In case you needed another reason to disapprove of Wall Street's role in our economy and society, here you go. According to a Bloomberg analysis of census data on men's and women's income in 265 major occupations:



The six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector: insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists.

Of course, it's not like the financial industry is the only place there's a serious gender gap. Among doctors, women make 63 cents on the male dollar; among lawyers, it's 78 cents. But among those six financial sector jobs that had the largest gap of all 265 occupations analyzed, women were making between 55 and 62 cents for every dollar earned by men. There are a range of explanations for this persistent disparity, but mostly they're different expressions of the same root cause: widespread, deep-seated sexism.

For instance according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois- Chicago, Northwestern University and Yale University:



The starting-salary disparity between male and female physician “cannot be explained by specialty choice, practice setting, work hours or other characteristics,” the study’s authors said. “The unexplained trend toward diverging salaries appears to be a recent development that is growing over time.”

The best way for women to make nearly as much money as men within the same profession is to go into a line of work that doesn't pay anyone very well. Bloomberg's analysis found that the only job category paying women more than men—$1.02 to $1—was personal care and service work, including "butlers, valets, house sitters and shoe shiners." Female butlers reported a median wage of $25,645. Similarly, in the financial sector, female bank tellers earn 96 cents on the male dollar, with a median salary of $23,695.

There's your choice, if you're a woman: Go into a high-paying field and be paid far less than your male colleagues, or go into a low-paying one and be paid almost as much. Or be a butler and be paid 2 cents more.