This seems to happen in pretty much every industry (even female dominated ones). My wife is a specialist, and worked for a corporate owned vet hospital (she signed on when it was just starting up, and was owned by someone she did a residency with, then they sold…). She was their top earning doc. Tons of people referred specifically because she was there to see a case. They kept denying raises etc…, and as she’d taken a bit of a pay hit to sign on to work for a good person that she knew (originally). I kept pushing her to demand what she was worth (minimum industry standard or better), and they wouldn’t budge. The last straw was when they hired a new hire, with the same specialty, for more than what they were paying her (their senior Doc, most accomplished vet, and breadwinner), all the while telling her that they couldn’t afford to give her a raise…
Push come to shove, and it took tons of other people leaving for her to jump ship. Now she works for someone else, at much better pay, and being more valued. The original hospital is failing and looks like it’ll cost the corporation a fair amount of $ before they have to sell.
The problem is partially that, in this female dominated field, there are huge, largely self imposed restrictions. My wife wasn’t willing to push as hard as she should have, and it was a lost cause by the time she was willing to fight for what she was truly worth. For the new place, she really made them fight for her because there were two places trying to woo her away from the other, so the fight for what she was worth was almost more up to two business owners rather than being managed by her. I’ve generally seen the few guys in the industry, myself included, get greater pay raises etc… because they’re more willing to “fight”/push for what they’re worth. The women who do the same are few and far between.
