Is The Corporate Gender Pay Gap Narrowing?

That is hardly any consolation for the persistent gender disparity at workplaces that Goldin sought to highlight through her pathbreaking work on participation of women in the labour market, their compensation and the challenges of balancing work, life. Nonetheless, it nudges us to ask if gender pay gaps are indeed narrowing in the corporate world.

Despite modernisation, economic growth and rising proportions of employed women in the 20th century, for a long period of time the earnings gap between women and men hardly closed.

According to Goldin, part of the explanation is that educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of career opportunities, are made at a relatively young age. If the expectations of young women are formed by the experiences of previous generations – for instance, their mothers, who did not go back to work until the children had grown up – then development will be slow. Although her work focused on the US market, the findings are applicable to many other countries as well.

Goldin’s research is echoed by Indra Nooyi, the former chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo Inc who has long been a votary of gender parity at the workplace. In one of her blogs (indiranooyi.com) she argues that, “No statistic stands as stark and simple when measuring gender inequality as the pay gap. And one remarkable aspect of that gap is this: It has barely changed in thirty years. I recognize that the average disparity — about 20 per cent — doesn’t tell the whole story, and that race, age, education, experience, and perhaps dozens of other factors determine women’s pay. But, even with endless caveats, the gap is still there.”

Contrast this with the recently released Hurun India Rich List 2023 which named Jayshree Ullal as the richest Indian professional manager globally. The CEO of US-based Arista Networks has a huge net worth of Rs 20,800 crore, which is more than the net worth of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Rs 7,500 crore) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Rs 5,400 crore) combined. In fact, Nadella was ranked fourth spot, while Pichai did not even feature in the top five. He was ranked sixth behind Ullal, Thomas Kurian of Oracle (Rs 15,800 crore), World Bank's Ajaypal Singh Banga (Rs 7,600 crore), and Nadella.

What gives? Is this a tipping point on gender and compensation parity? Is this an indicator of the shape of things to come at future workplaces?

To understand why and how Ullal has reached the peak, it is useful to know her personal and professional journey. Born in London and raised in a middle-class family in New Delhi, she graduated in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and started her career with Advanced Micro Devices. After that she joined Crescendo Communications which was bought over by Cisco Systems in 1993.

After 15 years at Cisco, she joined Arista Networks where she took the company to a multi-billion-dollar valuation at its IPO in 2014. According to Forbes, she has a 2.4 per cent stake in Arista. Earlier this year, Ullal also featured in the 2023 Forbes' 100 Richest Self-Made Women List.

What are the lessons from Ullal’s career that have helped her to be exceedingly successful and at the same time bridge the gender pay gap? In her own words, three critical aspects:

• Find your dream and what you are excellent at.
• Broaden your skill sets.
• You can be an entrepreneur and executive: that is think like an entrepreneur and lead like a professional executive.

Beyond the above, one of the important reasons is that women from India have a good record of higher education both within the country and overseas. Aspirations of middle-class India are high and considerable student loans and scholarships for overseas study are now available. Besides, increasingly Indian women are finding their partners on their own, usually at a much later age than the traditional arranged marriage age. This shows progress from the findings of Goldin.

Sums up Teevrta Kaul, Head of Human Resources at Net Solutions, an IT firm in Chandigarh, “I have worked in HR across multiple sectors like IT, ITES, Banking and Education and have not recently come across any major instances of compensation gap between men and women. One historical aspect that led to the disparity is the 3Ms - Marriage, Mobility and Maternity. Today while these three factors still exist in the Indian diaspora, bridging the resultant gap is part of the overall maturing of the Indian society.”