Values Value: Raising women's salary expectations will help close the gender pay gap
Encouraging women to request higher pay — and not just to match the salaries of their male counterparts — could be the key to closing the gender pay gap.
That's according to Tanja Loktionova, founder of Values Value, who presented the findings of the recruitment agency's annual salary survey at Devcom yesterday.
During her session, she showed that not only do women earn less than men in almost every discipline within the games industry, but they also expect less when asked what salary they believe would be fair.
"The gender pay gap exists," she told attendees. "And it has always existed."
"We need to turn on the light. When it's seen in the open, it will be much harder to maintain in the way that it has historically continued to go on in the games industry. And it's not just this industry for this gender pay gap."
The survey was based on responses from 1,832 developers around the world, with the majority of responses coming from Europe, including non-EU countries such as the UK.
69% of respondents were male, 29% were female and 2% identified as other. 19% of those surveyed had worked in games for more than ten years, and most were in senior, lead or management roles, including top-level and C-suite executives.
18% have been affected by layoffs within the past year. The vast majority of those have since found other roles — mostly those in HR and recruitment, which were among the most affected departments. 5% of all respondents had been laid off and were still searching for work.
When it comes to the gender pay gap, men predictably outearned women in all but two disciplines. Women in HR and recruitment earned on average €6,000 more than their male colleagues, while women in programming and development earned fractionally more than men.
The biggest gap between men and women was in marketing and user acquisition, with men earning an average of €65,400 and women an average of €38,000 — a 42% difference. Top-level management and C-suite male respondents earned an average of
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