Salaries remained higher for men than women in 2016 for both investor relations heads and IROs/IR managers, according to the IR Magazine Global Salary Report 2016.
Although men and women as IR heads have the same global median pay range ($150,000-$199,000), 47 percent of male IR heads earn more than this compared with just 36 percent of female bosses. Furthermore, 22 percent of male IR heads earn $250,000 and above, while only 13 percent of women manage the same.
Male and female IROs/IR managers also have the same median pay bracket ($75,000-$99,999). As with IR heads, there is an 11 percentage-point difference between the number of men earning above the median pay range (45 percent) and the number of women (34 percent).
The greatest equality in pay between men and women is found among European heads of IR. Not only do male and female IR heads share the same median salary range ($100,000-$149,999), but there are actually more women bosses than men earning above the median (47 percent to 49 percent).
There are, however, more European women heads of IR earning below $100,000 (29 percent of female European IR heads compared with 22 percent of males).
For both North American and Asian IR heads, median pay is one bracket higher for men than for women. In North America, 30 percent of male IR chiefs earn at least $250,000 compared with 14 percent of female IR heads. Half of Asian male IR bosses take a base salary of at least $150,000, while just over one in five of their female counterparts do likewise.
Europe is also the best place, salary-wise, for female IROs/IR managers. Although median pay for men at this grade is one bracket higher than it is for women, the difference between the number of men earning at least $100,000 and the number of women earning the same – 20 percent and 17 percent, respectively – is just 3 percentage points.
Among North American IROs, nearly twice as many men earn $150,000 or above as do women (52 percent versus 28 percent). Nearly two thirds of female Asian IROs earn less than $50,000 compared with 45 percent of men.
For both IR heads and IROs/IR managers, the disparity in pay between men and women narrows at the larger companies. At small and mid-cap companies, median pay for men is one bracket higher for IR heads and two brackets higher for IROs than their female counterparts.
While a quarter of women IR bosses earn at least $200,000 at small/mid-cap companies, this figure rises to 37 percent for their male equivalents. A majority of male IROs earn $100,000 or more, but just one in three female IROs earns the same.
Among large and mega-cap companies, however, the picture is different. Median pay for men and women is the same for both IR heads and IROs/IR managers. Among IR bosses, although there are more men than women earning above the median pay bracket (38 percent to 23 percent), there are actually more women than men earning $350,000 or above.
While the number of IROs at large/mega-cap companies earning below the median pay bracket is higher for women than it is for men, the percentage of men and women earning in excess of median pay is exactly the same.
