Why the pay gap persists in the female-dominated comms industry

Yet the same survey revealed that despite their domination, women are underpaid compared to their male counterparts. Women’s base salaries averaged $9,136 less than their male counterparts — $118,284 versus $109,148. The average salary of all communicators was $110,872.

That means women earn just 92% of what men do. The somewhat dark silver lining is that this is a smaller gap than in the economy as a whole, where women earn just 82 cents for every dollar a man earns, according to Pew Research. Men in communications are also more likely than women to earn more than $150,000 — 24% versus 16%.

This gap persists when we look at bonuses, with men reporting extra pay averaging $10,549 versus $7,248 on average for women, a huge 37% gap.

Additionally, 25% of men who received bonuses reported $20,000 or more, while only 10% of women did. And 14% of women who were handed bonus payments took in less than $1,000 for the year, compared to just 5% of men who earned at this lowest level. Men were also likely to earn bigger cost-of-living adjustments.