Why do women earn less than men?
Position, industry, and years of experience are the top three factors that affect the gender pay gap, while education plays a positive role in reducing the gender gap.
1. Differences in industry are a significant factor in the gender pay gap. Among the female share of the top 15 highest-paying jobs for the whole of 2018, except for strategy consulting and securities analysts, which ranked 14th and 15th, the female share of the remaining jobs was generally below 30%. Artificial intelligence and big data-related positions such as machine learning, deep learning, image recognition, and architects, which are currently the hottest in the tech field, have a female share of less than 20%, or even single digits. The low participation rate of women in high-paying technical positions makes the pay gap increasingly obvious. And in recent years, as business model dividends in various fields have waned and industry giants have shifted to a technology-driven approach, salaries for senior technical positions have continued to skyrocket, further reinforcing the pay advantage of high-earning men in related fields.
2. Job selection is the biggest factor leading to the salary differentiation between men and women. Judging from the job-seeking characteristics of both men and women, men are more inclined to positions with high work intensity and high pay returns, such as technology and sales; while women are more in favor of balanced positions with average work intensity and medium pay, such as administration, operation and marketing. In the past two years, more and more women have been flocking to senior technical, product and management positions, but the relationship between men and women in most of the high-paying positions still shows a clear imbalance. Although women earn more than men in most industries, women still earn more than men in education and training, wedding/photography and real estate.
3. Years and hours of work are also important reasons. In fact, one of the reasons for women's low income is that women divide their energies among their families. For the family, women seem to play a more important role than men.
In summary, we can see that there is a reason why the average salary of women in China is lower than that of men.