You’ll Be Shocked in a Good Way by the 20 Best-Paying Jobs for Women
This week we celebrated Women’s Equality Day, but it wasn’t until we clicked across Forbes’ latest list of the top paying jobs for women that we felt the holiday might have a little bit more significance. While we still have a long way to go in terms of equal pay (ask Amanda Seyfried about that) there is some good news when it comes to women making major bucks in high-powered careers — even tech.
According to 2014 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, women are more likely than ever to be the primary breadwinner of their family — a stat we’ve been celebrating for a little while now. The data also suggests that women make over 40% of married parents’ income, which could be due to their access to high-paying jobs. Out of the list of 20, many of the jobs where women can make the most bank include STEM jobs and jobs in the medical field.
Women working in tech are making noise recently thanks to trending campaigns like #ILookLikeanEngineer, but apparently women in some of these gigs are earning more money than they ever have before.
While that is super exciting, there is still a dearth of women who actually have these jobs. For example — the job that tops the list with the biggest paycheck goes to women sales engineers (earning $134k+ a year), yet only 5% of people in that job are actually women. Conversely, the number four best-paying job is a nurse anesthetist, who earns around $114k a year, and women make up 63% of workers in this field. Bottom line: some women are earning big bucks in certain fields, but are underrepresented in fields that are not traditionally gendered.
As the great philosopher Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott once said: “aint no shame/ladies do yo thang/just make sure you’re ahead of the game.”
What would you do if you made big bucks? Tell us in the comments, and also buy us some lunch!
