By Quentin Fottrell
Female personal financial advisers make little more than half (56.4%) of what their male counterparts make, compared to 83% overall, facing the widest wage gap across all occupations, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, which has analyzed salary trends for women and men since 1960. The institute made its calculations based on 2017 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Each week, women financial advisers on average make $760 less than their male colleagues,” says Ariane Hegewisch, program director for employment and earnings at the institute. It is “ironic” that an industry focused on helping people achieve financial security has one of the biggest gender wage gaps, she adds. (The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, an industry group, was not immediately available for comment.)
Rebecca Fender, the head of future of finance at CFA Institute, says about 18% of financial advisers are women. “We are looking to profile more of the successful women in our industry,” she told MarketWatch. “It’s an important element to attract women into the industry. Visibility is validity.” She was surprised, she says, by the size of the gender wage gap for financial advisers and hopes that more firms disclose wage data. “We don’t think there should be a wage gap for doing similar work.”
