With research conducted by J. Thelander Consulting, it’s been found that “the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $39,621 while the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $50,383”. With this drastic pay difference, there’s no doubt that wage inequality is an issue. Though it’s often considered fact that women make only 70 cents to every man’s dollar, those facts can be delved deeper. In fact, women of color make less than white women, even with the wage inequality. And, while the tech world is working to better close the gap between wage inequality, biotech is one of the few industries that women of all backgrounds are paid the same as their male counterparts. Jody Thelander, CEO of J. Thelander Consulting, speaks on how this phenomenon could happen: With the push to bring more representation to STEM fields, understanding how biotech is helping to make gender inequality a thing of the past is important. And hopefully, other industries follow suit. But what the Thelander analysis found is that biotech is a unique case and that women make almost exactly the same amount as their male colleagues. It’s an exploding industry – PitchBook reported that more than $10 billion was invested in biotech companies last year alone – but what’s encouraging is that the Thelander survey found there’s almost no disparity between the median salaries earned by men and women and that women founders have more equity. Typically biotech executives have advanced degrees and years of training, which seems to track with the higher compensation, especially for women.”
