Despite the currency conferred by a newly-coined MBA, women are still finding it hard trading achievement for equitable income on the job.  A study conducted by Catalyst, an organization dedicated to women’s advancement in the workplace, offers a dauntingly rocky playing field for new MBA women.

On average, they report, women earned $4,600 less than men of the same cohort their first year on the job.  Details can be found at Pipeline’s Broken Promise.  Catalyst president, Ilene Lang, in her blog, Catalyzing, amplifies the findings with figures reinforcing the common wisdom that the boys’ club of Wall Street is still entrenched: Men who’d been mentored received $9,260 more the first year of MBA employment than women who’d been mentored.

Lang also reports that salary increments for men with MBAs were larger than women’s and they were promoted more frequently and lucratively than their female counterparts.  In grim end-game statistics, Catalyst reports that, by retirement, women will have earned–across careers–$431,000 less pay over a 40-year career span.

The figures are cautionary and not irreversible.  But they do show that women have a long, hard struggle ahead to reach parity.

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