The Pay Equity Gap Between Genders Is Widening In 2023, New Study Shows

March is Women’s History Month, and as a man, I am saddened and embarrassed that to say it’s 2023, and my female colleagues and friends are still fighting for reproductive rights, protection from toxic workplace abuse and gender discrimination and pay equity. Gender discrimination is still alive and well in boardrooms, operating rooms and university conference rooms around the country on a regular basis. I’ve seen women being left behind firsthand. Shocking, perhaps, but true. Few will deny we have come far in workplace equality, but we still have a long way to go until women are fully recognized equally to men for their contributions in the workforce.

The Toxic Culture Gender Gap

According to new research released in MIT Sloan Management Review, women are 41% more likely than men to experience toxic corporate culture. The toll of the pandemic appears to have widened the toxic culture gender gap. Over the six years from 2016 to 2021, women were 35% more likely to negatively mention toxic culture compared to men. Additional findings from the MIT Sloan Management Review include:

• The toxic culture gap does not appear to diminish with seniority. Across self-reported C-level roles, women are 53% more likely to experience toxicity than men—higher than the average across all job categories.
• The occupation of chef exhibits the largest gender gap in toxic culture in our data, with female chefs 81% more likely to experience toxic culture than their male counterparts.
• Chefs exhibit the largest gender gap in toxic culture, and women chefs are nearly twice as likely to discuss toxic culture in their reviews.
• 14 of the 16 occupations with the smallest toxic culture gender gap are jobs with a high percentage of female employees, including childcare workers, psychologists, social workers and communication associates. Even in most of these cases, the toxic culture gender gap exists. It is just smaller.
• The four sectors with the largest toxic culture gender gap are retail, transportation, investment services and restaurants. Investment services (including brokerages, venture capital, private equity, investment banking and asset management) stand out among white collar industries for the size of the gap between men and women experiencing toxic culture. It’s worth noting that more traditional financial institutions, including insurance firms, banks, and credit unions all have gaps below the average of all industries.
• The women in the sample used more than 14,000 distinct words, terms and phrases to describe elements of a toxic culture, and the two most frequently mentioned were “favoritism” and “clique.”
• Women and men discuss one element of toxic culture—unethical behavior—with roughly the same frequency.

The Latest Research On Pay Equity

One study found that women who show promise early in their academic careers have fewer leadership prospects in the workplace. “Our research clearly illustrates the barriers that exist for women, especially mothers in the workplace,” notes Jill Yavorsky, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who co-led the study. “At the same time, given that even men with low grades go on to attain higher leadership roles than women, this study highlights perhaps the lack of barriers that men face in securing greater leadership opportunities.” It’s also not unusual for women to receive less pay, fewer benefits, fewer opportunities or to be passed up for jobs or promotions for which they are well qualified.

Earlier this week Visier released a study on pay equity that showed signs of not only stagnation in progress toward closing the gap, but a disheartening widening, in contrast to the equal-wage progress made over the last five years. “The compensation gap between women and men has rightly generated a lot of attention. National Equal Pay Day, which falls on March 14, 2023, highlights the difference in average compensation by marking the number of extra days a woman has to work to earn as much as her male counterpart,” says lead author Donald Sull, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder of CultureX, a company that uses AI to measure and improve corporate culture.

The number is 73—the number of extra days into the new year women must work to equal the pay of men, according to the study. Visier’s data comprising over 15 million employee records, revealed incremental progress towards pay equity culminating in a historic high of women earning $0.85 to the dollar on average compared to their male counterparts. But updated data from 2022 shows the first ever decline in pay equity progress since Visier began tracking in 2017. According to the report, this decline, from $0.85 to $0.84 may not feel significant on its own, but it shows a clear faltering in progress.

What The Data Means For Organizations

In order to recoup gains and continue to see progress, the Visier report insists that organizations will need to make pay parity a priority in 2023 . . . Even worse, there is the risk that the decline in pay equity in 2022 could be replicated in 2023 due to the impact of adverse economic conditions and inflationary pressures. “Toxic culture is not only an outlier in terms of the sentiment gap between women and men, it exacts an enormous toll on organizations and individuals,” continued Sull. “In our work advising firms on how to fix toxic cultures, we have found that leaders who successfully narrow the toxic culture gap begin by focusing on the employee experience and identifying and rooting out toxic behaviors across all levels of the organization through a sustained cultural detox effort.”

If you’re a leader of an organization, it’s in your company’s best interest to address the legal responsibilities to which you adhere in regard to gender discrimination. If allowed to continue, the toxicity and dissatisfaction hurts the company’s bottom line. Workplace performance eventually drops, and the organization’s integrity is compromised. Minimizing, covering up or turning your head the other way, in effect, creates a toxic work culture for all employees. The company becomes a revolving door for workers, and it will be more difficult to attract and retain talented employees who can always find a mentally healthier and more supportive work environment that makes accommodations for gender equality for all workers.