87 Cents on the Dollar

The Cranky Product Manager is not simply cranky today.  She is kinda pissed off, actually.  And feeling grossly underpaid.

Witness the results of Pragmatic Marketing’s 2006 Annual Product Management Salary Survey. On the brink of the year 2007, female product managers in the US and Canada only make 87 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make.  For the SAME JOB.

In the UK and Europe the situation is even more pathetic. Female product managers are only paid 82% of what their male counterparts are paid.

Even more disturbing, the situation seems to be getting worse over time. Over the 7 years that Pragmatic Marketing has conducted this survey, the percentage of female product managers has decreased and the pay gap is increased.

Don’t believe the Cranky Product Manager? Check out the charts below.

Percentage of Female Product Managers Is Decreasing Over Time

Female Product Managers Earn 13% Less Than Males

So why is this happening?  The Cranky Product Manager wants to find out….  Her top-of-the-head hypotheses include the following:

• The women respondents skewed younger or less experienced than the male respondents?
• The women respondents tended to be less technical than the male respondents?
• The women respondents are in worse-paying industries than the male respondents?
• Sexism? (which might be increasing over time?)

The first three hypotheses could potentially be ruled out by slicing and dicing the raw survey data.

Pragmatic Marketing (Steve Johnson, you are my idol even though your blog is almost solely links to the content of others), the Cranky Product Manager would appreciate it if you would release some more analysis relative to the Product Management Gender Gap.

The Cranky Product Manager wants more women in the profession.  She is truly sick of being the only woman in the DysfunctoSoft Product Management group. She’s tired of being referred to as a “woman product manager” as if it were a wacky novelty to be, well, such a BIZARRO thing.  She’s fed up with DysfunctoSoft’s newly hired engineers, especially those not raised in North America, automatically assuming she is a technical lightweight, the “Demo Dolly,” or — worse — someone in HR.  Just because she is that stereotypically least technical of all creatures, The American Woman.

Truth is, the Cranky Product Manager is the most technical PM in her group. And back in the day, she’d code circles around your asses, beeyotches. Even though she looks like a supermodel.  (A supermodel with a fat ass, baggy eyes, and gray hair, that is…)

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