For every dollar a man makes in North Carolina, a woman makes 16 cents less, according to a report from the National Partnership for Women and Families.

“A large wage gap, and a persistent and really pernicious wage gap is an indicator that we’re still not doing enough to make our work places fair,” said Jessica Mason, a senior policy analyst at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

“And we’re still not doing enough to fight the gender stereotypes and really gender and racial based harassment that are holding back women in the work place and our economy.”

For the finance industry, these disparities seem to grow, but not without some explanation.

In the overarching, categorically defined industry of “business and financial operations” occupations, women in 2017 made approximately 77 percent of what men made, on average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

More specifically in this category, female personal financial advisors show the largest gender wage gap, with women making 58.9 percent of what men make, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Women financial managers made approximately 71 percent of what men made.

North Carolina shows a little more disparity, with women in “business and financial operations” occupations making 74 cents for every dollar paid to men, just slightly below the national figure, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Women working as financial managers made $75,244 annually on average, whereas men made $131,241 on average, according to the survey, according to data from the American Community Survey.

One former Bank of America employee in Charlotte, North Carolina, who asked to remain anonymous, said she always felt she was fairly compensated for her work, though she had no knowledge of what her male coworkers made. She said based on a performance evaluation, which she typically scored well on, she felt she was compensated accordingly.

But while she said she’s been fortunate, these numbers don’t surprise her. She believes a lot of it goes back to societal expectations, such as responsibilities after starting a family.

“You juggle and you manage. Not everyone has that luxury to be able to have it all and to figure it out and to juggle it. You have competing priorities,” she said. “Sometimes your family wins and sometimes your job wins. I would guess that’s it. There are few women who are completely singularly focused on their career.”

‘Society has been very slow’

Wells Fargo & Co., another bank with a large location in Charlotte, employs about 32,900 people across the state, including around 25,100 in Charlotte, according to The Charlotte Observer.

According to a 2017 report by the company’s Economics Group, despite women’s participation, experience and education closely mirroring that of men more than ever before, women still earn approximately 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. Progress toward closing the pay gap shows improvement over the last 50 years, but in the last 15, this progress has stalled.

The report attributes the time women spend on housework and family care as one of the reasons the gap exists, showing that women spend 50 percent more time than men on these tasks. And while this trend has slowed in recent years, many women would leave the workforce upon having a child.

Even if women do choose to keep working, they often cut hours to manage time for both of the factors above which can further contribute to the pay disparities.

United States work place culture doesn’t account for external factors such as having a family, taking care of sick relatives or having a personal illness, Mason said.

“We still by a large associate a lot of that caregiving with women, and women are so much more likely to be doing a lot of that caregiving both for themselves and for their families,” Mason said. “They’re much more likely to take time out of the work force.”

Corporate America and child care

Women will not be able to do it on their own, said head of global research and main researcher on the report Diane Schumaker-Krieg in an interview with Bloomberg. Women need husbands to help with child care, but corporate America hasn’t made
this that easy, she said.

“Society has been very slow to recognize that if we’re going to improve things for women, we also have to change how we look at men,” she said.

Mason said company leadership needs to audit and evaluate pay, hiring and promotion practices, while also examining internal work culture.

“It’s important to set an example for employees that if you have these family friendly benefits, that it’s okay to take them,” Mason said. “And that you won’t get punished for taking them so that everybody really feels that that’s part of the culture, and that that’s a gender equitable part of the culture as well. So it’s not just when a new baby comes, mom takes off, but dad stays at work. Dad needs to be able to and encouraged to take that time as well.”

‘Follow their passion’

The report says the largest cause of the gender pay gap is job trends that tend to be disproportionately one gender over another. For example, men are five times as more likely to be engineers, whereas women are nine times as likely to be receptionists, the report says. While it is not well-known, these differences account for half of the wage gap.

When looking at some of these corporate companies, many of the executives are men, further affecting the pay differences.

From Bank of America’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan who made $1.5 million in 2017 to Chief Operating Officer Thomas Montag who made over $1.2 million, all five highest paid executives are male, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And at Wells Fargo, it is the same across the board with the top five highest paid executives being male. The word “female” is mentioned once in the company’s entire proxy statement, highlighting Chair of Board of Directors Betsy Duke, the company’s first female chair of a large financial institution.

“We still have a lot of evidence that in our culture and in people’s minds whether implicitly or explicitly, the qualities that tend to be associated with leadership still tend to be coded as masculine and people tend to have a hard time imagining women in those positions,” Mason said.

In the interview with Bloomberg, Schumaker-Krieg said women often opt out too early or choose occupations that will offer flexibility, which might keep them out of higher-paying fields.

“My advice would be for women to follow their passion, don’t think so much about when you might have children in the future,” she said. “Go with your profession, and if you are really great at what you do, you will find a way to make it work for you.”

38 percent unaccounted for

One positive move toward closing the gap is that women are now out-achieving men educationally. If this weren’t the case, the gap would be nearly 6 percent larger, the report shows.

Finance companies should use this to their advantage and place more women in power, said Cherise Walker, vice president of special projects for the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.

“The incredible buying power of women, and the fact that women are now becoming more degreed than men, tells me that it would be advantageous for any organization to empower women to help them identify how to be even more targeted and effective in attracting their target,” Walker said.

The former Bank of America employee said placing women in these positions is important for both the diversity of thought and experience, especially in this industry.

“Data is showing that women oftentimes are the primary decision maker in financial decisions for their family,” she said. “If you have a bunch of old white men trying to make decisions about what a woman and her family are going to want and what they’re going to do, they’re going to miss the boat.”

While progress has been shown, 38 percent of the wage gap is not accounted for. This leads the researchers to believe that this remaining difference could be due to discrimination. Even if not intentional pay discrimination, which has become less common, implicit and unconscious biases can affect both opportunity and pay for women, the report shows.

This gap isn’t only familiar to the finance industry. In an article published by Bloomberg, a new survey shows that female partners in large firms make an average of $627,000 annually, while male partners make an average of $959,000.

This 53 percent pay gap is primarily due to the difference in credit for big-ticket legal work among genders and higher hourly rates set by male lawyers.

And for many women, fear is a factor even when considering asking for better pay, Walker said.

“Fear of negotiating a deserved salary, fear of applying for certain jobs because of the assumption that we might not possess all of the job qualifications, even if we possess most of them,” Walker said. “Fear of being criticized for being outspoken because of the stigma associated.”

There are legal avenues for women to pursue depending on what their situation might be, including being informed about rights under the Equal Pay Act, Mason said.

“Sometimes more important to recognize is that these are really structural problems individual women are not going to solve on their own,” Mason said. “And that’s hard and frustrating to say, but it’s the truth.”