Graduating from business school and pursuing graduate studies in the same field do not put graduates on the same economic basis or the same salaries as males and females, a new survey finds that the gender wage gap widens as career progresses.
The survey found that female MBA graduates earn about $11,000 less than their male colleagues, a disparity that grows to more than $60,000 a year after less than a decade, according to CBS News.
Post-MBA men earned an average of $177,112 in 2020, while women earned $147,412, or $29,700 less, according to results published by the Forté Foundation Thursday.
The 20% pay gap has narrowed from 39%, the Austin, Texas-based nonprofit found in a similar 2016 survey.
The institution recently surveyed 3,133 MBA students, students, and prospective graduates from 57 top-tier business school programs in the fall of 2020, and women performed worse in terms of pay, earning on average about $52,000 less on the job than all of the men surveyed.
Fewer female MBA students surveyed also expressed plans to rise to the top of the corporate body, as men are 3 times more likely to say they want the CEO position, for example.
“When it comes to professional results, women still lag behind men, and they don't aspire to high results,” Elisa Sangster, CEO of the Forté Foundation, said in a press release.
"This research tells us that the focus still needs to be to raise the bar for women in general and specifically, women of color when it comes to salary," Sangster continued.
Women more commonly work in lower-wage industries such as food services, healthcare, and childcare, but Forté's data helps explain the gap in what the genders make when performing the same jobs, even in higher-paying fields.
The gender gap has remained relatively constant in the United States over the past 15 years or so, according to a Pew Research Center report, and women earned 84% of what men earned in 2020, according to a Pew analysis of average hourly wages for full-time and part-time workers. Which was released in May.
According to Sangster: “Although women have increased their presence in traditionally male-dominated higher-paying jobs, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole are still overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share in the labor force, and this may contribute to gender differences in wages.
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