It’s 2016, but women – even in elite professions – still earn less

Having data helps sharpen the conversation:

In the legal field, a 2016 survey of compensation paid to in-house counsel found that female lawyers who work as corporate counsel earn 15 per cent less than their male in-house counterparts.

“This wage gap cannot be fully explained away by the assertion that ’men have been in the workplace longer,’ as men have fewer average years as both legal counsel and senior counsel and [yet] still earn a higher base salary,” according to a report by the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and The Counsel Network, a national legal recruitment firm. “For in-house counsel, the gender wage gap is real and it is not shrinking… In all sectors, except government, where woman have wage parity, men earn a higher salary than women.”

(The average annual salary for all in-house counsel surveyed is $165,000.)

A 2015 survey conducted by Chartered Professional Accountants Canada uncovered similar results: “At the total level, female members have a median total compensation of $99,000 versus $120,000 among their male counterparts.”

Some – but not all – of this is explained by the preponderance of men in more highly paid executive roles, said the CPA, which also provided a compensation breakdown by role and gender, based on 2014 pay stubs.

Examples: median annual compensation for male accountants in chief financial officer roles was $180,000, compared with $140,000 for females; $125,00 for male treasurers, compared with $98,000 for females; $133,000 for male professors, compared with $109,000 for females; $250,000 for male partners in accounting practices compared with $190,000 for females.

“It’s a fairly recent thing that we have looked at the data and gone on the record with it. That’s obviously good, because just recognizing that there is a problem can lead to change,” Robin Taub, volunteer chair of the CPA Canada’s women’s leadership council, said in an interview.

The most recent in-house counsel compensation survey – the fourth such survey conducted since 2009 – “was shocking” in that the gender pay gap has not narrowed “and it’s 2016,” said Dal Bhathal, Toronto-based managing partner of The Counsel Network.

This time, however, perhaps because it is 2016, “I can tell you that, absolutely, in the in-house counsel community, it has definitely received attention,” Ms. Bhathal said.

At a time when the federal government has its first-ever gender-balanced cabinet and securities regulators now require publicly traded companies to disclose the percentage of women on their boards of directors and in executive positions, the issue of gender equity is not only on the corporate radar, it’s on the agenda.

Source: It’s 2016, but women – even in elite professions – still earn less – The Globe and Mail