Glass ceilings, sticky floors, and satisfaction: Rewards and remuneration

This chapter looks at the rewards of creative careers and focuses on both pecuniary and non-pecuniary rewards: salary and career satisfaction. Creative careers, on average, offer lower salaries and are not compensated in the form of higher career satisfaction. In the short term there is a gender pay gap which persists for the UK, but in Australia women catch up over the medium term. In the UK there is evidence of a gender glass ceiling in creative careers, with men having greater pay growth, in and outside of creative careers, whilst in Australia there is evidence of a sticky floor in creative careers. There are no general gender differences in career satisfaction and no evidence creative graduates trade off lower returns for higher career satisfaction.