By Caroline Kitchener
Across the United States, 34-year-old women, on average, make between 10 and 18 percent less than 34-year-old men. That gap isn’t surprising—it’s actually been slowly improving in recent years. What’s striking is that, when you only consider Ivy League graduates, the gap is significantly wider. This wage disparity came to light in a study by The Equal Opportunity Project, recently featured in The New York Times, that focused primarily on socioeconomic inequality. The study showed that female Ivy League alumni make 30 percent less than their male peers.
In their early 20s, Ivy League women keep up with men. They graduate with higher GPAs and start at similar salaries. But somewhere between age 26 and 34, their male classmates advance professionally at a pace they don’t match.
