27-05-2025
Getting An MBA Boosts Earnings. It Won't Close The Gender Pay Gap
While the gender pay gap is just 6% in first post-MBA jobs, it tends to rise swiftly — to about ... More 17%—several years after graduation.
Getting an MBA tends to boost earnings significantly for both women and men, but it's not helping to close the gender pay gap, new research shows.
A survey of more than 1,000 graduates from elite MBA programs across the U.S., Europe and Canada, found that in the first post-MBA job, women's salaries, on average, rose 52% to $131,449 from their last pre-MBA role. Men's, meanwhile, surged 73% to $140,007.
Men who did not identify as belonging to an underrepresented minority group, enjoyed the biggest salary jump, of 74%, on average. Women who identified as belonging to an underrepresented minority group saw a 57% jump to $128,860, while women who did not experienced a 51% increase to $132,304.
The research, conducted by the non-profit Forté Foundation, also found that while the gender pay gap is just 6% in first post-MBA jobs, it tends to rise swiftly — to about 17%—several years after graduation. This mirrors the widening of the gender gap across border populations. In the U.S., for example, women aged between 25 and 34 earned an average of 95 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group – or a 5-cent gap—last year, according to the Pew Research Center. For workers of all ages, the gap is around 15 cents.
Forté in its survey—conducted at the end of 2024—also found that women with MBAs lagged their male counterparts in terms of the number of direct reports, distance in their current level from a CEO role, and amount of budget managed. And it established that while many MBAs said that they had changed jobs in order to become more senior, women were more likely to have done so than men. 'A third of MBAs of both genders say they have to change jobs to advance and this is much higher for women and minorities," commented Forté CEO Elissa Sangster. 'Clearly, we can do better than having MBAs believe they have to move out in order to move up.'
In terms of career satisfaction, the research showed that women MBAs were trailing their male peers, too. They reported lower levels of satisfaction than men across all five measures including current role, current organization, current level, number of people managed, and current salary. Over the last two years, however, overall satisfaction has declined for both women and men.
