Beyond Equal Pay Day: Closing the workplace gender gap

Key Findings

Equal Pay Day highlights the gender pay gap, emphasizing one tangible and prominent way that women face barriers in the workforce. But there are also many intangible ways that women experience the workplace differently than men. Women’s satisfaction with their workplace is affected by a host of factors from their experience with the culture, senior leadership to work-life balance.

Glassdoor data shows that in addition to a gender pay gap, women also face a workplace gender gap. In 2024, women rated their employee satisfaction in Glassdoor reviews 3.5% lower than that of men. This workplace gap in employee satisfaction has been shrinking over the last two years from a high of -4.8% in 2022. The gap is also now smaller than it was before the pandemic at -4.1%.

This gap in how women experience the workplace also varies across different workplace factors. The largest difference in satisfaction between women and men is in diversity & inclusion where women rate their satisfaction 3.9% lower than men. Compensation & benefits is the second largest difference at -3.6%, which highlights the prominence of the gender pay gap. The smallest difference is actually among work-life balance, despite the common narrative that women prioritize flexibility and work-life balance more than men. This may be because employees tend to join companies that already align with their work-life expectations, leading to more stable satisfaction levels in this area.

Table: Percent difference in ratings on Glassdoor between men and women

How many employers have a workplace gender gap problem? Of over 500 employers with at least 30 ratings from women and men each, about 1 in 7 (14%) have a statistically significant difference in employee satisfaction between women and men. The vast majority (92%) of these employers have a gap in satisfaction that favors men over women. This suggests that a subset of companies with particularly large cultural gaps drive a disproportionately large share of the gap between women and men in the workforce overall.

The gender pay gap is driven in large part by men being disproportionately represented in higher-paying jobs, industries and seniorities. This workplace gender gap, however, doesn’t appear to be clearly driven by the same phenomenon. For example, there is a consistent gap in satisfaction across all sectors in our data.

The sectors with the largest gap in satisfaction for women compared to men are education (-7.5%), government & public administration (-6.4%) and pharmaceutical & biotechnology (-4.1%), while the smallest gaps are in energy, mining & utilities (-0.7%), real estate (-1.4%) and manufacturing (-1.8%).

Table: Percent difference in overall ratings on Glassdoor between men and women by sector

Interestingly, there’s little relationship between the proportion of women in a given sector and the gap in satisfaction. For example, the education workforce is disproportionately women, but has the largest gap while the government & public administration workforce skews toward men but has the second largest satisfaction gap.

Overall, this workplace gender gap points to some of the challenges women face beyond just tangible factors like the pay gap. By quantifying the workplace experience, Glassdoor ratings can help highlight this gap. This data points to persistent gaps across a host of different workplace factors and even across sectors. This suggests that just equalizing representation for women in male-dominated jobs won’t be enough by itself to equalize workplace satisfaction. Similarly, our data points to a cohort of companies where cultural differences by gender are more pronounced, where leaders need to look inward to address these issues or risk deterring women from joining or staying at the company. 

Methodology

This analysis examines Glassdoor reviews left by full-time or part-time employees in the U.S. from January 1, 2019 through February 20, 2025, grouped by the year that current or former employees held their job. Reviews are grouped by gender based on whether the user self-identified as a woman or man.

Statistically significant differences in employee satisfaction are calculated based on a two-sided Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test to the p<0.05 significance level. There is no correction made for multiple comparisons so the estimate of 14% of employers should be regarded as an upper bound due to the possibility of false positives. For this part of the analysis, only employers with at least 30 ratings from men and 30 ratings from women for jobs held in 2024 were included, leaving just more than 500 employers.