Gender pay gap narrows – but remains – across investor relations

The gender pay gap identified by IR Magazine research in 2012 has noticeably narrowed over the last two years, though equal pay remains elusive.

Median average salaries for IROs now fall within the same range of between $100,000 and $149,999 a year for both men and women, with 30 percent of male IROs taking home this level of remuneration compared to 29 percent of females, according to new research taken from the IR Magazine Global Investor Relations Practice Report 2014. In 2012, the average female IRO salary was $75,000-$99,999.

The gap between male and female IROs earning more than $150,000 has also shrunk, although there is still work to do. A quarter of female IROs now achieve this level of pay, versus 36 percent of men, marking an improvement on the 2012 figures when a male IRO was nearly four times more likely than his female counterpart to earn in excess of $150,000.

When it comes to those leading the IR department, the average salary for male IR heads remains above that of female peers, with men taking home a salary in line with the global average of $200,000-$249,999 a year.

There has been an improvement in the percentage of female IR heads taking home both the average salary and higher pay packets, however. For example, over a quarter of female IR heads (26 percent) now receive a salary of more than $250,000 a year, compared with 29 percent of male IR heads. This is in stark contrast to IR Magazine’s 2012 survey, when 24 percent of male IR heads received more than $250,000 – close to double the 13 percent of female IR chiefs achieving the same level of remuneration.

‘When we highlighted this issue two years ago, we saw it as a wake-up call for the IR community,’ says Janet Dignan, founding editor of IR Magazine. ‘There’s no such thing as an acceptable difference in pay between men and women, but these findings are a clear improvement.’

The IR Magazine Global Investor Relations Practice Report 2014 is based on a survey of over 1,500 IR practitioners worldwide and will be published on November 25. More than 600 respondents provided salary data for the gender pay section of this study.