A recent study has found that women who graduate with an MBA generally start out earning $11,000 less than their male peers, and as the years go on the gulf only widens, said Bloomberg. On average, a male graduate makes $145,000 out the gate and a female graduate makes $133,500. By years 3-5, men on average are making $172,500 and women are making $152,000. By years 6-8, men are making generally $194,500 and women are making $174,400. Once about a decade has passed, men are making on average $241,600 while women are making $179,200. 

Bloomberg said this can be attributed to the fact that women are underrepresented in higher paying positions, and are more concentrated in lower-paying industries. 

It calls to mind a Georgetown study from 2018 which found women with bachelor's degrees make as much as men with associate's degrees, women with master's degrees make as much as men with bachelor's degrees and so on and so forth for each successive level of educational attainment.

The report also looked at choice of occupation. It noted that, even when women work in high-paying fields, they tend to gravitate to the lowest paying positions within that field. For instance, while there are many women in the legal community, they make up 85 percent of paralegals, versus 44 percent of lawyers. Similarly, while healthcare is a lucrative field, women tend to dominate the lowest-paid positions within it: women make up 43 percent of surgeons, who can make $182,000 annually, but 90 percent of dietitians and nutritionists, who can expect to make about $48,000 a year. It also pointed out that the highest-paid engineering field for women is petroleum engineering, where they make up just 20 percent of the population, versus the much lower paying environmental engineering field, which has the largest proportion of women in any engineering occupation: 33 percent. This seems to represent an overall phenomena pointed out in the study that the highest paying fields tend to be dominated by men, and the lowest paying fields tend to be dominated by women.

Bluntly: the more women there are in a profession, the less that profession pays.