Women have access to less capital when starting their businesses. One of the reasons is because women have lower income levels, so less money to put into a start up. This trend continues even for young women today, as this Washington Post article shows.
Women are attending college at higher rates than men, graduating in greater numbers and earning higher grades. Yet one year after graduation, women were making only 82 percent of what their male colleagues were paid, according to a report by the American Association of University Women set to be released Wednesday.
Nearly every occupation has long paid men more than women, despite laws aimed at narrowing and dissolving the differences. Often the gap is attributed to men picking careers with higher salaries, women slowing their careers after having children and differences in work experience. The AAUW researchers decided to look at workers when they are most similar — freshly done with their undergraduate studies, lacking vast experience and unlikely to have spouses or children.
They focused on those who graduated during the 2007-08 school year, zeroed in on full-time workers and studied what they earned in 2009, one year after graduation. The women made only 82 percent of what the men were paid, with the average woman making $35,296 while men were paid an average of $42,918.
The report relied on data from an Education Department survey of about 15,000 college graduates via Web or telephone surveys.
Even when men and women had the same majors, there were often gaps in pay. The researchers found that female business majors earned an average of slightly more than $38,000, while men earned just over $45,000. In engineering, technology, computer science and social sciences fields, researchers found that women made between 77 percent and 88 percent of what their male colleagues were paid. (The health-care and education fields were credited for paying men and women about the same.)
Continue reading on the Washington Post.