Study: Wage Gap Persists

That Harvard diploma may not be quite enough to break the glass ceiling, according to findings released this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

The report, which found that women earn less than men as soon as one year after graduation from college, was released Monday, a day before Equal Pay Day—an annual commemoration of how far into the next year a woman needs to work in order to have earned as much as a man did the previous year.

The study found that not only do women earn 80 percent of what recent male graduates make one year out of college, but that gap widens by 11 percentage points 10 years after graduation, with women earning 69 percent of what men earn. A disparity still exists, albeit smaller, after controlling for occupational or lifestyle factors affecting earnings.

Another surprising find is that a disparity exists even though women consistently achieve better academic performance than men in college.

The salary gap persists between men and women from the same major.

“It’s not something you can just avoid by going to the right college or getting the right grades,” said AAUW Director of Research Catherine Hill, one of the authors of the study.

William Wright-Swadel, director of the Office of Career Services, said that primary parents looking for flexible schedules within a certain field—such as medicine—often have to accept a lower paying job than those not requiring such hours.

He added that although salary size is “certainly not the first thing on an 18-year-old’s mind,” he has more discussions about the issue with female than male undergraduates.

Jasmine J. Mahmoud ’04—who began her career in finance and eventually ended up at the Brennan Center for Justice—said that in her experience there are more women than men in the nonprofit sector.

And even though Mahmoud has chosen a field that typically offers lower salaries, she is still confident that she has chosen right.

“I know what I wanna do, and I made a conscious choice to go after these jobs,” she said.