Do women ever make more than men? And if so, in what jobs?
There’s a lot of speculation, but with the latest Australian Taxation Office (ATO) taxation statistics in hand, we can answer this question with facts.
Let’s start with the top 10 jobs where – on average – women made more than men in 2020-21.
I did not know saw sharpener was a real job. But there it is in the official ATO stats.
Apparently 45 women and 245 men worked in the trade of saw sharpening in 2020-21, so there you go – women make more than $100 grand keeping those saw teeth in shape.
But that is not the highest-paid profession in which women made more than men – that honour goes to magistrates.
There’s a fairly even gender balance in that profession – 242 women and 334 men (the size of the circles on the graphs tells you how many people worked in the job – by far the biggest is female medical receptionist with 44,000 jobs).
Male models are making less dough than their female counterparts.
Modelling is the least well-paid job on the list, but also the one where the percentage difference between men and women is highest.
There’s 976 women making $27,000 on average, and 275 men making just $16,000 on average. (Come to think of it, some of these could be boys and girls rather than men and women – there’s always lots of kids modelling clothes in Kmart and Aldi catalogues, and even kids need to pay tax).
The ifs and the buts
Now, none of this data tells you the hourly rate. We need to accept that at the start.
We are going to be looking at footballers and neurosurgeons, models and apprentice jockeys, bulldozer operators and dental assistants.
All the jobs are very different, and the ATO doesn’t tell us how many hours they did, just that they did them.
The earnings are annual earnings. If a job is seasonal, it shows up just the same as a job someone does every day.
We’re just looking at where the money goes, not why or how fast it flows.
If you’re a female model who only gets out of bed for $10,000 a day, maybe you can make more money in a day than a male apprentice gets in six months. Whatever. We’re not arguing about that.
With that out of the way, here’s the full list – all 71 jobs where women made more than men in 2020-21.
There’s some weird jobs on here. Mushroom pickers? How is that a category of its own? Motion picture projectionist? Do we still need those? And also quite a few apprentice jobs, where women (and girls) are in a minority and the result might be because of statistical noise.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – what about the reverse? Let’s look at the top 10 jobs where men made more than women.
What hits the eye: these jobs are extremely well paid. No part-time models on this list – and the gaps are huge.
Female magistrates made seven per cent more than male magistrates on average. But male futures traders made almost three times as much as their female counterparts ($386,000 vs $134,000).
It pays to be a male diagnostic and interventional radiologist. They make $422,000 in average, about $192,000 more than their female counterparts.
And check out the size of the dots: the blue ones are bigger in most cases. While the female jobs were ones where women were in a minority, like saw sharpener, these jobs are ones with a male majority, except for the pathologists.
Now, I could make a chart of all the jobs where men make more than women, but it would have more than a thousand rows – it’s basically a list of all jobs except the ones above. Instead, let’s look at the jobs where men and women made the same.
It includes at least one occupation that I think of as being male-dominated – private detective. There are 441 male private detectives and 204 female private detectives.
It also includes a bunch of jobs that are more female-dominated, like vet nurse.
The reality of most jobs is this: men make more.
That’s partly because the professions that pay men more are very numerous. It’s partly because the professions that pay men more pay a lot. And partly because men are more likely to work full time.
Perhaps in some cases men are being paid more than women for the same work, but this data cannot say if that is happening.
Before we go, let’s look at one more fun subset of jobs: sportspeople.
For this one, I’ve used total income, not salary and wages, because prize money isn’t salary.
It’s a nice little microcosm, with some very high-paid jobs where men earn more than women, (cricket, football), but also a small subset of jobs – gymnast, swimmer, golfer and tennis player – where women can make more.
The fact the female tennis players result is so strong is down to the success of one Queenslander: Ash Barty, who was ranked number one that financial year.
Reaching the Quarterfinals of the Aussie Open netted her $400,000, and winning the Miami Open got her another $US300,000.
She doesn’t live in the Bahamas like Nick Kyrgios, so her numbers show up in the ATO spreadsheet, while his don’t.
Jason Murphy is an economist | @jasemurphy. He is the author of the book Incentivology.