Female executives get bigger pay increases than men when changing employers, according to a July 14 report from MIT Sloan Management Review.
Researchers analyzed executives from a top five executive placement firm, interviews with search firm executives and career history from more than 2,000 senior-level external job switches.
Five study findings:
- Women get larger raises when moving to a senior position at highly visible public companies that have a global presence, or in industries where women are underrepresented.
- Among senior executives, pay increases for women who switched employers were 9.41 percentage points higher than increases for men.
- When women move to publicly traded companies, they gain more. The average pay increase was 33.2 percent, 11.5 percentage points higher than men's average increase of 21.7 percent.
- Higher percentage increases are not the same as higher pay. Women are still paid less than men, the report said. Men's pay was 19.5 percentage points higher than women's in the previous role and 14 percentage points higher in the new role.
- In addition to base salary, when performance-based compensation is considered, the difference in pay between both genders drops from 6.2 percentage points to zero, the report said.