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International Women’s Day: Gender pay gap closes by just 1% in 2018

Published on: 8 Mar 2019

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International Women’s Day, held on March 8th every year, is a celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world, as well as a call to action for gender parity.

A survey carried out by GAAPweb in November 2018 found that, for women in Finance and Accountancy, the past year had been one of slow progress to equality, with the gender pay gap in the sector closing by just 1%.

Of the 2000 individuals surveyed, 62% of women received a pay rise compared with 59% of men, perhaps indicating that employers are taking steps to remedy the gender pay gap. But these efforts appear to only be skin-deep.

Women are becoming increasingly well-represented, and in some cases out-earning men, in several key Finance and Accountancy job titles, but continue to suffer inadequate representation in senior, high paid roles.

The results of our survey demonstrate that behind the basic pay rise and job title data, Finance and Accountancy is a profession still plagued by gender disparity.

Female CFOs, for example, earned more in 2018 than their male equivalents - but only 7% of CFOs surveyed were women. Similarly, we found that women out-earned men in 7 of the 24 job titles surveyed, but those job titles are 7 of the 8 lowest paid roles in the profession.

Progress is progress, and 1% closer to equality is better than 1% further from it. On International Women’s day we celebrate the achievements of women in Finance and the steps taken towards parity, while recognising there is much work still to do before any meaningful gender balance is obtained.

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