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Innovation

Which city has the smallest pay gap for women in tech?

TriNet analyzed salary data from small tech companies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
Written by Janet Fang, Contributor

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New data on salaries at small tech companies show that the pay gap between executive-level men and women is smaller in San Francisco than in New York, while for programmers, it's the other way around. Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

The figures were complied by HR services provider TriNet, which analyzed salary data from October for 5,600 workers at small technology companies in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York regions for Businessweek.

Top-level managers were counted as "executives" and "software engineers" includes programmers, developers, and all manners of web ninjas.

Here are some highlights:

  • The median salary for women in executive roles was 9 percent less than for men in the Bay Area.
  • In New York, female execs earn almost one-third less than men; in Los Angeles, the gap is 20 percent.
  • Coders seeking equal pay may have a better chance in New York: the median salary software engineers earn is 10 percent less for women than for men, compared with 20 percent in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
  • In Los Angeles, the median pay gaps for both executives and programmers are about the same: women earned 20 percent less than men.
  • Executives and engineers of both genders earn more (absolute amounts) in San Francisco than their counterparts in other cities.

Women made less than 13 percent in the company's sample. Differences in education and work experience were not controlled for in the analysis.

A 2012 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that women make about 81 cents for every dollar that men do -- up from 62 cents in 1979. Women in management positions across the country earn 27 percent less than men, while those in "computer and mathematical occupations" earn 19 percent less.

[Businessweek]

Image: TriNet SMBeat August 2013

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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