COMP NEWS – Several recent surveys and reports have confirmed an unpleasant truth: pay disparity among women and minorities in the tech world remains a chasmic issue.

The gap between what white men are paid and how much women and minorities earn has narrowed over the past few decades.

The latest data from the US Census Bureau shows women now make about 82 cents on the dollar compared with their male counterparts. (Other studies show women make about 98 cents on the dollar compared with men.)

But the most recent studies show a much wider gap when it comes to overall compensation, which includes salary, bonuses, equity sharing, healthcare, titles, and any other benefits given to employees. For example, Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are often issued to an employee through a vesting plan and distribution schedule after achieving required performance milestones.

There is an even wider disparity in access to comparable employee benefits for women in technology:

Stock options and equity grants are far more skewed, especially for women in technology jobs. Female software engineers, for example, only make 64 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to Pave, a company that sells employee pay benchmarking tools.

“That’s the one that’s extremely alarming in my opinion,” said Pave CEO Matt Schulman.

The disparity closes when it comes to cash compensation, where one data survey shows that women make almost equal pay to their male counterparts.

By comparison, when it comes to only cash compensation, Pave’s study showed women make 94 cents to the dollar compared to men. Pave’s data comes from its HR software, which is used by 2,600 customers’ systems.

Gaps in salary also tend to become normalized over time as employees gain seniority, but compensation — such as corporate profit sharing or stock options — tends to remain stagnant over an employee’s career. “The value of equity may be $100,000 today, but what about when the company is worth $1 billion or $10 billion. Deltas in equity compensation get bigger over time where cash is a one-way door,” Schulman said.

Another recent tech industry report showed that the wage disparity among women and minorities narrowed for most people groups, with one stark exception – black women.

Online job search site Hired recently released its annual State of Wage Inequality in the Tech Industry report. The study also showed that while the wage gap across gender and race is narrowing, it’s still prevalent. Black women continue to see the widest gap among the demographics analyzed.

“In 2021, the wage gap narrowed by race and gender across all races, except for Black women,” Hired said.

To read more about recent reports on pay equity and disparity in the tech industry, click here.

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