Igor Ranc

Deep dive shows a clear pay advantage for men in the majority of categories!

Berlin gender pay gap breakdown

We have highlighted a pretty sad-looking ca. 15% salary gap across the board in the report but received plenty of feedback to do deeper dives. So naturally, my first deeper dive had to be into the gender gap.

🚨 Two important caveats are:

  • The sample (n=1150) is biased and not statistically representative.
  • Some of the sub-groups have a tiny amount of responses.

Therefore, look at the results with a grain of salt. They do, however, offer a good snapshot into the tech/startup/enterprise scene in Berlin. The analysis below only includes male (687) and female (444) respondents.

What do the results tell us? Well, they’re… sad, especially if we consider that the tech/startup scene could be considered more progressive— there is a lot of room for improvement.

Addition on 18.5.2024: I published the link to the article on Astral Codex Ten, and an interesting discussion followed. A lot of US-based views, but throughout an interesting discussion. Based on this, these aspects are probably impacting the gap without clearly showing in the numbers:

  1. Working Hours and Overtime:
    • Do differences in average working hours and overtime between genders impact overall earnings?
  2. Job Types and Responsibilities:
    • Does the distribution of job types and detailed responsibilities vary between men and women?
  3. Career Interruptions:
    • How do the long-term effects of career breaks (e.g., maternity leave) impact earnings and career progression?
  4. Negotiation and Salary Transparency:
    • Are there gender differences in salary negotiation outcomes? To what extent does the increased salary transparency help?
  5. Societal Expectations and Family Roles:
    • How do societal expectations and family caregiving responsibilities influence career choices and earnings for women?

Data details:

Pay gap & leadership level

I started with leadership splits. The biggest difference is within the group of Managers (20.63%) and the smallest with Team Leads (13.1%).

Table breaking down gender pay gap by leadership level, showing count, average, median, and gap percentages for Executives, Senior Managers, Managers, Team Leads, and Individual Contributors

The same table in a chart:

Bar chart of median salary gap percentage by management level: Manager highest at 20.63%, followed by Sr. Manager/Director at 16.16%, Individual Contributor at 15.38%, Executive at 13.92%, and Team Lead at 13.10%

Pay gap in higher education

Next is the gender pay gap in education. I’ve only included higher education (well over 90% of respondents). The biggest outlier was “Diploma” with only 30 respondents.

Bar chart of median salary gap by education level: Diploma highest at 60%, followed by Master's Degree at 19.40%, Doctor's Degree at 18.57%, and Bachelor's Degree at 12.50%

Break down:

Table breaking down gender pay gap by education level, showing count, average, median, and gap percentages for Bachelor's, Diploma, Master's, and Doctor's degrees

Next are age groups, where we can see that in the youngest group of respondents, women actually earned more (but with only 20 respondents in total!). The majority (86.26%) of respondents are between 25 and 39. Like the youngest bucket, age buckets from 45 onwards also have fewer respondents and a bigger/smaller gap.

Bar chart of median salary gap by age group, ranging from -3.03% for age 24 or under to 110.94% for age 55-59, with gap widening significantly after age 50

Detailed data:

Table breaking down gender pay gap by age group from 24 or under to 60 and over, showing male and female count, average, median, and gap percentages for each bracket

Pay gap by years of experience

Looking at the salary gap by years of experience, we can see a significant jump at 11+ years of experience. This chart could indicate the gap is narrowing, but barely.

Bar chart of median salary gap by years of experience, growing from 2.73% for less than 1 year to 41.54% for 16-20 years, showing a steep increase after 11 years

Here are the details:

Table breaking down gender pay gap by years of experience from less than 1 year to 30+, showing male and female count, average, median, and gap percentages for each bracket

Finally, how about the pay gap in different roles?

I’ve looked into all the manually grouped roles with 3 or more respondents per gender. Results are mixed.

🚨 Note: First, we deal with extremely small sample sizes in many cases; second, these comparisons don’t include any of the previously mentioned categories.

In job categories like Consultants, Data Scientists, Account Managers, Product Designers, and Agile Coaches, women earned more than men, with Consultants showing the largest gap where women earned 22.35% more.

Men have an advantage in all the remaining roles besides Business Development, which has median parity**. Roles like Project Managers & Coordinators,** and Analysts show smaller gaps where men earn slightly more.

The gap increases in roles like Product Managers and Software Engineers, with men earning around 9.09% to 12.33% more than women.

Strategists, Program Managers, and Customer Success Managers see larger disparities, with men earning 20.48% to 35.14% more than women.

The largest gaps are observed in some of the creative roles, such as UX/UI & Designers and Copy & Content, where men earn 36.84% and 54.22% more than women, respectively. Compare this with Product Designers, where women earned more (3.18%).

Bar chart of median salary gap by role, ranging from Consultants where women earn 22.35% more to Copy and Content where men earn 54.22% more, across 20 job categories

Detailed data:

Detailed table of gender pay gap across 20 job categories with 3 or more respondents per gender, showing count, average, median, and gap percentages from Account Managers to UX/UI Designers

Make sure to get more insights in the coming months by subscribing to the newsletter, and let me know what else is missing or how we can improve in the future. Also, feel free to share the charts, tables or the complete article on social media to raise awareness.

AuthorIgor Ranc

Founder of Handpicked Berlin — a weekly newsletter and community for Berlin professionals. Covering careers, salaries, startups, and Berlin life since 2020.