It's Equal Pay Day, but the gender pay gap could be widening in tech

As Equal Pay Day rolls around for another year Tuesday, the wage gap that makes the day so notable may be widening. 

Men were offered higher salaries than women 63% of the time for the same job title, at the same company, according to a report out Tuesday from tech recruiting platform Hired. That's a 3 percentage point increase from last year. 

Using data from 470,000 interview requests and job offers facilitated through the platform, Hired also found that men are 7% more likely than women to get the pay increase they're negotiating for. 

Equal Pay Day in the US is an annual marker representing how far into the new year women would have to work to earn the same as men in the previous year. For women of color, that day would come even later in the year. 

The Hired report comes as tech companies are under increased scrutiny for matters ranging from a lack of diversity to sexism and harassment in the workplace. Some tech firms have been working to correct their pay gaps -- Salesforce, Apple, Intel and PayPal all say they've reached pay equity. 

One reason Hired's report identifies for the imbalance (aside from other factors like discrimination and Impostor Syndrome) is what it calls the "expectation gap."

"Salary expectations any candidate has for a given job are closely tied to the salary ultimately offered to them by a prospective employer," Hired CEO Mehul Patel said in the report. "Our data reveals male candidates expect to earn more and our report shows their offers match that expectation." 

The idea is that 65% of the time, women will ask for lower salaries than men when applying for the same job at the same company. 

The report also dives into salary transparency as one way to close the expectation gap. Sixty-eight percent of women said they'd be more interested in working at a company that openly shared salaries. 

Meanwhile, 74% of both men and women cited in the report said the responsibility for closing the gender pay gap lies with a company's leadership.