Data-driven analysis of the gender pay gap and its implications for workplace culture and communication

Abstract

The gender wage gap is a longstanding issue that has yet to be fully explained. Women continue to earn less and fare worse than men during regular working and a major career shock event. While tech companies appear to be meritocratic and have emphasized diversity in workplace culture, how it relates to women's low pay has received little attention. Furthermore, while corporations' mergers and acquisitions seem to be beneficial in all aspects for everyone, the reason that women capitalize on fewer opportunities for wage growth and thus increase the gender wage gap is still unclear.

In this thesis, I investigate the role of workplace culture in illuminating the gender wage gap within tech companies through two studies using online job website data and one survey study. The first study reveals that the predominance of men in senior positions accounts for almost half of the pay gap, with senior-level women receiving less compensation compared to their men counterparts. By employing topic modeling techniques on company reviews, the second study uncovers the presence of a culture characterized by competitive and brilliance in software engineering jobs. This culture may impede women's progress in their careers. Additionally, a survey is conducted to validate the aforementioned findings. The survey indicates that women possess lower self-perceived salary negotiation power and exhibit less willingness to negotiate compared to men. On the other hand, this thesis reveals that the wage gap can be partially elucidated by communication behaviors exhibited during career shocks. By encoding the daily emails exchanged during these instances into two dimensions based on gender stereotypes, it is evident that women tend to exhibit a higher degree of agency in their communications. Engaging in communication practices that deviate from gender stereotype proves detrimental to women's wage growth during merger and acquisition events, providing a partial explanation for the wage growth gap. These findings underscore that the gender wage gap within the same occupation is influenced not only by personal characteristics but also by individual behaviors and the workplace culture.