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Women earn less, are more likely to face sexism at German startups: study

The Local Germany
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Women earn less, are more likely to face sexism at German startups: study
Photo: DPA

While working at a German startup offers better pay than in other European countries, women don't make the same as men. And while women are prominent in leadership roles, they are more likely to face sexism than they would do abroad, a study has found.

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The European Startup Report 2017, sponsored by the job listings website Joblift, found that every third executive at a German startup is a woman. Nonetheless there is a notable pay gap in the German startup scene. While women earn on average €40,087, men said they earn €44,309.

The survey, published last week, analyzed data from 32 million online job postings and conducted a representative survey among startup employees in Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands.

Around a fifth of all respondents at German startups said they had been the subject of discrimination. Over two thirds of the complaints were about sexism, with women most often saying they were the butt of sexist jokes. Some 40 percent of those who reported sexism said they had been touched inappropriately.

In no other country did as many respondents say that they had faced sexism as in Germany. While 13 percent said so in Germany, 9 percent gave this reply in the UK and France, and 7 percent agreed in the Netherlands.

Despite a gender pay gap of 11 percent, the German startup scene offers better salaries than in other countries. The survey showed that startup employees in Germany earn an average salary of €41,510, although 22 percent of all respondents said they earned less than €22,000. The average income in Germany is five percent higher than the average across all the countries in the survey.

On the downside though, startup workers have to work long hours in Germany. Respondents told the authors that they worked on average 45 hours a week, four hours more than the German average.

Analysis of 47,190 job ads posted over the past 12 months in the startup scene showed that Berlin is still very much the startup capital of Germany - 37 percent of new jobs were advertised on the Spree.

But the capital's influence seems to be slowly waning. Job adverts rose month-on-month in Cologne by 5 percent, and by 4 percent in Frankfurt, while there was no change in Berlin. And, despite talk that Berlin could overtake London as the startup capital of Europe, there were still 24 percent more jobs offered in the British metropolis.

READ ALSO: London v. Berlin: Which is better for startups?

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