Earning an MBA can chart a new path for career switchers—and often comes with a hefty pay bump. On average, MBA grads earn $115,000 per year, which is about double the salary of a bachelor’s degree holder, according to the Graduate Management Admissions Council.
But not all MBA grads earn equitable amounts. While the degree can boost the pay of women by 57% or more in their first post-MBA job, it doesn’t eliminate the gender pay and promotion gap—in fact, the pay gap widens, according to a recent study by the Forté Foundation, an organization focused on career development and business education for women.
Men with MBAs currently earn more than $209,000, on average, versus $173,000 for women—and this amounts to a gender pay gap of 17%, based on responses from nearly 1,500 current MBA holders. That’s even wider than the pay gap women experience in their first post-MBA jobs, which is 8%. In other words, as women progress throughout their careers post-MBA, their pay gap continues to widen.
“When you look at men versus women, the gap is not narrowing the way we’d like to see it,” Elissa Sangster, CEO of the Forté Foundation, tells Fortune. “And when you look at women of color, you see them behind all other categories, as well.”
It’s not all bad news, though
While the pay gap still exists, there is still “good news” when looking at post-MBA salaries, Sangster says. Women do see a significant bump in their pre-MBA and first post-MBA salaries—and again as they advance throughout their career.
Plus, several women who have earned an MBA degree have gone on to lead Fortune 500 companies—including CVS CEO Karen S. Lynch, who earned her MBA from Boston University and Anthem CEO Gail K. Boudreaux, who earned her MBA from Columbia Business School. Meanwhile, Mary T. Barra, CEO of General Motors, earned her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Centene CEO Sarah M. London got her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. These are all top-ranked MBA programs by Fortune.
In addition to climbing the corporate ladder, an MBA does prove to advance women’s salaries in the long term. On average, women made $76,660 pre-MBA salaries, $126,710 in their first post-MBA salaries, and $173,070 in their current roles—an overall 126% increase, according to the study.
For example, Rachana Tomer, a 2017 MBA graduate from George Washington University’s School of Business saw a “drastic” change between her pre-MBA and post-MBA salaries—although largely due to geography. After earning her undergraduate degree from Osmania University in India, Tomer worked for Deloitte in India making about 20,000 rupees, or the equivalent of approximately $3,000 to $4,000 per year.
After completing her MBA, she saw her salary jump to about $90,000 per year, which has increased, on average, over the years. Although she took a slight pay cut during her time with Accenture as a lead marketing technology strategist, she saw a 40% pay bump in her next role with Perficient as a Marketo architect. In her next role at Persefoni as a marketing operations lead she landed a 20% raise. She now works as a senior marketing operations manager with Neo4j, where she didn’t take a significant pay bump, but earned stock options and bonuses.
One way that Tomer successfully earned promotions and raises was through the art of negotiation.
“In the beginning of my career, I absolutely did not negotiate,” she tells Fortune. “You are able to negotiate better when you know your value and the value that you bring to your employer.”
Similarly, Jie “Jessica” Su, a 2016 MBA graduate from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, leveraged her degree to make a career switch from journalism to digital marketing and program management roles. She recently earned a promotion with Amazon as a senior program manager—and after negotiation, she earned about a 15% raise.
Su recommends that women do their research ahead of salary negotiations because recruiters will often first offer the most basic compensation package, she says. This includes conducting research on websites including Glassdoor, which can show salary ranges for specific positions at major companies.
“I was well prepared for that negotiation call with all of the data and information I gathered, so I was actually really confident when I negotiated the salary with the recruiter,” Su tells Fortune. “Know your value and why they should give you this much.”
Why the pay gap still exists
A major reason that the pay gap continues to widen is because women still have fewer opportunities for career advancement and leadership positions, Sangster explains. She distinguishes between “line” roles in which professionals have direct reports versus those who hold “staff” roles.
Because women aren’t being promoted at the same rate as men, fewer women are taking on “line,” or supervisory roles, which caps the overall compensation they can earn.
“You can’t just go in and flip a switch and say, ‘We’re going to give everybody a pay raise that needs a pay raise and that’s going to solve the problem’ because it’s all interwoven in the role they’ve taken,” Sangster says.
While the study didn’t break down compensation differences between industries, the pay gap is going to be more prominent in industries where there is a predominance of men, Sangster says. That largely includes finance and tech where the leadership balance is “more extreme,” skewing toward more men.
“Unless the leadership is really thinking about this problem and addressing it, some of those systemic barriers that are holding women back are probably not being addressed,” she says. “It’s important for those industries that are still male-dominated to be asking themselves the question of whether they’re really seeing change happen.”
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