Women Closing Salary Gap, Study Says

Women’s salaries equal and even surpass men’s salaries in certain fields, according to a magazine survey. It’s more likely, though, for men to be the beneficiaries of a salary gap, according to the annual survey by Working Woman magazine. Overall the study found that women continue to narrow the pay gap with men. Those results jibe with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported in May that women earn 76.5 cents on the dollar compared with men. That’s an increase of 0.2 cent from 1998 and a 14-cent increase since the government started keeping track in 1979. But the Working Woman study found wide variations depending on the industry. In advertising, female chief executives average an annual salary of $275,000, compared with $253,100 for men. Female physicists earn $65,208, about $400 more than their male counterparts. In occupational therapy, women make an average of $39,312, which is $7,384 more than male occupational therapists. The study also found that women and men often start out with similar salaries, but males who have accrued seniority are paid better than women with similar experience. The magazine’s survey is based on analysis of data from government and industry sources, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Society of Professional Engineers and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.