Are Women Engineers Paid the Same as Men?

While researching our annual Women in Engineering piece, EIC Alyse-Thompson Richards also looked at median annual earnings.

By Alyse Thompson-Richards, Editor in Chief

When I joined FOOD ENGINEERING in 2024, I had the honor and pleasure of inaugurating our annual Women in Engineering feature.

Since then, I’ve spoken to several brilliant, talented and ambitious women engineers who have pioneered critical projects, including greenfield facilities and process optimizations. They’ve also shared their unique perspectives and experiences in and out of the industry. This year, I interviewed Halak Mehta, reliability engineer for Sapporo-Stone Brewing, and Dharma Prime, senior controls engineer for Concept Systems.

While researching this piece, I turned to the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, which presents data on women in the workforce and offers insights on how best to support them. (Interestingly, the Women’s Bureau was founded on June 5, 1920 — exactly one year after the U.S. Congress passed the 19^th Constitutional Amendment and two months before it was ratified, giving women the right to vote.)

I included Women’s Bureau data, as well as estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, in last year’s feature, and this year, I’ve done the same. But this time, I stumbled upon data that offers another angle to the story: median annual earnings.

It’s no secret that a pay gap exists in many industries, and engineering is no different. The U.S. Census Bureau provided a breakdown by engineering discipline:

None of these estimates show the pay gap has completely closed, but in several subcategories, it’s very close. Additionally, nearly all these percentages exceed 85% — the overall national average gap in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center.

Of course, experience and education are major factors in determining income, but as these estimates indicate, there’s still work to do to ensure men and women are paid equally for commensurate work, credentials and capabilities. This is especially true in historically male-dominated industries like engineering.

Hopefully by highlighting the work, stories and passion of women engineers, we’ll work toward closing the gap once and for all.

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Alyse Thompson-Richards has held many positions with BNP Media, first serving as an intern at Candy Industry in summer 2012. She joined Candy Industry's staff full time as associate editor in August 2016 after a few years at newspapers in West-Central Illinois. Alyse has since served on Cannabis Products Insider and joined FOOD ENGINEERING in 2024. She has bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Spanish from Western Illinois University. Image courtesy of Thompson-Richards