Female MBA graduates earn less than their male colleagues, a gap that grows even greater over time, according to a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The results of the paper were published last week in the Economist.
The authors tracked the earnings of 1,600 MBA graduates from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (now Chicago Booth) between 1990 and 2006. According to their findings, males edged out females only slightly in income in their first year out of school. But the pay discrepancy increased steadily over time, with males earning as much as 90 percent more than their female counterparts 10 years after graduation.
The authors of the study attributed the differences to the subjects students chose to take (women took fewer finance courses), more frequent interruptions in women’s careers and the fact that the women worked fewer hours than the men, according to the Economist article.
Women MBAs having children contributed to the more frequent interruptions in their careers and their tendency to work fewer hours, according to the Economist. Upon having children, women MBAs cut back on hours or dropped out of the work force entirely. Ten years after graduation, 13 percent of the women in the study were not working at all, compared to just 1 percent of men, the Economist reported.
Active discrimination is not believed to have played much of a role in the pay gap, the researchers stressed. “But the continued influence of gender roles in determining career paths is clear,” the Economist wrote.
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