Senior investment professionals at hedge funds and long-only firms earned an average of $825,000 last year — at least, the men did.
Female portfolio managers and senior analysts made $630,000 on average, including base pay and bonus compensation, according to analysis by Odyssey Search Partners, a recruiting firm that specializes in hiring for hedge funds and private equity firms.
This $195,000 gender pay gap is mostly due to the disparity in bonus compensation awarded to female and male employees, according to the report. Women at the senior analyst or portfolio manager level earned an average bonus of $430,000 last year, compared with $610,000 for their male peers.
The rest of the pay gap resulted from a $15,000 disparity in average base salaries for men and women working as senior analysts or portfolio managers.
The analysis was based on a survey of nearly 1,000 public markets investment professionals across the U.S.
The authors of the report noted that it is “hard to be fully conclusive here given the small sample of senior women in the industry.” According to the report, women hold just over a quarter of positions in the public markets industry, and just 11 percent of investment roles.
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Odyssey also recorded a much smaller pay gap for junior analysts at hedge funds and long-only firms. The average female junior analyst earned $287,000 in total compensation last year, or about $5,000 less than her male peers.
Among these more junior employees, men only made $1,000 more than women in bonus compensation on average. The remaining $4,000 difference is attributable to slightly lower base salaries for female junior analysts, who earned $127,000 on average compared with the $131,000 reported by their male counterparts.
Despite earning somewhat less than their male peers, female junior analysts reported higher levels of satisfaction with their compensation compared to male junior analysts. However, women holding senior analyst and portfolio manager roles reported far less satisfaction with their pay compared to junior-level women, as well as lower satisfaction than their male peers.
Male investment professionals, meanwhile, reported similar levels of pay satisfaction across junior and senior roles.
