Hey [Social Media] ladies!

Apparently you will be payed about $11K less (on average) to do your job than a comparably qualified an average man. How can you compensate?

1.) Drinks

credit: Kyle May

And lots of them! At $10 a cocktail you need procure 1,100 of them. That is 22 cocktails a week (with two weeks vacation) that you should get someone else to buy. That is only 4 drinks a day to more than compensate. You can handle that, right?

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2.) Get a side job.

credit: aresauburnâ„¢

Maybe it is time capitalize on your other talents…like “dog haberdashery” (I’m not even sure what that is a euphemism for). But, clearly you can get a $75k a year day job, so, just stop sleeping to support a $11k side job.

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3.) Become a man.

credit: jc.westbrook

Caution don’t do this unless you are really serious about your job!

Becoming a man is very expensive about $77,000. If you aren’t staying in the business for 7+ years this doesn’t really pencil out. Especially considering women make up 52-55% of social media job holders and you probably like being a woman.

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4.) Sell a Kidney.

You can only do this once so make the most of it.

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All kidding aside. Regardless of your gender just be dedicated to your goals and don’t worry about the money–you’ll have more fun that way.

I have received a number of negative responses. I want to clarify that I don’t find salary inequity funny; I find organ sales and dog costumes funny. The article this is based on comes from a survey of 370 people. To be meaningful the compensation discussion has to normalize a number of issues that the quoted data fails to mention.

I think that the following information needs to be known to discuss salary in earnest:

1. Years in the industry split by gender
2. Years in work force split by gender
3. Organization level (manager, director, etc.) split by gender

Since the majority of respondents are women it can be greatly affected by their tenure. There are some strong trend in the online community jobs being more populated by women and that means that entry level positions are more likely filled by women–skewing the data. Separating out the average number of years for men and for women within the respondents should be considered. Salary differences are more than the question of dollar averages. Salaries in new job categories are very dependent on past experience. Knowing the average years in the work force and job position of respondents should also be considered. I don’t know if Forum One Networks disclosed this kind of information. Regardless the averages they put in their abstract are easily skewed by factors that they don’t even hinted at.