughout their careers.[7] Women often find their male peers are paid at a higher rate, and only 19% of men surveyed had discovered that someone in the same position was paid more than them whereas 54% of women have had this discovery.[1] The pay gap is different across industries within the tech industry, with women in tech finance experiencing the smallest gap at 7% and women in education technology experiencing the largest gap at 10%.[1] The gap is also different in the primary tech cities in the United States (San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Boston). Of the primary technology cities in the United States, women in Seattle face the largest wage gap at 11%, and women in San Francisco face the smallest gap at 8%.[1]

The pay gap affects younger women the most and manifests itself with the largest pay gap amongst ages. Women under 25 earn 29% less than their male counterparts, but this percentage reduces to 5% for employees over the age of 50.[7] The advent of the personal computer created more barriers to entry for women as the marketing of personal computers was primarily directed at young boys.[7] This marketing strategy led to computers being associated with men, which played a role in associating computer-based jobs with men rather than women.[7] Pervasive advertisements for personal computers aimed at boys and men helps to explain why women comprise only 23% of computer programmers.[7] Technology companies have to work to adapt how they advertise their products to not exclude the use of women which can result in a lack of women in the candidate pool which eventually plays a role in women seeking smaller salaries than their male counterparts.[7]

The wage gap exists for women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, which highlights that there is a divide between the salaries of men and women, but the wages differ across races.[1][8] Among white, black, Asian, and Hispanic workers, Asian men and white women compare the most favorably to white men. Black and Hispanic women have the largest gap of any of the surveyed groups, which indicates that race plays an important role in the wage gap.[1] Technology companies must work to understand that they have to alter their hiring practices to promote equal wages for women, but they must also realize that not all women are paid the same rates.[8]

Organizations can strive to be intentional with their hiring practices so that they have talent pools that are more representative. Currently, minorities are underrepresented in the interview process at 6%, and they receive lower salary offers.[1][9] However, Hispanic and black men still receive higher offers than their female counterparts of the same race.[1] Without considering the intersectionality of people, firms may miss that it is important to evaluate hiring practices of the whole person and not just correct for race or gender in a silo.[8] Correcting just for race can perpetuate situations in which black and Hispanic men continue to make more than their female counterparts, but correcting just for gender will continue to allow white women to earn more than all groups but Asian and white men.[1] Corrections that avoid binaries can help to reduce siloed hiring practices that attempt to fix one issue at a time rather than a multifaceted approach.[1][8]

There are those that believe the gender wage gap is a myth and is a result of factors that are not discriminatory.[15][16] Opponents of the wage gap claim that statistics are manipulated to present the data in a way that benefits the argument of a gender wage gap.[15] Opponents further assert that the gap is a result of women’s choice to not pursue jobs that pay the same rate as their male counterparts, which skews the data to create a bigger gap than actually exists.[16] The gap is rationalized by highlighting that men choose more dangerous jobs or higher paying fields that allow for them to advance their earning potential.[16] Research that disputes the gender pay gap also relies on the highlighting voluntary choices to show that women are earning less as a function of their lack of exploring jobs that will see them make the same as their male counterparts. Critics also feel it is not the job of employers to create representative hiring pools.[15] Critics acknowledge that cities such as Los Angeles report that in tech interview candidate pools women are underrepresented by 29%,[1] but believe that women may self select themselves out of certain jobs.[17][16] The lack of representation inhibits women from earning the same salaries within organizations because they are not hired at the same rate, and when they are hired are less likely to negotiate salary.[18]

• Why the Wage Gap for Tech Workers Goes Beyond Gender—Hired.com