Salary Survey: IT Gender Pay Gap Keeps Growing

Are women in IT paid the same or less than men in IT are paid in terms of salary? While individual situations may vary, overall men continue to make more than women in IT, according to the InformationWeek Salary Survey 2022 [available for free PDF download with site registration].

In fact, the gender wage gap in this year’s survey hit $23,000 a year, marking the largest wage gap InformationWeek has seen in its salary survey since we began to track the wage gap. The gap was at its narrowest in 2019 when it was $15,000.

It’s hardly news that the gender pay gap remains in full force. No forces great or small have been enough to alter the trend yet, even if the inequities have received more attention in recent years.

For instance, this year on International Women’s Day, as firms in the UK were tweeting proudly about the accomplishments of the women who work for them, the @PayGapApp bot on Twitter was retweeting every tweet tagged #IWD2022, together with each particular organization’s gender pay gap. (Since 2017, the UK government has required all companies with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap.) It made for some embarrassing moments for some organizations, and a few of them ended up deleting their original tweets.

But while there may be more transparency than there has been in the past about gender inequities in pay, that hasn’t translated into shrinking the pay gap yet in IT.

(You Haven’t) Shown Us The Money

Median total compensation for female IT pros in 2021 was $105,000, the same as it was in 2020. That compares to the median total compensation for male IT pros of $128,000 in 2021, up from $125,000 in 2020. While that wasn’t a huge increase in median total compensation for men year-over-year, it was still better than the salary stagnancy experienced by women IT pros.

Indeed, over the long term the trend is just as bleak. Median total compensation for female IT pros has risen by just $5,000 over the two years from 2019 to 2021. That compares to the raise in median total compensation for men of $13,000 during the same time period.

Management vs. Staff?

InformationWeek also looked at the distribution of women and men in management versus staff roles. Could differences there -- where managers were paid more -- possibly contribute to or cause the gender wage gap in IT? The answer to that was a resounding “no.” The InformationWeek sample of women IT workers were 50% management and 50% staff compared to our sample of men IT workers who were 47% managers and 53% staff.

Men Less Likely to Believe There is a Pay Gap

Perspectives differ on the gender wage gap. InformationWeek asked IT pros whether a gender pay gap exists in their organizations. This year 36% said there was no such pay gap. However, if you break out those numbers by the gender of the person answering the question, the difference is stark. Of women IT pros, only 12% said there is no gender wage gap while 39% of men IT pros said there is no gender wage gap. Another 40% of women said they didn’t know if there was a gap, compared to 34% of men who said they didn’t know.

Getting Equitable Pay

What can women in IT do to level up their salaries? Career counsellors and recruitment professionals generally advise that if you want to get a bigger bump in pay, you should look for a new job. If you are a woman who is not making as much as the men at your organization, that’s even more incentive to look for a new job, perhaps at a company that has disclosed pay equity information. The InformationWeek Salary Survey showed that of women who were looking for a new job, 70% said they were making the change because they wanted higher compensation. (76% of male job seekers cited higher compensation.)

You can download the full InformationWeek Salary Survey 2022 PDF report for free here when you register at the InformationWeek site.

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