You: Shortchanged by sex, 7/26/99

Shortchanged by sex

By NEAL WEINBERG
Network World, 7/26/99

Suzan McAllister didn't get any fat bonuses this year - no stock options either. She received a modest 4% raise that brought her annual salary to $30,000.

But McAllister, network administrator and PC lab manager at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., isn't complaining. She's seen worse.

In her prior job, she was a full-time network manager and database administrator at a public school system in a small town in Michigan. After five years on the job, she was only earning $10,000 for the academic year.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a male co-worker who did the same job and had been in the school system for only 18 months was earning $24,000 per year. McAllister says the school administrators gave him all the credit, despite even his efforts to point out her accomplishments.

She's not alone in the perception that gender has worked against her when it comes to compensation. And the numbers back her up. Female network professionals earn 72 cents for each dollar earned by their male counterparts, according to the 1999 Network World Salary Survey (see chart).

Men are earning an average of $67,237 in base salary and $77,322 in total compensation this year, while women are only bringing home an average base salary of $51,789 and overall compensation of $55,596 in 1999.

Sherri Zickefoose is a 26-year-old systems administrator at Gerber Industries Ltd., a Phoenix company that imprints logos on items such as plastic water bottles. She works in a three-person department alongside a man who essentially does the same job she does.

Zickefoose earns $29,000 per year, while her male co-worker earns more than $40,000 per year - and he started after she did. The only difference is that she learned on the job, while he has Microsoft Certified Professional certification. "If we're accomplishing the same things, then I would think it would be equal," she says. But it isn't.

Zickefoose says she has mentioned the disparity to her bosses and has been told that she's getting good experience and that she shouldn't complain too loudly.

One female network administrator who didn't want to be named says she and her husband hold bachelor's degrees and do the same job at different companies. She makes about $14,000 less than her husband. And he works for a government agency, while she works in the private sector.

When asked to explain the wage gap, she summed it up in one word: "Genes."

Likewise, a 43-year-old woman who works at a branch office of a pharmaceutical company in the Midwest attributes her relatively low salary to gender bias.

She has six years' experience and singlehandedly runs a 133-user network. She earns $37,000 per year and got a 4% raise without any bonuses this year. "I've been doing some research. Help desk professionals make more money than I do," she says.

The network administrator adds, "I enjoy what I do. I would love to be compensated for it." She brings the topic up with her supervisors all the time but never gets a satisfactory response.

She has flirted with the idea of looking elsewhere for a job, but she is in the midst of a Year 2000 project that involves moving the desktops to Windows 98 and upgrading from NetWare 3.12 to NetWare 5. She's dedicated to seeing the project through completion.

The gender gap in network pay tracks fairly closely to national averages. For example, women earned 74 cents for each dollar earned by men in 1997, according to a U.S. Census Bureau analysis of median annual earnings of all year-round, full-time workers.

Susan Bianchi-Sand, director of the National Committee on Pay Equity, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization, says this gender gap has shown up in virtually all salary studies, no matter what occupational group is examined.

The explanation is simple, she says: "The culture hasn't adjusted to the fact that women bring as much to the table as men do."

She's the boss
Women IT business owners declare independence, set goals and define success. Network World, 7/27/98.

Career crisis
Feeding frenzy for Java-savvy whiz kids leaves 40-something IT pros high and dry. Network World, 9/14/99.

What you make
Results of our 1999 salary survey.

Salary calculator
Are you getting as much as your peers? Find out with our calculator: Answer questions about your experience, company size and location and it'll use the data from our salary survey to tell you how much you should be making.

Salary links
Articles on advancing your career.

Contact Features Editor Neal Weinberg

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