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The 15 Most Sexist Jobs In America
Alison GriswoldNov 14, 2013, 23:15 IST
Flickr via mlazarevski
Among the hundreds of full-time jobs tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women earn more than men in only two. On average, women working full time make only about 81% of the median earnings of their male counterparts.
To find out which jobs feature the biggest gender wage gaps, we compared the median weekly earnings of men and women working full time in 2012 in the same job titles, as reported by the BLS. We then ranked the jobs with the largest pay discrepancies in percentage terms.
As a broad category, sales appears to be one of the worst areas for women. In sales and related occupations, women make on average 62.2% of what men earn in those same positions, according to data from the BLS. Legal, management, production, and business and financial operations occupations also tend to pay women far less than men.
While the report doesn't speculate on why men significantly out-earn women in particular fields, firm size, geographic location, and industry may all factor into the discrepancies. Women may be more likely to pursue career paths at smaller companies and nonprofits, and may also be less successful at salary negotiations. Discrimination, either by employers or clients, may also contribute, particularly in legal, business, and management careers without clearly defined salary ranges.
To be sure, the wage gap as a whole has improved significantly over the past three decades. In 1979, women earned 62% as much as men in the same job titles. That figure has jumped 20 percentage points to women's current earnings of 81 cents on the dollar.
Most of that progress, however, came between the 1980s and the early 2000s. Improvements in the gender wage gap largely stalled after the onset of the Great Recession, and women's salaries have hovered around 80% of men's for roughly the past decade.
Here are the 15 jobs with the largest gender wage gaps, based on the latest data from the BLS:
1. Insurance sales agents
Women's median weekly earnings: $641
Women's pay as a percentage of men's: 62.5%
2. Retail salespersons
3. Sales and related workers (all other)
4. Real estate brokers and sales agents
Women's pay as a percentage of men's: 66%
5. Personal financial advisors
Women's median weekly earnings: $1,016
6. Marketing and sales managers
7. Education administrators
8 (tie). General and operations managers
8 (tie). Physicians and surgeons
10. Securities, commodities, and financial services sales agents
11. Inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers
12. Claims adjusters, appraisers, examiners, and investigators
13. Financial managers
14. First-line supervisors of production and operating workers
15. Sales representatives (wholesale and manufacturing)
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1The 15 Most Sexist Jobs In America
2Don't Waste Mark Cuban's Time With Your Long Business Backstory
3More Professionals Are Turning To Psychics In The Uncertain Economy
4More Layoffs At Fab, The Retail Site That Lost A Third Of Its Staff And Most Of Its Traffic This Year
5Jack Welch: Trust Your Gut In Deal-Making But Not In Hiring