The gender pay gap basically vanishes the second you tell women exactly what the men in the office are making.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6432087
The Takeaway
In experiments where individuals set their own salaries, women consistently requested lower pay than men in the baseline scenario. However, once data on male earnings was provided, the gender difference vanished instantly, suggesting that pay gaps in these settings are driven by information asymmetry rather than inherent differences in negotiation confidence.
From the abstract
To gain insight into the emergence of the gender pay gap, we examine whether gender differences exist in the simplified context of self-set salaries where salaries are independent of the complexities of negotiations. Results clearly show that women set lower salaries than men in the baseline treatment. We then provide subjects with information about the average salary of men, thereby providing pay transparency. Interestingly, no significant gender differences are observed when pay transparency i