Who tips more - men or women?

What you probably already know: Tipping has become ubiquitous. It’s long been established that adding a gratuity at a sitdown restaurant is expected. Now we’re being asked to tip for a wide variety of services and transactions. Do you tip for counter service? How about furniture delivery or an oil change? In some cases, dry cleaners, tour guides, dog walkers and even fitness instructors expect a gratuity. Now, Tradingpedia reveals that 71% of more than 2,000 respondents in a nationwide poll say tipping is expected too frequently. Nationwide, the average tip is 18.85% of the bill. And women tip very differently than men.

Why? The survey, conducted at the earlier this year, shows that men leave slightly larger tips than women (19.07% versus 18.6%, on average). But women tend to tip more frequently at more places, though slightly more women than men say they never tip. Women are significantly more likely to leave a tip for grooming services (think hairdressers or massage therapists), fast-food restaurants, coffee shops and even grocery stores. Men tend to tip more frequently at sitdown restaurants and, interestingly, are far more likely to tip housekeeping staff at hotels (which consists overwhelmingly of women). About two-thirds of all tipped workers are women, and women servers earn about 78.5% as much as male servers, so even though men are doing more of the tipping, the trends suggest they’re tipping other men higher than women.

What it means: It probably comes as no surprise that women’s tipping tendencies reflect social norms. Women, for example, are more likely to tip for personal services. Older women are also more likely to tip more frequently than younger women. However, some women base tips on service quality rather than defaulting to a set percentage. A 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that men say it’s “extremely or very easy” to know whether and how much to tip. Additionally, women just have less money to tip than men. The gender pay gap has been persistent over the last two decades, from women earning 81% of what a man earned in 2003 to 85% in 2024.

 What happens now? Probably not a lot, at least in the short-term, though there have been movements for years to get rid of tipping in the U.S. In many European countries tipping is less common and not a cultural norm. In Germany, it’s common to simply round up the bill or leave a small gratuity for good service, though it’s not expected. In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, tipping is not customary (service workers tend to be relatively well-paid, at least compared to their U.S. counterparts). But in the United States — for all the talk of higher wages and pay transparency — the tipping culture seems firmly established. Getting rid of that would require a combination of economic, legislative and cultural shifts that don’t seem likely, at least not in the short-term.