Advertisement

Women Hit With Salary ‘Penalty’

Share
From Associated Press

Professional women who put careers on hold for family or other reasons earn 18% less once they return to the workforce, a survey published in the Harvard Business Review found.

The salary “penalty” for hopping off the career track is even higher in the business world, where earnings drop an average of 28%, according to the survey by the New York-based Center for Work-Life Policy.

The drop in pay partly reflects many women’s decisions to return to work in jobs with less responsibility, or to part-time jobs. But it may also reflect that women are exiting the workforce during the years when many men make the largest leaps up the corporate ladder, the survey’s authors concluded.

Advertisement

The price for exiting work steepens the longer women wait before returning. Women who take less than a year off from their careers return to the labor force at an average of 11% less pay. But those who take off for three years or more return to pay averaging 37% less than what they originally earned, according to the survey.

The survey tapped more than 2,400 women nationwide, focusing on those with a graduate degree, professional degree or undergraduate degree with high honors. The group also surveyed 653 similarly qualified men as a means of drawing comparisons.

The notion that more executive women are choosing to exit the workforce has generated considerable attention over the last year in business circles. The survey, done last summer, is one of the first efforts to try to verify and explain women’s choices.

The return to lower pay has multiple causes, the study concludes. Nearly four in 10 of those surveyed said they had intentionally chosen a job with fewer responsibilities and lower pay in a trade-off for having more time for family life.

About 44% of the women who exit the workforce do so to gain more family time, and 23% to pursue a degree or additional training. Just 12% of men said they put aside work to devote more time to family.

Advertisement