Encouraging women to ask for higher salaries (and not just match the salaries of their male counterparts) could be the key to closing the gender pay gap.
This is according to Tanja Loktionova, founder of Values Value, who presented the results of the recruitment agency's annual salary survey at Devcom yesterday.
During her session, she demonstrated that women not only earn less than men in almost all disciplines within the games industry, but they also expect less when asked what salary they think would be fair.
“The gender pay gap exists,” she told attendees. “And it always has.”
“We need to turn the light on. Once it's out in the open, it's going to be much harder to sustain it as it's historically been in the video game industry. And it's not just this industry that has 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 respondents had worked in games for more than ten years, with the majority in senior leadership or management positions, including senior executives and C-suite.
18% of respondents have been affected by redundancies in the past year. The vast majority of them have since found other positions, particularly in HR and recruitment, which are among the most affected departments. 5% of all respondents had been made redundant and were still looking for work.
When it comes to the gender pay gap, men earned more than women in all but two disciplines. Women in human resources and recruitment earned on average €6,000 more than their male colleagues, while women in programming and development earned slightly more than men.
The biggest gap between men and women was in marketing and user acquisition: men earned an average of €65,400 and women an average of €38,000, a difference of 42%. Men in senior management and executive positions earned an average of €76,752, while women earned €58,080, a difference of 24%.
However, the most interesting differences are found when respondents are asked about “the salary they want and consider fair.”
Men again led in all but two disciplines (HR and programming/development, where women already earn more than men), but the key finding was that while men expected to earn considerably more than they already did, women's expectations were almost always more in line with men's current average salaries.
The most striking example was in senior management positions. While men wanted an average of €100,000 (almost €25,000 more than the average salary for a man in a management position), women wanted €72,000. This is only €14,000 more than the current average for women, but also €4,000 less than the average salary for a male leader and €28,000 less than men's expectations for the position.
Asked later if this was partly due to a lack of transparency and discussion about salaries, Loktionova said: “The problem is that most salary negotiations in many industries start with the candidate's expectations. Unfortunately, it is women who make the first move and say they want this or that. But when we look at this slide, they are not only getting less, they want less.
“That's why it's necessary to spread the word. I want every manager and every woman to see this slide, this comparison. If we really want to overcome this gender pay gap, we first have to start by raising awareness and raising standards.”
“What I find most unfortunate is that the gap with seniority level is not the same. Young people have almost the same salaries, real and desired, and the biggest difference is at the senior and upper management levels. It's really frustrating, because women may think that if they move up in their careers they will overcome the pay gap, but that just doesn't happen.”
“We need to improve diversity and inclusion, and better support women, whether they are men or women, and spread the word about this inequality. This will help women to have these salary negotiations on a more powerful basis and in a more powerful context.”
Looking at senior management salaries, the average manager earned between €35,000 in quality control and testing and €84,000 in senior management and senior executive. Although senior managers were, unsurprisingly, the highest earners, analysts came in second at €77,000, followed by programmers and developers at €66,151.
These figures are averages across all respondents, including those from EU and non-EU countries such as the UK. Considering only non-EU countries, each discipline shows the average job, which ranges from €31,010 for quality control and testing to €56,400 for senior and senior management positions.
Loktionova told attendees that compared to the 2023 survey results, all but two disciplines saw an average salary increase. Only HR/Recruiting and QA/Testing saw their salaries fall year-on-year, and Loktionova subsequently suggested that this data may have been affected by the fact that QA and HR were among the departments hardest hit by layoffs that occurred over the past twelve months.
Furthermore, the survey found that hybrid workers are more satisfied with their jobs than remote or on-site workers, and that staff who are not offered financial bonuses of any kind are more likely to want to change jobs or companies.
Those least likely to leave their current position are those offered a combination of the following: a percentage of all game sales, profit sharing, paid parental leave, and/or project bonuses.
GamesIndustry.biz is a media partner of Devcom. Travel and accommodation have been provided by the organizers.