It costs £70,000 to be a women or a gay man, and this is the reason why

"The cost of being different is like a tax. We fail to value women, gays and lesbians."

That's Vivienne Ming's tagline, a transgender neuroscientist who calculated the cost of being a woman, or a gay man in the job market. She referred to this cost as "tax".

Ming referenced a number of job sites, such as LinkedIn, as well as social media to evaluate what motivated workers and the frequency and likelihood of promotion with a specific comparative focus on women and gay men, and straight men in the workforce.

Her method calculated how much more it would cost women and gay men to be qualified for the same jobs as straight men.

These extra costs referred to additional degrees and other formal qualifications.

Her findings estimated that it costs approximately £38,000 more to be a gay man in England, and that number shoots up to between £70,000 and £200,000 if you’re a woman in the US.

In real terms, this means that women have to spend more money to acquire qualifications that a straight man applying for the same job would not be required to have.

Despite decades of campaigning for equal pay, men in full-time employment in the UK earn an average 9.4 per cent more than women, as of 2015.

Given the pre-existing gender gap, this research demonstrates the existence of a pay disparity from the onset of employment.

Born Evan Smith, Ming has the unique perspective to have been a member of the work force as a man, and now as a woman, and her findings provide a context into the machinations of gender discrimination in the work place.

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