Although one might think that the male/female pay gap would not apply in the online arena, research conducted by Website Planet, a supplier of digital services, says otherwise.
“Female freelancers are being paid significantly less than men—in some cases half as much—on two of the most highly used and reputable freelance job platforms, Upwork and Fiverr,” says the report.
“On average, across the different industries on Upwork, men charged 57% more per hour than women. This disparity is even more extreme on Fiverr, where men typically charged upwards of 80% more than comparable services offered by women.”
Based on the evidence the report provides, there do appear to be some areas where women charge higher rates. These tend to be in areas requiring either care and nurturing of customers (i.e. customer service), or meticulous attention to detail (translation, writing for the web, and search engine optimization).
But these services are on the lower end of the scale. The high-end jobs, like IT, video production, accounting/consulting and IT software development, pay a premium for male freelancers – in many cases a big premium.