Year after year, the observation remains the same: although women hold more qualifications than men, they are less likely to hold positions of power and responsibility – and, therefore, the best-paid ones.

In fact, women make up just 35% of people who work in one of the top 10 highest-paid occupations in the United States. While this figure may seem low, it is much higher than that recorded in 1980 (13%).

This shows that women have greater access to the highest-paid positions than ever before, regardless of their sector of activity. But they remain the minority in nine of the 10 highest-paid jobs, with the exception of pharmacists.

In the latter profession, American women account for 61% of the payroll, which pays an average of US$117,000 (RM580,000) a year. “This could be because the field offers flexible work hours, a collaborative environment, and family-friendly policies,” the Pew Research Center report suggested.

In recent decades, corporate governance bodies worldwide have emphasised the need to feminise companies to promote diversity in the professional sector. But there is still a long way to go to achieve gender equality in the highest-paid occupations.

In the US, the proportion of women dentists has risen considerably since 1980, when they accounted for 7% of the sector’s employees; today, they account for a third. Similarly, the proportion of women physicians has roughly tripled in four decades, from 13% to 38%.

Varying rates of progress

However, the gap between women and men in the top-paying jobs is not closing at the same rate in all fields of activity. The proportion of women engineers in the oil, mining and geology industries, for example, has risen from just 5% to 8% since 1980. Yet this profession offers an annual salary of US$112,000, making it the 10th best-paid occupation in the US.

The same trend can be observed among sales engineers and physicists/astronomers: women make up just 7% and 24%, respectively, of workers holding these two jobs, which pay an average of US$120,000 a year. Similarly, just 7% of airplane pilots are women.

While several factors can explain the underrepresentation of women in top-paying jobs, the report’s authors emphasise the key role played by higher education in this phenomenon. After all, the vast majority of the best-paid jobs in the US require university degrees.

This prerequisite has not escaped the attention of women: with the exception of mathematics and statistics, an increasing number of female graduates hold degrees that give them access to higher-paying jobs.

Women represent only 42% of graduates in those two fields, the same as in 1980.