The Male/Female Pay Gap Is Still There and It's Still Wide: Is it simple discrimination or a whole lot of other things?
The gap in pay between women and men is roughly the same that as it was three years ago, at 35 percent. At first glance, one is tempted to say "not fair! This proves discrimination." But when we dig deep into the survey data, we find many variables typically associated with higher or lower salaries that account for much of the difference.
Does the data reflect discrimination against women? Let's take a look at the data.
Education Levels by Gender
Education is one of the most important predictors of salary, and it goes a long way towards explaining the gender gap in pay. Men in the credit profession have significantly higher levels of education than women, as demonstrated in the following table. What this table shows is that nearly half of (49.0 percent) the women in credit have not finished college, compared to just 15 percent of the men in the profession. Conversely, more than twice as many men in credit have graduate degrees and nearly three times as many have post graduate credits. Finally, 31 percent more men have college degrees.
Additional Statistically Significant Variables By Gender
But education isn't the only factor that comes up different between men and women. We ran correlations for every survey variable to see what other factors were statistically significant.
- Top Credit Officer Worth a Premium - 71 percent of the men in the survey, vs. 54 percent of the women, report that they are the "top credit exec" at their company. Obviously, the top exec is paid a premium over everyone else. But of course, you have to ask, are fewer women given the opportunity to be the top credit exec, everything else being equal? This statistic won't tell you that. One thing interesting is that the number of senior level credit execs participating in this survey is greater than in 2004, when 67 percent of the men and 47 percent of the women were the top credit exec.
- Women at Smaller Companies - As our stats have shown time and again, large companies pay higher salaries for credit positions than smaller companies, and the data show that many more women than men populate the credit departments at smaller companies, while many more men than women populate the credit departments at larger companies.
- Over 52 percent of the women in the survey work at companies under $150 million in annual sales, compared to only 30 percent of the men. Similarly, over 51 percent of the men in the survey work at firms over $500 million in sales, versus only 29 percent of the women.
- Impact of Staff Size - The average woman in the survey oversees an average staff size of 5.7 people (up from 5.0), while the average man in the survey oversees an average staff of 9.7 (up from 9.2) people. Looks like progress, albeit modest, for women in this category.
- A/R Portfolio: Gap is Narrowing - This is one of the most important stats in determining pay scales in credit, and one of the most encouraging from an "equality for women" standpoint. Men manage an A/R portfolio of $171 million (down from $195 million three years ago), while women manage an A/R portfolio of $102 million (up from $60 million). This represents a significant increase in responsibility for women.
- Number of Invoices Per Day - Men oversee credit departments that average 4,496 invoices per day, while women oversee credit departments that average 853 per day. For women the figure is largely unchanged from three years ago, but the average for men is significantly higher this time around.
- Experience Gap Narrowing - Men have 21.2 years of experience, on average, while women have 17.3 years of experience. Here the gap has narrowed modestly since our last survey, from 4.5 to 3.9 years. Previously, women had 14.9 years of experience, while men had 19.4 years of experience.
- Age - Men in the survey average 49.5 years old, while women in the survey average 46.4 years old. Everyone's older this time around, but the gap is about the same at 3.1 years. Age has a mild correlation with salaries.
- Working to One's Potential - Once again, more women than men in the survey feel that they are working to their full potential, given the parameters set for them by their companies. 85 percent of women report that they are working to their potential "always" or "almost always." But only 79 percent of the men believe that.
- Time on the Job - Women work about 1.9 hours less per week (46.6 hours), on average than men (48.5 hours). Here again, the difference has narrowed somewhat, from a 2.3 hour difference three years ago.
- Rural vs. Urban Bias - Women are about 50 percent more likely than men to work at rural companies (15 percent of the women in the survey vs. 10 percent of the men). Typically, companies in rural areas pay a bit less than those in suburban or urban areas. And significantly more men than women (44 to 37 percent, respectively) work at urban companies, which typically pay more than suburban or rural firms.
- Certifications - 14.0 percent of all men in the survey have earned the CCE designation, versus 6.5 percent of the women.
Apples-to-Apples Comparison
One of the great things we can do with our survey data is to compare data while "drilling down" in order to - as best as possible - compare apples to apples. Here we examined men vs. women while holding staff size (in this case 11 to 20), education, and the question of whether or not they are the top credit exec at their company constant.
Conclusions
Remember, we started with an overall gap of 35 percent gap between men and women. But here we find that women are on equal footing, or in fact have a slight edge. But still, in reviewing the data, we find that women managing smaller staffs are paid less than their male counterparts, though the difference is significantly less than the 35 percent overall gap.
So we still see some inequalities that we can't fully explain by other variables, but it does appear that at larger companies, it's a level playing field. Inequities are more likely to be seen at smaller companies.
