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Gender wage gap for women of color worse

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Gender wage gap for women of color worse

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Women, on average, earn 22 percent less than men, or 78 cents for every white man's dollar. This fact is everywhere, especially on Tuesday, Equal Pay Day. The day itself is meant to symbolize this figure, as it takes women three-and-half extra months of work to earn what men make year-round.

Critics love to quibble that a few factors easily explain this gap. They say women work fewer hours, and have less experience than male counterparts because they leave the workforce to raise children, and seek jobs and careers that may have flexible hours but pay worse. Per a " fact check" from the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler in early April: "Unless women stop getting married and having children, and start abandoning careers in childhood education for naval architecture, a large gap in wages will almost certainly persist." While blaming politicians for trotting out this statistic without "proper context," Kessler somehow fails to mention his own context. The lack in the United States of policies that guarantee paid parental leave and childcare helps explain why some women have no choice but to exit the workforce or curtail their career options. The option, in realistic terms, is that women wouldn't have children, yet critics seem fine with penalizing women economically for being caretakers and continuing the existence of the human race.

There is a problem with the 78 percent statistic, but not the one critics say. That figure obscures the fact that most women of color fare worse than white and Asian women. It is a national average, across all races, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compared to what a white man makes: Hispanic women earn 54 percent, followed by black women at 64 percent, and Native American at 65 percent. (The wage gap closes somewhat for women of color vs. men of the same race or ethnicity).

Women of color are more likely to hold hourly wage jobs and to work in lower-paid fields. They also tend to work fewer hours. Not because they choose it, per se, but because of the nature of the work. Black and Hispanic women are concentrated in service industries, where part-time shift work is often the only option. In 2014, 29 percent of African-American women and 28 percent of Hispanic women had no choice but to work part-time, because they were unable to find full-time work, compared to 16 percent of white women.Differences in education also don't explain the full gap, because "many women of color tend to be paid less than their white peers even when they have the same educational background," writes the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

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The Gender Pay Gap Is Bad. The Gender Pay Gap for Women of Color Is Even Worse.

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Women, on average, earn 22 percent less than men, or 78 cents for every white man's dollar. This fact is everywhere, especially on Tuesday, Equal Pay Day. The day itself is meant to symbolize this figure, as it takes women three-and-half extra months of work to earn what men make year-round.

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Large racial and gender wage gaps in the U.S. remain, even as they have narrowed in some cases over the years. Among full- and part-time workers in the U.S., blacks in 2015 earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings and women earned 83% as much as men.

Looking at gender, race and ethnicity combined, all groups, with the exception of Asian men, lag behind white men in terms of median hourly earnings, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. White men are often used in comparisons such as this because they are the largest demographic group in the workforce - 33% in 2015.

In 2015, average hourly wages for black and Hispanic men were $15 and $14, respectively, compared with $21 for white men. Only the hourly earnings of Asian men ($24) outpaced those of white men.

Among women across all races and ethnicities, hourly earnings lag behind those of white men and men in their own racial or ethnic group. But the hourly earnings of Asian and white women ($18 and $17, respectively) are higher than those of black and Hispanic women ($13 and $12, respectively) - and also higher than those of black and Hispanic men.

While the hourly earnings of white men continue to outpace those of women, all groups of women have made progress in narrowing this wage gap since 1980, reflecting at least in part a significant increase in the education levels and workforce experience of women over time.

White and Asian women have narrowed the wage gap with white men to a much greater degree than black and Hispanic women. For example, white women narrowed the wage gap in median hourly earnings by 22 cents from 1980 (when they earned, on average, 60 cents for every dollar earned by a white man) to 2015 (when they earned 82 cents). By comparison, black women only narrowed that gap by 9 cents, from earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white man in 1980 to 65 cents today. Asian women followed roughly the trajectory of white women (but earned a slightly higher 87 cents per dollar earned by a white man in 2015), whereas Hispanic women fared even worse than black women, narrowing the gap by just 5 cents (earning 58 cents on the dollar in 2015).

Black and Hispanic men, for their part, have made no progress in narrowing the wage gap with white men since 1980, in part because there have been no improvements in the hourly earnings of white, black or Hispanic men over this 35-year period. As a result, black men earned the same 73% share of white men's hourly earnings in 1980 as they did in 2015, and Hispanic men earned 69% of white men's earnings in 2015 compared with 71% in 1980.

To be sure, some of these wage gaps can be attributed to the fact that lower shares of blacks and Hispanics are college educated. U.S. workers with a four-year college degree earn significantly more than those who have not completed college. Among adults ages 25 and older, 23% of blacks and 15% of Hispanics have a bachelor's degree or more education, compared with 36% of whites and 53% of Asians.

However, looking just at those with a bachelor's degree or more education, wage gaps by gender, race and ethnicity persist. College-educated black and Hispanic men earn roughly 80% the hourly wages of white college educated men ($25 and $26 vs. $32, respectively). White and Asian college-educated women also earn roughly 80% the hourly wages of white college-educated men ($25 and $27, respectively). However, black and Hispanic women with a college degree earn only about 70% the hourly wages of similarly educated white men ($23 and $22, respectively). As with workers overall, college-educated Asian men out-earn college-educated white men by about $3 per hour of work.

What contributes to these persistent wage gaps? Research shows that a majority of each of these gaps can be explained by differences in education, labor force experience, occupation or industry and other measurable factors.

For example, NBER researchers Francine Blau and Lawerence Kahn found that education and workforce experience accounted for 8% of the total gender wage gap in 2010, while industry and occupation explained 51% of the difference. When it comes to race, sociologists Eric Grodsky and Devah Pager found that education and workforce experience accounted for 52% of the wage gap between black and white men working in the public sector in 1990, and that adding occupational differences explained approximately 20% of the wage gap. And NBER researcher Roland Fryer found that for one group of adults in their 40s, controlling for standardized-test scores reduced the wage gap between black men and white men in 2006 by roughly 70%.

The remaining gaps not explained by these concrete factors are often attributed, at least in part, to discrimination. Blau and Kahn point out, however, that there are both portions of this "unmeasured" difference that could be due to factors other than discrimination (e.g., gender differences in behaviors like risk aversion or negotiation) as well as portions of the "measured" difference that may in fact be due to discrimination (e.g., a woman or minority not entering a high-paying STEM field because of experiences that may be rooted in prejudice, such as greater encouragement for men than women to pursue these studies).

When it comes to racial discrimination in the workplace, most Americans (60%) say blacks and whites are treated about equally, but opinions on this vary considerably across racial and ethnic groups. A new Pew Research Center report finds that roughly two-thirds (64%) of blacks say black people in the U.S. are generally treated less fairly than whites in the workplace; just 22% of whites and 38% of Hispanics agree.

About two-in-ten black adults (21%) and 16% of Hispanics say that in the past year they have been treated unfairly in hiring, pay or promotion because of their race or ethnicity; just 4% of white adults say the same. And while 40% of blacks say their race or ethnicity has made it harder for them to succeed in life, just 5% of whites - and 20% of Hispanics - say this. Some 31% of whites say their race or ethnicity has eased the way toward their success. At least six-in-ten whites (62%) and Hispanics (65%), and about half of blacks (51%), say their race or ethnicity hasn't made much of a difference.

For their part, about a quarter of women (27%) say their gender has made it harder for them to succeed in life, compared with just 7% of men. About six-in-ten men and women say their gender hasn't made much difference, but men are much more likely than women to say their gender has made it easier to succeed (30% vs. 8%). In addition, a 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that about one-in-five women (18%) say they have faced gender discrimination at work, including 12% who say they have earned less than a man doing the same job because of their gender. By comparison, one-in-ten men say they have faced gender-based workplace discrimination, including 3% who say their gender has been a factor in earning lower wages.

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Racial, gender wage gaps persist in U.S. despite some progress

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Large racial and gender wage gaps in the U.S. remain, even as they have narrowed in some cases over the years. Among full- and part-time workers in the U.S., blacks in 2015 earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings and women earned 83% as much as men.

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How much does being a woman cost over a lifetime? A lot more if she's Latina.

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day -- the day that marks how far into the year full-time employed women have to work in order to earn what their male counterparts earned in the year prior. To mark the occasion, the National Women's Law Center released a report showing how much the wage gap costs women over their lifetime.

The findings, released earlier this month, are based on 2014 U.S. Census data showing the difference between women's and men's median annual earnings for full-time, year-round employees, multiplied by 40 years. The data comes from a Census study that does not take immigration status into account, meaning it doesn't make distinctions about whether or not people are undocumented.

We're often reminded that women earn 79 cents for every dollar men earn, but what sometimes gets lost is that the gap is much worse for Latinas, black women and other women of color. Here are some of the NWLC's most jarring takeaways about being a woman of color working in the U.S.:

Women overall lose out on more than $400,000 over the course of their careers, but most women of color are shorted more than double that.

Men out-earn women in all 50 states and in Washington D.C. For full-time, year-round employees nationwide, women earn a median annual $39,621 compared to men's $50,383 -- a yearly difference of $10,762. If a woman works for 40 years, then, that adds up to a lifetime shortfall of $430,480 as compared to a man.

But most women of color can expect to lose out on a lot more. When compared to the earnings of white men, that wage loss figure rises to $883,040 for Native American women, $877,480 for black women and $1,007,080 for Latinas.

The gap is smaller -- though still nowhere near equitable -- for Asian-American women, whose lifetime wage difference compared to white men totals $365,440. So, you know, just a third of a million dollars, instead of an actual million dollars.

In a shocking number of states, white men earn more than twice as much as Latinas.

There are 12 states, or about a quarter of the country, where Latinas on average earn less than half of what white men make per year. In order from greatest lifetime wage gap to least, these states are New Jersey, California, Maryland, Connecticut, Texas, Massachusetts, Washington, Illinois, Rhode Island, Utah, Georgia and Alabama.

For black women, the above is true only in Louisiana, and for Native American women it's only true in Delaware. There are no states where, overall, men earn twice as much per year as women, and no states where white men earn twice as much as Asian-American women.

Our nation's capital is setting a horrible example.

At first glance, Washington, D.C., doesn't look like one of the most dire environments. With lifetime wage losses for women overall totaling $288,560, it's the seventh best state for working women.

But when lifetime wage loss for black women and Latinas is stacked up against the lifetime earnings of white men, D.C. comes in dead last. It's also the second worst for Asian-American women and eighth worst for Native American women.

Nearly half the states are shorting Latinas more than $1 million over the course of their careers.

There are 23 states where Latinas are losing out on more than $1 million during their careers when compared to white men. That figure is closer to $2 million in D.C. ($1,781,720), New Jersey ($1,685,120) and California ($1,616,520), according to the report.

And it's not much better for other women of color. The lifetime earning gap also exceeds $1 million for Native American women in 13 states, black women in six states and Asian-American women in one state.

Louisiana has the biggest overall wage gap in the country.

Over the course of a woman's career in Louisiana, based on median annual earnings, she loses out on $671,840 as compared to a man -- the highest wage gap between men and women in the country. Following Louisiana are Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota and New Hampshire.

Louisiana is the fourth worst state for black and Asian-American women, the seventh worst state for Native American women and the 14th worst state for Latinas when their pay is compared to that of white men.

Louisiana state legislators are currently weighing an equal pay bill that would ensure fair wages for women. The bill has strong support from Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) and passed in a state Senate committee earlier this month, but it could face an uphill battle in the state House, which vetoed similar legislation last year.

Florida has the smallest overall wage gap.

Without taking race into account, Florida has the smallest gender wage gap. Women in the state lose out on a total $248,120 over the course of their careers, slightly less than half the nationwide figure. Following the Sunshine State are Nevada, North Carolina, Hawaii and New York.

But similar to D.C., Florida is much less balanced when you look at what women of color earn over a lifetime as compared to white men. It ranks 27th worst for black women, 24th worst for Asian-American women, 15th worst for Native-American women and 13th worst for Latinas.

The states closest to equal pay for black and Latinas are also some of the whitest states in the country.

Vermont has the lowest lifetime wage loss for black women and Latinas. Maine and New Hampshire come in second and third for Latinas, while Idaho and Kentucky come in second and fourth for black women.

While these relatively small wage disparities deserve praise, they don't exactly affect a huge number of people. None of those states are home to many black women or Latinas, and they all rank among the least diverse states with populations that are at least 90 percent white. And even this group includes some noteworthy trouble spots: Vermont is the sixth worst state in the country for Asian-American women in terms of lifetime wage loss, for example, and both Idaho and New Hampshire fall in the bottom 50th percentile for Asian-American women as well.

BEFORE YOU GO

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The Wage Gap: Terrible For All Women, Even Worse For Women Of Color

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How much does being a woman cost over a lifetime? A lot more if she's Latina. Tuesday is Equal Pay Day -- the day that marks how far into the year full-time employed women have to work in order to earn what their male counterparts earned in the year prior.

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From Marilyn Monroe to Meryl Streep, Hollywood has long idolized iconic actresses. The industry ladles out awards and promotional adoration, but when it comes to their paychecks, Hollywood seems to love women a little bit-and in some cases a lot-less. Not only are women grossly underrepresented in film, television and comedy, they are also often underpaid compared to their male counterparts.

The gender pay gap, which is present across all industries and pay scales in the U.S., is finally receiving more media attention in Hollywood as stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Viola Davis have spoken out on the disparity. Here is what you need to know about the less-than entertaining ways that the entertainment business compensates its female stars.
On The Big Screen
The world's highest-paid actress, Lawrence, made $52 million in the 12 months to June 2015-an impressive number until it is compared to the $80 million banked by Robert Downey Jr., the world's top-paid actor.

Lawrence may have proven herself as a box office and critical success with The Hunger Games and films like Silver Linings Playbook, but Wikileaks revealed that the actress and her American Hustle co-star Amy Adams received a 7% cut of that film'sprofits, 2 percentage points less than the film's male leads, Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner. While Lawrence may have had a smaller role than her male counterparts, back-end compensation is typically awarded based on star power and gravitas, which Lawrence possesses on par with Bale and Renner.

Lawrence addressed the pay gap in October in an essay in Lenny, Lena Dunham and Girls producer Jenni Konner's newsletter. "When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn't get mad at Sony," she wrote. "I got mad at myself...I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early."

Scarlett Johansson, who earned $35.5 million last year, was the only film actress to join Lawrence on the 2015 edition of the Celebrity 100, Forbes' list of top-paid celebrities. Johansson was, in fact, the beneficiary of a rare fair deal in Hollywood: Playing Black Widow, she earned the same amount as Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

More frequent are anecdotes of discrimination like those recently related by Selma Hayek, Gwyneth Paltrow and even Streep.

Diane Keaton did not receive back-end pay for her star role in Something's Gotta Give, while Jack Nicholson did. Even after three Oscar wins, Streep says she gets paid less than her male co-stars. Paltrow stated the wage gap between her and Iron Man co-star Downey "feels shitty." Amanda Seyfried recalled that she has, at times, only earned a 10 th of what male actors have while working on the same film.

All of these women have echoed the sentiment of Patricia Arquette, who brought the issue to the world's attention at last year's Oscars when she said in her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, "It's our time to have wage equality for once and for all."

But it is not only the number on the paycheck that is the problem: Women are also greatly underrepresented on the big screen, leading to fewer opportunities to make money, an issue that Reese Witherspoon brought up at the American Cinematheque Awards in October: "Women make up 50% of the population, and we should be playing 50% of the roles on the screen."

That is a dream that is far from a reality. According to a report by the Annenberg School at USC's Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative released in August, only 28.1% of characters in 2014's top 100 films were female and of that percent, only 21 had a female lead or co-lead.
Behind The Camera
The misrepresentation is even worse behind the camera: Of the same films, women made up only 1.9% of directors, 11.2% of writers and 18.9% of producers. This only aggravates the problem. The report found that in productions where women held key positions off-screen-as directors, writers and producers-the films featured women more often, and in less sexualized roles.

Many argue that this stems from the antiquated and false notion that films starring women don't sell. Disney has been particularly proactive in making more female-centered films, including the animated hits Frozen and Inside Out and the live-action Malificent, Tomorrowland and aforementioned Avengers, as well as the upcoming Cinderella starring Cate Blanchett and Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson.

"Audiences have proven that there's an appetite and a market for dynamic female leads and female-driven stories, and as an industry, we have a responsibility to create those roles for women and compensate them accordingly," Alan Horn, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, told Variety.
On The Small Screen
In television, the pay gap is less severe, as casts can negotiate so that all leads get paid the same amount. This explains why Sofia Vergara and Kaley Cuco-Sweeting, who both made $28.5 million in the year to June, had comparable earnings to their male co-stars.

Still, the underrepresentation persists and explains the disparity in pay between TV actors and actresses: To make this year's list of top-paid TV actors, it took at least $9.5 million, but the cut-off for TV actresses was $5 million. According to the Annenberg School study, women are underrepresented among cable comedy and drama leads, as well as reality leads across the board.

Even after receiving two Emmy Awards, Kathy Griffin still had to ask NBC executives to be paid a salary equivalent to those of her male counterparts when she was starring on the Bravo series My Life on the D-List. She recently told Variety that it isn't getting better.
Deeper Disparities For Women Of Color
The earnings disparity is even worse for women of color. While, on average, women in this country make an average of 78% of their male counterparts, African American and Native American women make 64 cents and 59 cents, respectively, for every dollar made by white men, and Hispanic women earn just 56 cents to a white man's dollar.

And this imbalance also stands in the representation of people of color in film. According to the Annenberg study, 4.9% of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 were Hispanic or Latino-a tremendous underrepresentation considering the same people comprise 17% of the population. For blacks and Asians, the number was slightly higher at 12.5% and 5.3%, respectively. In fact, only 17 of the same 100 films starred an actor of an underrepresented ethnic group.

How to Get Away with Murder actress Viola Davis articulated the difficulties facing women of color in her recent Emmy award acceptance speech: "The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity," she said. "You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there."

When it comes to pay disparity, music may be the area of the entertainment industry in which women are best compensated for their work. Katy Perry was the top-paid musician last year, earning $135 million to beat out Garth Brooks, the highest paid male solo musician, who made $90 million.

But, still, there is an expectation that women do not discuss earnings and success. Perry told Forbes that she believes women fear being considered hubristic. "I'm not here to brag," said Perry on being Forbes' coverstar. "I'm here to inspire other females."

Of course, this is a concern that touches the entire country, not just Hollywood. And while in Hollywood the issue affects those fortunate enough to be making six, seven or eight figure salaries, in the rest of the country, it affects women struggling to support themselves and their families.

Still, with powerful visibility and an ability to spark public debate, Hollywood has an opportunity to set an example for every industry. Actresses, writers and directors must continue to discuss the wage gap-and opportunity gap-they face. Only then might studios move beyond unequal pay for equal work.

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Everything You Need To Know About The Hollywood Pay Gap

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The gender pay gap, which is present across all industries and pay scales in the U.S., is finally receiving more media attention in Hollywood as stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Viola Davis have recently spoken out to highlight the disparity. Here is what you need to know.

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Today is International Women's Day with marches and protests against gender inequality taking place across the world.

One of the more obvious examples of inequality between the sexes is in the gender pay gap.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the UK's gender wage gap narrowed to a record low this year but women still earn 9.4 per cent less than men, with big discrepancies still existing in some parts of the country.

A full-time worker in 2016 earns an average wage of £13.59 per hour, according to the latest edition of the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.

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International Women's Day 2017: How big is the gender pay gap where you live?

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Today is International Women's Day with marches and protests against gender inequality taking place across the world. One of the more obvious examples of inequality between the sexes is in the gender pay gap.

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Women, Work and the state of wage Inequality

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Women, Work and the state of wage Inequality

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Even in Harvard the gender pay gap exist 

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Even in Harvard the gender pay gap exist 

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The coaches of men's athletic teams at Harvard make significantly more money than coaches of women's teams, a disparity the Athletics Department is considering as part of a review of how it compensates its coaching staff.

A database from the Department of Education that compiled statistics from the 2015-2016 school year shows that the Harvard Athletics Department pours its resources overwhelmingly into men's programs.

Head coaches of Harvard's women's teams made roughly $34,000 less on average than the head coaches of men's teams. In 2015-2016, head coaches of men's teams made $114,196, and head coaches of women's teams made $80,097. Assistant coaches for women's sports also make less than their colleagues on men's teams, earning $39,006 compared to $53,983 for assistant coaches on men's teams. The way Harvard pays its coaches is consistent with statistics from across the Ivy League.

These compensation differences play out along gender lines. The head coach of every men's team at Harvard is male, and only eight women coach a men's team in any capacity. Half of women's team's head coaches are men, and 23 of 45 assistant coach positions for women's teams are held by men.

Athletics Department spokesperson Timothy J. Williamson wrote in a statement Monday evening that the Athletics Department "periodically" reviews how it compensates the coaches of men and women's teams.

"We have historically considered the market along with a variety of factors in setting salaries," Williamson wrote. "We are taking a hard look at our criteria and will continue to make appropriate adjustments."

In an interview earlier this month, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith-who oversees the Athletics Department-said that an investigation into gender equity in athletics beyond the normal procedure was underway.

"For a variety of reasons that I don't want to go into, there's reasons it's being looked at in more detail today," Smith said.

The Athletics Department is also conducting a broad review of the program's culture after a number of highly-publicized incidents last year prompted concerns about gender equality in the department.

Under Title IX, Harvard is required to provide equal opportunities for and treatment of male and female student-athletes, including providing equal facilities, equipment, opportunities to play, and support and recruitment services. But the reality, some experts say, can often be more complicated.

"[The law] gave women a lot of opportunities to play sports, but this doesn't apply for employment," said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic gold medalist and civil rights lawyer, in an interview.

With its 42 varsity teams, Harvard has the most NCAA Division I varsity sports programs in the country and the third highest number of student-athletes among the Ivy League with 1,070 participants-roughly 16 percent of the student body- in the department's programs, according to Department of Education data. The majority of these athletes are men; during the 2015-2016 academic year, there were 629 male athletes at Harvard and 441 female athletes, according to the Department of Education.

In 2015-2016, the Athletics Department put $11,523,987 towards men's teams and $7,361,857 towards women's teams, according to the Department of Education's database. Of the listed expenses, men's teams spent $815,274 on recruiting, nearly half a million more than the women's teams, which spent $327,342 last year.

While Harvard offers an equal number of men's and women's teams, the ratio of male to female athletes is considerably higher than the ratio of male to female students. While 47 percent of the student body is female, only about 41 percent of student-athletes are female, a difference which some say points to larger inequities.

Hogshead-Makar said if the difference between the number of male athletes and female athletes exceeds the size of a standard athletic team, a school may be violating federal law.

"A gap of 25 or more athletes will not equate to compliance with proportionality," Hogshead-Makar wrote in an email.

Other experts, though, say that both Harvard's larger number of male athletes and coaches is relatively common.

"There has never been a university that has lost federal funding because they have not been in compliance with Title IX, but you could make the argument that most schools aren't completely in compliance," said University of Connecticut professor Laura J. Burton.

Nicole LaVoi, a professor at the University of Minnesota and the co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport, said that more men have started coaching women's teams as it has become more lucrative nationwide.

"Back in the seventies, these women that were mostly coaching women either didn't get paid at all or got paid very little so men weren't interested in that," LaVoi said. "But now if you're a women's basketball coach at the highest level, you could make half a million dollars or more."

Burton also attributed the lower number of female athletics administrators and female coaches, especially of men's teams, to biases in the hiring processes.

"When you have your higher profile, revenue generating sport, you are going to select that person who better represents leadership and expertise," said Burton. "Unfortunately we stereotype that person to be more masculine than feminine."

-Staff writer Brittany N. Ellis can be reached at brittany.ellis@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @britt_ellis10.

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In Harvard's Athletics Department, A Stark Wage Gap | News | The Harvard Crimson

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The coaches of men's athletic teams at Harvard make significantly more money than coaches of women's teams, a disparity the Athletics Department is considering as part of a review of how it compensates its coaching staff.

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Business won't address the gender wage gap until they are force to 

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Business won't address the gender wage gap until they are force to 

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Has someone asked you your salary today? No? How strange. After all, as of Thursday the traditional reticence around discussing money and the secrecy over what we're all paid should have ended. The government requirement that all companies with more than 250 employees publish their salary data, showing the average pay for men and women, has finally come into force. The thinking behind this is that if companies are forced to publicly admit they don't pay their female staff as much as the males, they'll be shamed into doing something about it. Female-focused pay rises will ensue and, praise be, the UK will have solved a problem that is currently due to last until 2069.

Except that it won't be solved - as any woman who's ever discovered that the guy sitting next to her is earning more for the same job could have told the policy wonks who thought this up. Why should any company worry about spending money on consultants to analyse its salaries or having to pay its female staff more when it can simply ignore the recommendations and face no reprisal?

The original recommendations around pay-gap reporting suggested companies should be fined if they failed to publish their data. However, the government has decided it would rather coax organisations into complying than fine them. This was the approach taken to increase the number of women on FTSE100 boards. Over five years of consistent chivvying, the proportion moved from 12.5% to 26% in 2015, the process was declared a success and the chivvying stopped. Since then, the number has dropped to 25%. If we want corporates to behave differently from the way they have for centuries, constant monitoring and fear of reprisal is needed, not polite requests.

The government argues that companies will start to comply once they realise that if they don't, they risk not attracting the best talent. This puts the emphasis on women to make sure we don't go and work for a company that treats us unfairly. By making it women's job to hold organisations accountable for equal pay, the government is essentially saying it's our own fault if we find ourselves underpaid. This attitude ignores the fact that most of us don't have the luxury of turning down a job when it comes our way.

The bigger problem is that these stats won't accurately reflect where the real issues lie. We know there is a 9.4% pay gap when looking at average salaries paid to men and women working full time. However, this doesn't take into account that the gap is minimal for women in their 20s and early 30s and much wider for those who are older. Nor does it show that women of colour earn less than white women; that disabled women earn less than those who aren't. When it comes to pay prejudice, this isn't a discussion just about gender, it's a reflection of how we treat anyone who isn't a non-disabled white man.

What gender pay reporting might do is make it clear how much more women should be asking for when they're looking for a pay rise, although again it would be more helpful if the data was intersectional. However, this won't help women when it comes to actually asking for more money. Research from Harvard shows that managers, both male and female, respond negatively when women ask for a pay rise. This negativity results in either a refusal or a lingering anger at the woman for daring to ask, making it unlikely she's going to come back for more.

The problem with making companies publish their gender pay gap is that while it will force them to acknowledge they pay women less than men, it won't force them to care. To do that, the government needs to start hitting companies that fail to comply with equal pay laws where it hurts - in their bank accounts.

* This article was amended on 7 April 2017. An earlier version said incorrectly that the 9.4% pay gap related to full-time employees doing the same job.

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Businesses won't address the gender pay gap until they are forced to | Harriet Minter

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Has someone asked you your salary today? No? How strange. After all, as of Thursday the traditional reticence around discussing money and the secrecy over what we're all paid should have ended. The government requirement that all companies with more than 250 employees publish their salary data, showing the average pay for men and women, has finally come into force.

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Female doctors earn a LOT less then male doctors

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Female doctors earn a LOT less then male doctors

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It's no secret that doctors take home some pretty hefty paychecks. But male physicians are getting paid a lot more than their female colleagues.

Among all physicians, females earn an average of 74 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to a new report from Doximity, a social network for healthcare professionals. That translates to female physicians earning roughly $91,000 less a year than their male counterparts.

Among all full-time workers in the U.S., women earned an average of around 82 cents for every dollar men made in 2016, according to the Labor Department.

Even when broken down by medical specialty, there is no area where women earn as much as men.

The biggest pay gaps exists in vascular surgery, occupational medicine and pediatric endocrinology.

The wage gap can put women at a disadvantage in their long-term earnings potential and when it comes to paying off the massive loans that tend to accompany medical school.

Related: Women who want to outearn men should choose their college major carefully

"Medicine is going through a generational shift," said Joel Davis, vice president of strategic analytics at Doximity. "They are entering a world that has been historically dominated by men."

Neurosurgery is the highest-compensated specialty with an average annual pay of $620,000. The pay gap in this field was among the smallest at 15%. But that still translates to female neurosurgeons making $92,917 a year less, on average, the report found.

The report was based on 36,000 responses from full-time, licensed U.S. physicians who practice at least 40 hours a week.

Related: What did I make at my last job? None of your business

Where physicians live also impacts their earnings. Generally speaking, doctors in more rural and lower-cost cities tend to be better paid than those practicing in higher-cost cities like San Francisco or New York.

"More desirable locations to live or areas that are located near major medical schools had lower compensation," said Christopher Whaley, an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and lead author of the report.

The pay gap between male and female physicians was the highest in Charlotte and Durham, North Carolina, where women earned 33% and 31% less, respectively.

The pay gap was the smallest in Sacramento, where female doctors earned an average of 19% less than their male counterparts.

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 26, 2017: 3:01 AM ET

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Female doctors earn a LOT less than male doctors

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Among all physicians, females earn an average of 74 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to a new report from Doximity, a social network for healthcare professionals. That translates to female physicians earning roughly $91,000 less a year than their male counterparts.

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A State by state breakdown  of the striking gender gap in doctors pay

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A State by state breakdown  of the striking gender gap in doctors pay

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f you're a doctor in Charlotte, N.C., you're ideally situated to benefit from the highest pay in the health care business. There's just one catch: If you want that big money, you can't be a woman.

That's because the city also has the biggest gender wage gap in the nation. Women physicians in Charlotte make an average of 33 percent less than their male counterparts, a difference of $125,000 per year, according to a new report by the social media site Doximity.

The report tracks medicine's pay disparities by geography. It reveals that pay for women doctors varies widely, though one thing remains consistent - women are always paid significantly less than men.

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Among the report's findings:

Nationally, women physicians make an average of 26.5 percent, or $91,000, less than men.

Women are paid less in every city and every specialty. Female neurosurgeons are paid about $90,000 less per year on average. In vascular surgery the pay gap is $89,000 a year, and it's $76,000 among cardiologists.

In several cities, the pay gap is 30 percent or more, including Charlotte and Durham, N.C., Orlando, and Pittsburgh. Five other cities have a 29 percent gap.

The report also examines compensation more broadly, looking at variations in pay for foreign-trained doctors and primary care physicians, as well as differences in metropolitan areas that pay doctors the most and least.

Physicians' annual compensation versus gender wage gap by state

Hover over circles or squares to see details by US region or state.

Source: Natalia Bronshtein Doximity

Its data on the gender pay gap adds to a growing body of research on the extent of those disparities. "I don't know if we've known that it is this stark and exists across this many dimensions," said Chris Whaley, lead author of the Doximity report and adjunct assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

He added: "There are obvious implications here in terms of being able to attract and retain high quality physicians. More importantly, there's an equity and fairness issue."

The pervasiveness of the pay gap belies the importance of women to the future of the profession. A study by Harvard researchers recently showed that women physicians achieved better clinical outcomes in Medicare patients. In addition, women account for about half of the graduates from US medical schools every year. In 2015, they outnumbered male graduates in several states, including Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Washington, and Missouri.

Doximity's findings are based on a survey of 36,000 physicians across the US. The researchers said they controlled for hours worked and other factors that might explain the variations in pay. The report does not examine the reasons for the pay gap.

Read More

Female scientists face gender bias in NIH grant process

Dr. Suzanne Harrison, president of the American Medical Women's Association, said differences in pay begin early in female physicians' careers and often grow wider during the course of their careers. Until the gender pay gap is closed, she said, the issue must be addressed during training, so that women physicians are better equipped to advocate for themselves when they are negotiating compensation and benefits on their first jobs.

"This is unfortunately still a very real problem," said Harrison, a family medicine physician and professor at Florida State University College of Medicine. "Women are less comfortable negotiating right out of residency. They haven't had the training to feel comfortable in that role of asking for more."

The disparities they face apply to opportunities to conduct research, lead grand ground lectures, and create the reputation and visibility needed to compete for promotions. Women also face additional barriers related to raising children and requiring additional flexibility in their work schedules.

Too often, Harrison said, that flexibility is incorrectly construed as a ding on productivity. "The assumption has been by many that if you're at work fewer hours, that means you get less work done," Harrison said. "But if you drill down, women tend to be very productive" when they're at work.

She said eliminating the pay gap requires a systemic response. In addition to beefing up training for their doctors, health care organizations must examine their own pay inequities - across gender and race - and devise ways to address them. "It helps everyone to take the 10,000-foot view and really ask these questions: 'Where are we providing opportunities? How do we train people to keep accurate account of their work and the value they bring to their institutions?'"

About the Author(s)

Casey Ross can be reached at casey.ross@statnews.com
Follow Casey on Twitter@byCaseyRoss

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How medicine's gender pay gap spans specialties and geography

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f you're a doctor in Charlotte, N.C., you're ideally situated to benefit from the highest pay in the health care business. There's just one catch: If you want that big money, you can't be a woman. That's because the city also has the biggest gender wage gap in the nation.

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How Organizations Can  Reduce Gender Wage Gap

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How Organizations Can  Reduce Gender Wage Gap

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What Organizations Can Do to Reduce the Gender Pay Gap

During a recent interview about gender pay equity on Freakonomics with Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, she noted that the reasons for the existence of the gender pay gap in the United States are varied and complex. For organizations that are interested in promoting pay equity, it's important to understand what these varied and complex drivers of pay equity are. My colleague authored a great article that provides additional information about proposed legislation and notes steps organizations can take to create consistent pay practices.

Some of the biggest impacts on the gender pay gap are manifestations of societal norms and pressures that find males and females making different choices as they go through their professional lifecycle. While those societal phenomenon are inextricably linked to the gender wage gap and provide context to the topic, the focus of this article is on what organizations can do to reduce the gap.

When I work with clients who have identified an initiative that they would like to pursue (such as promoting gender pay equity), I recommend following a simple process:

Begin by defining what the intent of our efforts is:
If the overall intent is to ensure gender pay equity for equal levels of work at the organization, the first step is to begin by conducting an audit. To effectively conduct an audit, certain information should be available (such as job descriptions) so that roles can be accurately compared to each other.

Identify what is happening:
Just because the United States has a net gender pay equity gap, it doesn't mean that there's a gap at your organization. Knowing whether a gap exists before you take steps to reduce the size of the gap is both intuitive and important.

Analyze the drivers behind what is happening:
Separate the causes of a particular phenomenon from things that only have a correlative but not causal relationship.

Enact change by addressing the root cause(s) of the issue:
Effectively addressing the causes behind an issue, as opposed to constantly dealing with the symptoms of the issue, is almost always the most scalable and straightforward way to enact lasting change.

Pay Equity Review: The 4 Primary Drivers

Following that same four-step approach, we can use the underlying reasons for the existence of the gender pay gap that professor Goldin identified to address ways in which organizations can mitigate these causes. Some of the larger contributors to the gap that she identified include:

1. Job Selection: Job selection's impact on the gender pay gap is a large one because since females are more likely to take on caregiving roles that may need additional flexibility, they are therefore more likely to select jobs that have greater flexibility. These jobs with greater flexibility often pay less than similar jobs that have less flexibility. This can manifest itself in a lot of different ways, but a simple example would be someone turning down a role with a high amount of required travel and variable hours for a role that has more flexible or predictable hours but less pay.

2. Taking Time off for Caregiving Purposes: The data shows that taking time off has a large impact on gender pay equity. This is due to the fact that women are more likely than men to take time off for caregiving responsibilities.

3. Employees not Having Good Substitutes for Themselves: When a job can be performed by multiple employees at an organization, there is much less of an impact when one of those employees takes some time away from work. Conversely, there are some jobs in which it is very difficult to have any sort of flexibility or quality work life balance.

4. Discrimination: Based on the academic findings regarding the gender wage gap, discrimination was found to be a likely contributor to the gap, but not as big of a driver as some of the other concepts noted in the bullets listed above.

We know some of the main drivers of the gender pay equity gap, now what?
Since we know some of the main culprits of the gender pay gap, it'll be easy to just wipe out the disparity in pay between genders, right? Well, not exactly. While the size of the gender pay gap has closed in the most recent decades, economists who have recently worked to compare workers with the same education, labor force participation rates, and other relevant characteristics found that the gap still exists. The four items that were listed above as some of the main contributors to the gender pay gap can be addressed by organizations to varying degrees.

Job Selection

Of the four drivers of the gender pay gap, Job Selection is likely the one where organizations have the least amount of power to directly influence. This is because there are a lot of causes for why individuals make their specific job selection choices that organizations are powerless to control. A prime example of one of the most impactful reasons why Job Selection drives the gender pay gap is based on the decisions that individuals make about taking on caregiving responsibilities (as described above).

What can be done? Since females are more likely to opt-out of positions that don't have flexibility due to the relatively higher likelihood that they'll be performing caretaking responsibilities, organizations who are interested in reducing the gender pay gap should attempt to create jobs that reasonably allow for flexibility. This is by no means a silver bullet, and a disproportionately high amount of females will still to opt-out of jobs with higher pay, longer and more variable hours, more travel, and higher levels of accessibility due their desire for a role that has a smaller footprint on their personal life and the responsibilities that they've taken on and/or inherited. Some types of roles are more conducive to flexible scheduling and for some roles (or professions) introducing flexibility it can be near impossible.

Taking Time Off for Caregiving

Taking time off for caregiving has a lot of overlap with job selection. Claudia Goldin notes that women who have caregiving responsibilities will often get fewer opportunities, raises, and if they're working flexible hours their boss can think that they're not that committed. In addition, she notes that their boss may want to not burden the woman with additional work.

What can be done? The challenge for organizations is to keep employees engaged who are working longer hours and/or are on a less flexible schedule while at the same time not ignoring those who have to take time off for caregiving responsibilities. The degree and nature in which organizations focus on those caregiving employees impacts the degree to which those organizations' practices impact gender pay equity.

Employees Not Having Good Substitutes for Themselves

Employees not having good substitutes for themselves also ties in with the previous two drivers of gender wage disparity. This is because having a good 'substitute' for yourself at work means that it should have much less of an impact when you take time off. By reducing the impact to the organization when an employee takes time off or has a flexible schedule, the level of the tradeoff between compensation and flexibility should be reduced. Claudia Goldin notes that the cost of flexibility is very high if a client says 'I want you to be available all of the time'; that's a big demand, and an individual who values their family time will often say they won't do it. According to Professor Goldin, the professions and industries in which the cost of flexibility is very high also are the most likely to have the biggest gender wage gaps.

An example of this that almost everyone has experienced while growing up involves substitute teachers. When your normal teacher wasn't able to make it into work, the school district would send in a substitute teacher to fill in for the regular one. If your experiences were anything like mine, sometimes the substitute teacher had experience with the subject matter and was able to relatively seamlessly take over for the day, and sometimes they appeared woefully unprepared for what they were stepping into. The same concept applies to just about any profession that you can think of. The cost of flexibility in one instance was high, and low in the other instance, even though the general job of being a teacher was the same in both cases.

What can be done? The most straightforward approach that an organization can take is to cross train employees and have work status and processes well documented. Laying this sort of foundation also provides organizations with a lot of benefits beyond anything related to the gender wage gap. If you have employees at your organization whose work grinds to a halt when they take time off, their flexibility then comes at a high cost to the organization. Ultimately, cross training employees and having good documentation reduces the cost of flexibility and its potential associated impact on pay.

Discrimination

Claudia Goldin discussed discriminations' impact on the gender wage gap as something that used to have a much larger footprint, although its manifestations are no longer as overt as they used to be and are therefore rather difficult to single out during her analyses. As a result, she notes that the impact of discrimination as a contributor to the gender pay gap is pretty small once you hold a lot of things constant. The last I checked, small does not mean non-existent, and therefore organizations who want to reduce the gender wage gap should take efforts to mitigate any potential conscious or unconscious discrimination at their organization in regards to compensation (or any employment-related area).

What can be done? As much as it would simplify things to be able to catch gender-based wage discrimination at the exact moment it's occurring, that just isn't a realistic and comprehensive solution to the issue. One of the best ways to reduce any sort of illegal employment discrimination is to have consistent policies and practices that are accompanied by training for those who will be making or influencing employment-related decisions. This framework engenders consistency in the application of process and as a result, it reduces the opportunities for individuals to consciously or unconsciously discriminate when making employment-related decisions.

With all of these different drivers and approaches to reducing the size of the gender wage gap, the steps organizations can take goes back to the initial process that we walked through in the beginning of the article. A measured and methodical approach to reducing the gender pay equity gap makes sense given the complex and nuanced nature of the drivers behind the gap. Some organizations are better situated to promote gender pay equity than others, and every organization can do something to contribute to reducing the gap.

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How to Reduce the Gender Wage Gap: Pay Equity Review | Helios HR

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During a recent interview about gender pay equity on Freakonomics with Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, she noted that the reasons for the existence of the gender pay gap in the United States are varied and complex. For organizations that are interested in promoting pay equity, it's important to understand what these varied and complex drivers of pay equity are.

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The simple truth about the gender wage gap

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The simple truth about the gender wage gap

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Chart and graphs that show the gender wage gap throughout states

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The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as:

The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create

Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level

Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender

Differences in the scope and strength of state pay discrimination laws and policies

Explore Your State STATE WAGE GAP DATA
The gender pay gap occurs across almost all occupations and industries:

Male-dominated industries tend to have higher wages than industries and occupations made up mostly of female workers;

In a comparison of occupations with at least 50,000 men and 50,000 women in 2017, 107 out of 114 had statistically significant gaps in pay that favored men; six occupations had no significant gap; and just one had a gap favoring women.

In some occupations, women collectively are receiving billions less than they would with equal pay; for instance, women working as physicians and surgeons are paid $19 billion less annually than if they were paid the same as men in that occupation.

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The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap: AAUW Report

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The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as: The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender Differences in the scope and strength

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This chart shows the overall wage gap for black and Hispanic women overtime.

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Over half a century after the US passed the Equal Pay Act, American women still face a substantial gender wage gap across the spectrum.

Today, on average, a woman earns 80.5 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women's median annual earnings are $10,086 less than men's, according to data from the US Census Bureau.

While progress has been made toward pay parity between the sexes, the Institute for Women's Policy Research estimates that it will not be reached until 2059.

The six charts below illustrate the significant pay discrepancies between men and women based on race, age, geographical location, and more.

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6 charts show how much more men make than women

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Over half a century after the US passed the Equal Pay Act, American women still face a substantial gender wage gap across the spectrum. Today, on average, a woman earns 80.5 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women's median annual earnings are $10,086 less than men's, according to data from the US Census Bureau.

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What Gender Pay-Gap Statistics Aren't Capturing

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What Gender Pay-Gap Statistics Aren't Capturing

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At a young age little girls are taught my society that because they are girls they must do jobs and activity's such as becoming a a preschool teacher or jobs that show that women are more emotional.So that why women are more likely to go into less paying jobs

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Women are in fact more likely to choose lower-paying jobs, but numbers do a poor job of highlighting the cultural biases that can shape their decisions.

In discussions of the gender-pay gap, there's one counter-argument that comes up a lot: The gap isn't real, because after adjusting for the different types of jobs men and women tend to have, the gap shrinks to single digits. And so, the argument goes, men and women aren't paid the same amount of money because they are choosing to go into different professions, and the labor market rewards their choices differently. In other words: unequal work, hence unequal pay.

There's a lot of truth to this: Men and women do tend to choose different careers, so much so that researchers have a term for it: "gender occupational segregation." And because of this occupational sorting, the most commonly mentioned figure of the gender-gap debate-that an American woman only earns 79 cents for every dollar a typical American man makes-is indeed too simple.

But the occupational differences explanation, when presented without caveats, is also problematic. "The story is a lot more complicated than that," says Elise Gould, an economist and the co-author of a new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute about gender and compensation. "We wanted to disentangle the question of 'choice' and what's happening between two workers that are sitting right next to each other in a cubicle ... What's going on behind that in terms of cultural norms, expectations, work-family balance-all the different components that might lead women to be in certain kinds of jobs differently than men."

Researchers often control for certain variables if they suspect that those variables might be exaggerating the size of an effect. In the case of the pay gap, economists often adjust their data to compensate for the fact that, for example, men are overrepresented in high-paying computer programming jobs, and women are overrepresented in low-paying service jobs. These adjustments lead to numbers that stand as good estimates of how big a pay gap would be if men and women were represented in equal numbers in each profession. There are usually other variables that researchers control for, too; geography, experience, and job titles are other variables with known effects, so filtering them out from the numbers is a step toward isolating the effects of gender on pay.

But the striking thing is that even after adjusting for so many factors, there's still a statistically significant pay gap. (Pay-gap skeptics often note that the gap shrinks after taking these factors into account, but it's supposed to-those statistical adjustments were intended to create a more definitive, standardized measurement.) The fact that a gap remains at all after such adjustments shows that the problem defies any simple explanation. As Robert Hohman, the CEO of Glassdoor, wrote a few months ago in Fortune:

Factoring differences in education, experience, age, location, job title, industry and even company, our latest research reveals that the "adjusted" gender pay gap in the U.S. amounts to women earning about 94.6 cents per dollar compared to men. It is remarkable that a significant gap persists even after comparing male-female worker pay at the job title and company level.

That 5-cent difference is evidence that something isn't getting accounted for in all those variables that economists are adjusting.

The premise of the occupational-differences argument is that if women are choosing jobs that are easier to do, they shouldn't be paid the same wages as men. But what that argument-that women are to blame for keeping their wages down because they're choosing bad jobs-doesn't take into account are the many things that contribute to the way men and women choose their careers.

Gould, along with her co-author, Jessica Schieder, argue that the decisions women make regarding their careers do not happen in a vacuum: These are decisions shaped by cultural norms and expectations, societal forces that aren't cleanly captured by pay data. Gould and Schieder point to a multitude of messages that women get from society about what sorts of jobs they should pick: The expectations of American mothers could lead women to take lower-paying jobs because they're more likely to offer flexible (or shorter hours), while fears of discrimination might steer them away from higher-paying professions. In other words, adjusted statistics could be missing the role of discrimination in the processes that lead women to choose the careers they do.

"Too often it is assumed that this gap is not evidence of discrimination, but is instead a statistical artifact of failing to adjust for factors that could drive earnings differences between men and women. However, these factors-particularly occupational differences between women and men-are themselves affected by gender bias," Gould and Schieder write.

And while there are many efforts to push women towards studying subjects that would funnel them into higher-paying fields, such as science or tech, it's worth remembering that the adjusted gap still exists. Closing it would mean paying attention to all the ways that women make choices about their careers-and the inequities they can experience after they make them.

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What Gender Pay-Gap Statistics Aren't Capturing

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Women are in fact more likely to choose lower-paying jobs, but numbers do a poor job of highlighting the cultural biases that can shape their decisions. In discussions of the gender-pay gap, there's one counter-argument that comes up a lot: The gap isn't real, because after adjusting for the different types of jobs men and women tend to have, the gap shrinks to single digits.

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Women earned 84 cents for every $1 made by men in 2012, according to a new report released today by the Pew Research Center.

How did we get to that number? In October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that women earned 81 cents to the dollar. The difference is not large, but what gives?

One reason is that our study estimates the gender gap in hourly earnings while the government estimates the gap in weekly earnings. We chose to use hourly earnings, estimated as usual weekly earnings divided by usual hours worked in a week, because it irons out differences in earnings due to differences in hours worked.

For example, women are twice as likely as men-26% versus 13%-to work part-time. Naturally, that has a significant impact on the relative earnings of women and men if one looks at weekly earnings. To account for the skew in hours worked, the government's estimate of the gender pay gap is derived for full-time workers only, defined by the government as people who usually work at least 35 hours per week.

Restricting the estimate of the gender pay gap to full-time workers is not without limitations. For one, it leaves out a significant share of women and men when calculating the gender pay gap, namely those who work part-time. Moreover, just looking at full-time workers does not eliminate the difference in hours worked. Even in this group, men report working longer hours-26% of full-time men say they work more than 40 hours per week compared with 14% of women, according to government data.

The BLS, of course, is aware of these limits and it reports several other measures of the gender pay gap-for workers paid by the hour, for part-time workers, and for workers grouped by the number of hours worked in a week. According to their data, women who are paid an hourly rate earned 86% as much as men who are paid an hourly rate; women working part-time earn 104% as much as men working part-time; and, at the extreme, women who worked five to nine hours in a week earned 119% as much as men who worked the same number of hours. The reasons why women who work fewer hours earn more than men are complex, but a contributing factor is that women who work part-time are older than men who work part-time.

As it turns out, our estimates are similar to the government's estimates, not only for the moment but over an extended time. The BLS reports that the weekly earnings of full-time women relative to weekly earnings of full-time men increased from 64% in 1980 to 81% in 2012. Our estimate, based on hourly earnings of women relative to men, shows an increase from 64% in 1980 to 84% in 2012. In the intervening years, the two estimates trend together very closely.

Which is the preferred basis for the gender pay gap-weekly earnings or hourly earnings?

The two measures offer different perspectives, and, like many other things, the choice is with the beholder. Those wishing to focus on specific segments of the labor market may prefer the several different estimates broken down by the BLS. Those wanting to focus on the overall figure for working women and men may prefer our more encompassing approach, which uses hourly earnings.

Regardless, the pay gap estimates show that women earn 16-to-19% less than men. What explains this gap in the earnings of women and men?

Some of it is due to differences in the types of jobs (occupations) women and men do and some of it is due to the effects of parenthood on women and men. Research also suggests that women may not negotiate for higher wages as aggressively as men or they may be more likely to trade off higher wages for other amenities, such as flexible work hours. Other pieces of the puzzle-attributes employers value but that are not captured in available data or the presence of discrimination-are more difficult to quantify.

Topics: Gender, Work and Employment

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How Pew Research measured the gender pay gap

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Women earned 84 cents for every $1 made by men in 2012, according to a Pew Research report. But in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that women earned 81 cents to the dollar. The difference is not large, but what gives?

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7 Actions That Could Shrink the Gender Wage Gap

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7 Actions That Could Shrink the Gender Wage Gap

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See also: Video: Why Women's Economic Security Matters for All
The Census Bureau reported this week that the gender wage gap between full-time, year-round working men and women in 2013 remained virtually unchanged, with women earning 78 percent of what men earn. The 1 percent increase from 2012 is not statistically significant, and there has been no real movement in the gender wage gap since 2007. While working women have made great strides since 1967, when they earned only 58 percent of what men earned for full-time, year-round work, there is still a long way to go before true pay equity is achieved.

This means that, although women are the primary, sole, or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of families, dollar for dollar they continue to earn, on average, 22 percent less than their male counterparts, with Latinas and African American women experiencing the sharpest pay disparities compared to white men. There are a number of factors that contribute to the pay gap, including where women work, differences in hours worked, and education differences. But there is also a portion of the pay gap that is unexplained; researchers have estimated that as much as 10 percent to 40 percent of the gender wage gap cannot be explained even when taking into account gendered differences between the occupations, educations, and work histories of men and women.

Closing the gap will require multifaceted solutions that together help ensure that the work women perform is valued fairly, that women are not penalized unfairly for their caregiving responsibilities, and that there is greater transparency in workplace pay practices. Here are seven steps we can take that could make a difference.

1. Raise the minimum wage

Women make up a disproportionate share of low-wage workers, and estimates show that differences between women's and men's occupations could account for nearly one-half of the gender wage gap. Raising the minimum wage will help hardworking women better support their families. While nearly two-thirds of mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families, women made up approximately two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers in 2012. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, which means someone working full time, year round earns only $15,080 a year. That is below the poverty threshold for any family with children and not far above the poverty line for a single person. Increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would boost wages for about 15 million women and help close the gender wage gap.

2. Raise the tipped minimum wage

The gender wage gap is particularly prominent among tipped workers. The federal tipped minimum wage, which hasn't been changed since 1991, only pays workers $2.13 per hour. According to the Economic Policy Institute, women make up two-thirds of tipped workers and are 70 percent of food servers and bartenders, occupations that comprise more than half of the tipped workforce. Tipped workers have a higher poverty rate than non-tipped workers, and 46 percent rely on government assistance to make ends meet.

As the burden of tipped-wage poverty falls primarily on women and their families, raising the tipped minimum wage could make a real difference in decreasing the gender pay gap. Recent proposals advocate raising the tipped minimum wage to 70 percent of the minimum wage to ensure that the majority of a worker's income is coming from his or her employer, instead of from tips.

3. Support fair scheduling practices

Women, especially women of color, are more likely to work in low-wage jobs and often have rigid, unpredictable schedules that can change with little notice, making it difficult for working parents-especially mothers-to anticipate their schedules and arrange for child care. These workers risk losing their job because they lack the flexibility to alter their schedules when they need to take their child to the dentist or pick up a sick child from school-tasks that are more likely to fall to mothers than fathers. Legislation has been passed in Vermont and San Francisco in the past year that provides workers with a "right to request," allowing them to ask for greater flexibility or scheduling predictability from their employer without jeopardizing their job. Being able to keep a job is essential to closing the gender pay gap.

4. Support pay transparency

When women are not able to discuss their salaries with their colleagues, they often cannot tell when they are making less than their male colleagues for doing the same job. The Paycheck Fairness Act would reduce pay secrecy, give women better tools to address pay discrimination, and make it more difficult for companies to pay male workers more than female workers-an important tool in combatting the gender wage gap.

5. Invest in affordable, high-quality child care and early childhood education

Each day, 11 million children spend time in the care of someone other than a parent. Among children under age 6, 65 percent either live with only a single parent who works or two parents who both work. For parents of young children, particularly those who are low-income, the lack of affordable, high-quality early childhood programs can prevent working parents from ensuring that their families are cared for while they fulfill the demands of their jobs and can inhibit their long-term success. Furthermore, child care costed more than median rent in every state in 2012, yet access to reliable child care is a requirement for working parents to maintain employment.

Legislation such as the proposed Strong Start for America's Children Act invests in high-quality and sustainable early learning environments for young children, working families, and the future of our country. Investing in affordable, high-quality child care creates long-lasting structures that support both working parents and children, increasing women's ability to keep a job, excel in the workforce, and lower the gender wage gap.

6. Pass paid sick days legislation

Everyone gets sick, but not everyone has time to get better. Almost 40 million U.S. workers, or about 40 percent of the private-sector workforce, do not have access to any paid sick days. For part-time workers, that figure climbs to 73 percent. As a result, these employees often must go to work sick, send their sick children to school, or leave their sick children at home alone because they fear they will be reprimanded or fired for missing work. A 2012 poll found that one-third of parents of young children report that they will experience negative job consequences if they have to miss work to stay home with a sick child. Paid sick days would help close the gender wage gap by ensuring that women, who most often care for sick family members, would not lose pay or their jobs just because they or their child fell ill.

If employees must take unpaid leave from work when they fall ill, the loss of wages can take a toll. The strain is most acutely felt by low-income workers, most of whom are women; these workers are also the least likely group to have access to paid sick days. Eleven cities and two states across the country have recognized that this is bad for workers, bad for business, and bad for public health and have thus taken the lead in pushing legislation to guarantee paid sick days for workers through active campaigns and bills at the state and municipal levels. One such bill, the Healthy Families Act, would create a national standard by allowing workers to earn sick leave regardless of where they live.

7. Pass a national paid family and medical leave insurance program

Because caregiving responsibilities most often fall to women and mothers, women are more likely to have to leave the paid labor force to provide family care. Furthermore, working women can be targeted for discrimination and denied job opportunities altogether because of negative stereotypes about their caregiving roles-stereotypes that men are less likely to face. According to estimates, slightly more than 10 percent of the gender wage gap is due to women spending less time in the labor force than men, often stemming from these disproportionate family care responsibilities. Access to paid leave has been proven to shorten time away from work and facilitate re-entry into the workforce and makes it more likely that women will return to work, return to their previous employer, and return with the same or higher wages, all of which can help to close the wage gap. And when gender-neutral paid family leave is offered, men are more likely to take it, which reduces stigma and caregiving penalties for workers.

A national paid family and medical leave insurance program would provide wage replacement to working women-and men-when they must take time off to care for their families, bolstering families' economic security. Paid leave would help reduce the gaps in work histories, which women are more likely to experience, that contribute to the wage gap and affect women's opportunities to rise through the ranks. The United States is the only developed country that does not guarantee workers paid maternity leave after the birth or adoption of a child. In fact, only 12 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers. California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have implemented state-level paid family leave programs, and a national system such as that proposed in the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, or FAMILY Act, would help decrease the impact of the gender wage gap by supporting the vital work of caregivers and reinforcing families' economic security.
Sarah Jane Glynn is the Associate Director for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress. Milia Fisher is a Research Assistant with the Women's Initiative at the Center. Emily Baxter is a Research Assistant for the Economic Policy team at the Center.
The seven actions outlined here offer concrete opportunities to reduce the gender wage gap in the United States. Together, they can help further the cultural and structural change that will bring us closer to making the 22 percent wage gap a thing of the past.

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7 Actions that Could Shrink the Gender Wage Gap

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See also: Video: Why Women's Economic Security Matters for All The Census Bureau reported this week that the gender wage gap between full-time, year-round working men and women in 2013 remained virtually unchanged, with women earning 78 percent of what men earn.

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See also:
Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF and Scribd versions.

In order to earn as much as the average man did in 2015, the average woman would have to work until April 12, 2016-known as Equal Pay Day. Women today have made great strides past the barriers that blocked previous generations from success in the workplace; however, further action must be taken in order to fully eliminate the earnings gap. The gender wage gap is the difference between women's and men's earnings-which is due partly to discrimination but also factors such as differences in occupation and industry, education, work hours, and experience. If the gender wage gap continues to close at its current rate, it is projected to persist until 2059.

Here are a few key facts about the gender wage gap to keep in mind on Equal Pay Day.

1. Women earn just 79 cents for every dollar made by men.

In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, full-time, year-round working women's annual median wages were $39,621 compared with $50,383 for men. To put this in perspective, the difference between men's and women's median wages-$10,762-could cover more than 14 months of median U.S. rent in 2014 or the average cost of more than one year of full-time, center-based care for an infant.

2. The gender wage gap most severely affects women of color, and the wage gap exists within all racial and ethnic groups.

In 2014, Latinas and African American women suffered the greatest losses in earnings because of the gender wage gap. Hispanic and African American women working full time and year round earned just 55 cents and 60 cents respectively, for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. Additionally, the gender wage gap exists within all racial and ethnic groups:

Asian women earned 81 cents for every dollar earned by Asian men.

Black women earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by black men.

Hispanic women earned 88 cents for every dollar earned by Hispanic men.

White, non-Hispanic women earned 75 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men.

3. Women earn less than men in all but five occupations.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2015 show that for all occupations with comparable median weekly earnings data for men and women, men make more than women in all but five of the detailed occupations: wholesale and retail buyers except farm products; police and sheriff's patrol officers; bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks; general office clerks; and data entry keyers. Additionally, women even made less than men in the so-called pink-collar jobs in which women are disproportionately represented, such as maids and housekeeping cleaners, elementary and middle school teachers, and registered nurses. Recent research has also shown that as women enter an occupation previously dominated by men, pay decreases in that occupation.

4. Despite the fact that women now earn the majority of college degrees, the wage gap persists.

The American Association of University Women, or AAUW, found that one year out of college, women were paid just 82 percent of what their similarly educated and experienced male peers were paid. The AAUW found that the gap widens over time: 10 years after graduating from college, women were paid only 69 percent of what their male counterparts were paid.

5. The gender wage gap continues to grow over time.

For women ages 15 to 24 working full time and year round, the wage gap is $4,373 per year. By the time women reach age 45 to 64, they earn $15,404 less than men per year.

6. The wage gap results in significant losses in lifetime earnings for women.

Over a 40-year career, the average lifetime earning losses for women based on today's wage gap total $430,480. These losses are greater for women of color: Latinas lose a total of $1,007,080 and African American women lose $877,480 over a 40-year career. A lifetime of earning less also affects women's retirement security. On average, women have 50 percent smaller account balances in defined contribution plans.

7. The wage gap has consequences for families' economic security.

In 2012, 63.3 percent of mothers were sole, primary, or co-breadwinners for their households. This means that when women are not paid fairly, it is not just women's economic security that is put at risk-entire families often miss out on wages lost due to the gender wage gap.

8. Nearly 40 percent of the wage gap cannot be explained by occupation, work experience, race, or union membership.

Research has broken down the wage gap to show that more than half is due to differences in the types of occupations and industries in which men and women work. Additionally, about 14 percent is due to the fact that women are more likely to leave the workforce to provide unpaid care to family members. Yet the wage gap persists even when men and women have the same background: After controlling for gender and racial differences, 38 percent of the gap is unexplainable by measureable factors. This means that gender-based pay discrimination is still a significant cause of the discrepancy in pay between men and women.

9. Part of the gender wage gap is explained by the fact that more women take unpaid leave than men.

Estimates suggest that around 14 percent of the gender wage gap is due to women spending less time in the labor force, which can be explained by the fact that women are more likely to leave labor force to provide unpaid care for family members. Access to paid leave has been proven to increase the likelihood that mothers will not only return to the workforce after childbirth, but also return to their previous employer. Indeed, mothers are more adversely affected by the wage gap than nonmothers. Women's earning are reduced by about 7 percent per child. Slightly less than one-third of the wage gap between mothers and nonmothers is based on taking leave to care for a child.

10. Public policy could help close the gender wage gap, but Congress has obstructed progress.
Kaitlin Holmes is a Special Assistant for the Women's Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Danielle Corley is a Research Assistant for Women's Economic Policy at the Center.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would be a critical step forward in closing the gender wage gap by prohibiting gender-based pay discrepancies and banning workplace policies that penalize employees for sharing wage information. Although the bill has been introduced in every Congress since 1997, Congress has yet to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act into law, thereby further contributing to the loss of hard-earned wages for millions of workers and families.

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The Top 10 Facts About the Gender Wage Gap - Center for American Progress

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Posted on See also: Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF and Scribd versions. In order to earn as much as the average man did in 2015, the average woman would have to work until April 12, 2016-known as Equal Pay Day.

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Summary

What this report finds: Women are paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men-despite the fact that over the last several decades millions more women have joined the workforce and made huge gains in their educational attainment. Too often it is assumed that this pay gap is not evidence of discrimination, but is instead a statistical artifact of failing to adjust for factors that could drive earnings differences between men and women. However, these factors-particularly occupational differences between women and men-are themselves often affected by gender bias. For example, by the time a woman earns her first dollar, her occupational choice is the culmination of years of education, guidance by mentors, expectations set by those who raised her, hiring practices of firms, and widespread norms and expectations about work-family balance held by employers, co-workers, and society. In other words, even though women disproportionately enter lower-paid, female-dominated occupations, this decision is shaped by discrimination, societal norms, and other forces beyond women's control.

Why it matters, and how to fix it: The gender wage gap is real-and hurts women across the board by suppressing their earnings and making it harder to balance work and family. Serious attempts to understand the gender wage gap should not include shifting the blame to women for not earning more. Rather, these attempts should examine where our economy provides unequal opportunities for women at every point of their education, training, and career choices.

Introduction and key findings

Women are paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men (Hegewisch and DuMonthier 2016). This is despite the fact that over the last several decades millions more women have joined the workforce and made huge gains in their educational attainment.

Critics of this widely cited statistic claim it is not solid evidence of economic discrimination against women because it is unadjusted for characteristics other than gender that can affect earnings, such as years of education, work experience, and location. Many of these skeptics contend that the gender wage gap is driven not by discrimination, but instead by voluntary choices made by men and women-particularly the choice of occupation in which they work. And occupational differences certainly do matter-occupation and industry account for about half of the overall gender wage gap (Blau and Kahn 2016).

To isolate the impact of overt gender discrimination-such as a woman being paid less than her male coworker for doing the exact same job-it is typical to adjust for such characteristics. But these adjusted statistics can radically understate the potential for gender discrimination to suppress women's earnings. This is because gender discrimination does not occur only in employers' pay-setting practices. It can happen at every stage leading to women's labor market outcomes.

Take one key example: occupation of employment. While controlling for occupation does indeed reduce the measured gender wage gap, the sorting of genders into different occupations can itself be driven (at least in part) by discrimination. By the time a woman earns her first dollar, her occupational choice is the culmination of years of education, guidance by mentors, expectations set by those who raised her, hiring practices of firms, and widespread norms and expectations about work-family balance held by employers, co-workers, and society. In other words, even though women disproportionately enter lower-paid, female-dominated occupations, this decision is shaped by discrimination, societal norms, and other forces beyond women's control.

This paper explains why gender occupational sorting is itself part of the discrimination women face, examines how this sorting is shaped by societal and economic forces, and explains that gender pay gaps are present even within occupations.

Key points include:

Gender pay gaps within occupations persist, even after accounting for years of experience, hours worked, and education.

Decisions women make about their occupation and career do not happen in a vacuum-they are also shaped by society.

The long hours required by the highest-paid occupations can make it difficult for women to succeed, since women tend to shoulder the majority of family caretaking duties.

Many professions dominated by women are low paid, and professions that have become female-dominated have become lower paid.

This report examines wages on an hourly basis. Technically, this is an adjusted gender wage gap measure. As opposed to weekly or annual earnings, hourly earnings ignore the fact that men work more hours on average throughout a week or year. Thus, the hourly gender wage gap is a bit smaller than the 79 percent figure cited earlier. This minor adjustment allows for a comparison of women's and men's wages without assuming that women, who still shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibilities at home, would be able or willing to work as many hours as their male counterparts. Examining the hourly gender wage gap allows for a more thorough conversation about how many factors create the wage gap women experience when they cash their paychecks.

Within-occupation gender wage gaps are large-and persist after controlling for education and other factors

Those keen on downplaying the gender wage gap often claim women voluntarily choose lower pay by disproportionately going into stereotypically female professions or by seeking out lower-paid positions. But even when men and women work in the same occupation-whether as hairdressers, cosmetologists, nurses, teachers, computer engineers, mechanical engineers, or construction workers-men make more, on average, than women (CPS microdata 2011-2015).

As a thought experiment, imagine if women's occupational distribution mirrored men's. For example, if 2 percent of men are carpenters, suppose 2 percent of women become carpenters. What would this do to the wage gap? After controlling for differences in education and preferences for full-time work, Goldin (2014) finds that 32 percent of the gender pay gap would be closed.

However, leaving women in their current occupations and just closing the gaps between women and their male counterparts within occupations (e.g., if male and female civil engineers made the same per hour) would close 68 percent of the gap. This means examining why waiters and waitresses, for example, with the same education and work experience do not make the same amount per hour. To quote Goldin:

Another way to measure the effect of occupation is to ask what would happen to the aggregate gender gap if one equalized earnings by gender within each occupation or, instead, evened their proportions for each occupation. The answer is that equalizing earnings within each occupation matters far more than equalizing the proportions by each occupation. (Goldin 2014)

This phenomenon is not limited to low-skilled occupations, and women cannot educate themselves out of the gender wage gap (at least in terms of broad formal credentials). Indeed, women's educational attainment outpaces men's; 37.0 percent of women have a college or advanced degree, as compared with 32.5 percent of men (CPS ORG 2015). Furthermore, women earn less per hour at every education level, on average. As shown in Figure A, men with a college degree make more per hour than women with an advanced degree. Likewise, men with a high school degree make more per hour than women who attended college but did not graduate. Even straight out of college, women make $4 less per hour than men-a gap that has grown since 2000 (Kroeger, Cooke, and Gould 2016).

Steering women to certain educational and professional career paths-as well as outright discrimination-can lead to different occupational outcomes

The gender pay gap is driven at least in part by the cumulative impact of many instances over the course of women's lives when they are treated differently than their male peers. Girls can be steered toward gender-normative careers from a very early age. At a time when parental influence is key, parents are often more likely to expect their sons, rather than their daughters, to work in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields, even when their daughters perform at the same level in mathematics (OECD 2015).

Expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A 2005 study found third-grade girls rated their math competency scores much lower than boys', even when these girls' performance did not lag behind that of their male counterparts (Herbert and Stipek 2005). Similarly, in states where people were more likely to say that "women [are] better suited for home" and "math is for boys," girls were more likely to have lower math scores and higher reading scores (Pope and Sydnor 2010). While this only establishes a correlation, there is no reason to believe gender aptitude in reading and math would otherwise be related to geography. Parental expectations can impact performance by influencing their children's self-confidence because self-confidence is associated with higher test scores (OECD 2015).

By the time young women graduate from high school and enter college, they already evaluate their career opportunities differently than young men do. Figure B shows college freshmen's intended majors by gender. While women have increasingly gone into medical school and continue to dominate the nursing field, women are significantly less likely to arrive at college interested in engineering, computer science, or physics, as compared with their male counterparts.

These decisions to allow doors to lucrative job opportunities to close do not take place in a vacuum. Many factors might make it difficult for a young woman to see herself working in computer science or a similarly remunerative field. A particularly depressing example is the well-publicized evidence of sexism in the tech industry (Hewlett et al. 2008). Unfortunately, tech isn't the only STEM field with this problem.

Young women may be discouraged from certain career paths because of industry culture. Even for women who go against the grain and pursue STEM careers, if employers in the industry foster an environment hostile to women's participation, the share of women in these occupations will be limited. One 2008 study found that "52 percent of highly qualified females working for SET [science, technology, and engineering] companies quit their jobs, driven out by hostile work environments and extreme job pressures" (Hewlett et al. 2008). Extreme job pressures are defined as working more than 100 hours per week, needing to be available 24/7, working with or managing colleagues in multiple time zones, and feeling pressure to put in extensive face time (Hewlett et al. 2008). As compared with men, more than twice as many women engage in housework on a daily basis, and women spend twice as much time caring for other household members (BLS 2015). Because of these cultural norms, women are less likely to be able to handle these extreme work pressures. In addition, 63 percent of women in SET workplaces experience sexual harassment (Hewlett et al. 2008). To make matters worse, 51 percent abandon their SET training when they quit their job. All of these factors play a role in steering women away from highly paid occupations, particularly in STEM fields.

The long hours required for some of the highest-paid occupations are incompatible with historically gendered family responsibilities

Those seeking to downplay the gender wage gap often suggest that women who work hard enough and reach the apex of their field will see the full fruits of their labor. In reality, however, the gender wage gap is wider for those with higher earnings. Women in the top 95th percentile of the wage distribution experience a much larger gender pay gap than lower-paid women.

Again, this large gender pay gap between the highest earners is partially driven by gender bias. Harvard economist Claudia Goldin (2014) posits that high-wage firms have adopted pay-setting practices that disproportionately reward individuals who work very long and very particular hours. This means that even if men and women are equally productive per hour, individuals-disproportionately men-who are more likely to work excessive hours and be available at particular off-hours are paid more highly (Hersch and Stratton 2002; Goldin 2014; Landers, Rebitzer, and Taylor 1996).

It is clear why this disadvantages women. Social norms and expectations exert pressure on women to bear a disproportionate share of domestic work-particularly caring for children and elderly parents. This can make it particularly difficult for them (relative to their male peers) to be available at the drop of a hat on a Sunday evening after working a 60-hour week. To the extent that availability to work long and particular hours makes the difference between getting a promotion or seeing one's career stagnate, women are disadvantaged.

And this disadvantage is reinforced in a vicious circle. Imagine a household where both members of a male-female couple have similarly demanding jobs. One partner's career is likely to be prioritized if a grandparent is hospitalized or a child's babysitter is sick. If the past history of employer pay-setting practices that disadvantage women has led to an already-existing gender wage gap for this couple, it can be seen as "rational" for this couple to prioritize the male's career. This perpetuates the expectation that it always makes sense for women to shoulder the majority of domestic work, and further exacerbates the gender wage gap.

Female-dominated professions pay less, but it's a chicken-and-egg phenomenon

Many women do go into low-paying female-dominated industries. Home health aides, for example, are much more likely to be women. But research suggests that women are making a logical choice, given existing constraints. This is because they will likely not see a significant pay boost if they try to buck convention and enter male-dominated occupations. Exceptions certainly exist, particularly in the civil service or in unionized workplaces (Anderson, Hegewisch, and Hayes 2015). However, if women in female-dominated occupations were to go into male-dominated occupations, they would often have similar or lower expected wages as compared with their female counterparts in female-dominated occupations (Pitts 2002). Thus, many women going into female-dominated occupations are actually situating themselves to earn higher wages. These choices thereby maximize their wages (Pitts 2002). This holds true for all categories of women except for the most educated, who are more likely to earn more in a male profession than a female profession. There is also evidence that if it becomes more lucrative for women to move into male-dominated professions, women will do exactly this (Pitts 2002). In short, occupational choice is heavily influenced by existing constraints based on gender and pay-setting across occupations.

To make matters worse, when women increasingly enter a field, the average pay in that field tends to decline, relative to other fields. Levanon, England, and Allison (2009) found that when more women entered an industry, the relative pay of that industry 10 years later was lower. Specifically, they found evidence of devaluation-meaning the proportion of women in an occupation impacts the pay for that industry because work done by women is devalued.

Computer programming is an example of a field that has shifted from being a very mixed profession, often associated with secretarial work in the past, to being a lucrative, male-dominated profession (Miller 2016; Oldenziel 1999). While computer programming has evolved into a more technically demanding occupation in recent decades, there is no skills-based reason why the field needed to become such a male-dominated profession. When men flooded the field, pay went up. In contrast, when women became park rangers, pay in that field went down (Miller 2016).

Further compounding this problem is that many professions where pay is set too low by market forces, but which clearly provide enormous social benefits when done well, are female-dominated. Key examples range from home health workers who care for seniors, to teachers and child care workers who educate today's children. If closing gender pay differences can help boost pay and professionalism in these key sectors, it would be a huge win for the economy and society.

Conclusion

The gender wage gap is real-and hurts women across the board. Too often it is assumed that this gap is not evidence of discrimination, but is instead a statistical artifact of failing to adjust for factors that could drive earnings differences between men and women. However, these factors-particularly occupational differences between women and men-are themselves affected by gender bias. Serious attempts to understand the gender wage gap should not include shifting the blame to women for not earning more. Rather, these attempts should examine where our economy provides unequal opportunities for women at every point of their education, training, and career choices.

- This paper was made possible by a grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

- The authors wish to thank Josh Bivens, Barbara Gault, and Heidi Hartman for their helpful comments.

About the authors

Jessica Schieder joined EPI in 2015. As a research assistant, she supports the research of EPI's economists on topics such as the labor market, wage trends, executive compensation, and inequality. Prior to joining EPI, Jessica worked at the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) as a revenue and spending policies analyst, where she examined how budget and tax policy decisions impact working families. She holds a bachelor's degree in international political economy from Georgetown University.

Elise Gould, senior economist, joined EPI in 2003. Her research areas include wages, poverty, economic mobility, and health care. She is a co-author of The State of Working America, 12th Edition. In the past, she has authored a chapter on health in The State of Working America 2008/09; co-authored a book on health insurance coverage in retirement; published in venues such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Challenge Magazine, and Tax Notes; and written for academic journals including Health Economics, Health Affairs, Journal of Aging and Social Policy, Risk Management & Insurance Review, Environmental Health Perspectives, and International Journal of Health Services. She holds a master's in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

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Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn 2016. The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 21913.

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Hegewisch, Ariane, and Asha DuMonthier. 2016. The Gender Wage Gap: 2015; Earnings Differences by Race and Ethnicity. Institute for Women's Policy Research.

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"Women's work" and the gender pay gap: How discrimination, societal norms, and other forces affect women's occupational choices-and their pay

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Serious attempts to understand the gender wage gap should not include shifting the blame to women for not earning more. Rather, these attempts should examine where our economy provides unequal opportunities for women at every point of their education, training, and career choices.

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¨Did you know that in 2015, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 20 percent? While the number has gone up one percentage point from 2014, the change isn’t statistically significant — because the increase is so small, mere tenths of a percent, it doesn’t amount to perceptible change. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the earnings ratio hasn’t had significant annual change since 2007. The gap has narrowed since the 1970s, due largely to women’s progress in education and workforce participation and to men’s wages rising at a slower rate. Still, the pay gap does not appear likely to go away on its own. At the rate of change between 1960 and 2015, women are expected to reach pay equity with men in 2059. But even that slow progress has stalled in recent years. If change continues at the slower rate seen since 2001, women will not reach pay equity with men until 2152.¨

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the gender wage gap explained in 2 minutes

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THE GENDER WAGE GAP EXPLAINED IN 2 MINUTES

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The GENDER WAGE GAP: Women earing 77cents on a man's dollar. It's obviously discrimination against women and this is no laughing matter, ok guys? Unfortunately, only Obama and Justin T really care about this, because it makes women wet when they make speeches about it. These women then become liberals.

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The Narrow, But persistent, Gender Gap In Pay

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The Narrow, But persistent, Gender Gap In Pay

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The gender gap in pay has narrowed since 1980, but it has remained relatively stable over the past 15 years or so. In 2017, women earned 82% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers in the United States. Based on this estimate, it would take an extra 47 days of work for women to earn what men did in 2017.

By comparison, the Census Bureau found that full-time, year-round working women earned 80% of what their male counterparts earned in 2016.

Our analysis finds that the 2017 wage gap was smaller for adults ages 25 to 34 than for all workers ages 16 and older. Women in this age group earned 89 cents for every dollar a man in the same age group earned.
(For more on the gender pay gap, see our 2014 explainer, "There's more to the story of the shrinking pay gap." To understand how we calculate the gender pay gap, see our 2013 post, "How Pew Research Center measured the gender pay gap.")
The estimated 18-cent gender pay gap among all workers in 2017 has narrowed from 36 cents in 1980. For young women, the gap has narrowed even more over time. In 1980, women ages 25 to 34 earned 33 cents less than their male counterparts, compared with 11 cents in 2017.

Why does a gender pay gap still persist?

Much of the gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.

But other factors that are difficult to measure, including gender discrimination, may contribute to the ongoing wage discrepancy. In a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, about four-in-ten working women (42%) said they have experienced gender discrimination at work, compared with about two-in-ten men (22%) who said the same. One of the most commonly reported forms of discrimination focused on earnings inequality. One-in-four employed women said they have earned less than a man who was doing the same job; just 5% of men said they have earned less than a woman doing the same job.

Both men and women see inequalities in the workplace: In a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 77% of women and 63% of men said this country needs to continue making changes to give men and women equality in the workplace.

Family caregiving responsibilities, particularly motherhood, can lead to interruptions in career paths for women and can have an impact on long-term earnings. In a 2013 survey, women were more likely than men to say they had taken breaks from their careers to care for their family. Roughly four-in-ten mothers said that at some point in their work life they had taken a significant amount of time off (39%) or reduced their work hours (42%) to care for a child or other family member. Roughly a quarter (27%) said they had quit work altogether to take care of these familial responsibilities. Fewer men said the same. For example, just 24% of fathers said they had taken a significant amount of time off to care for a child or other family member.

Our 2016 survey of workers who have taken parental, family or medical leave in the past two years found that mothers typically take more time off than fathers after birth or adoption. The median length of leave among mothers after the birth or adoption of their child was 11 weeks, compared with one week for fathers. About half (47%) of mothers who took time off from work in the past two years after birth or adoption took off 12 weeks or more.

Mothers were also nearly twice as likely as fathers to say taking time off had a negative impact on their job or career. Among those who took leave from work in the past two years following the birth or adoption of their child, 25% of women said this had a negative impact at work, compared with 13% of men.

Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations. This may also contribute to gender differences in pay.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published April 8, 2014.

Topics: Gender, Income Inequality, Work and Employment, Income

1. Nikki Graf is a research associate focusing on social and demographic trends at Pew Research Center.

2. Anna Brown is a research analyst focusing on social and demographic trends at Pew Research Center.

3. Eileen Patten is a former research analyst focusing on Hispanic, social and demographic trends at Pew Research Center.

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The narrowing, but persistent, gender gap in pay

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The gender gap in pay has narrowed since 1980, but it has remained relatively stable over the past 15 years or so. In 2017, women earned 82% of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers in the United States.

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I have long been insisting that we don't in fact have a gender pay : we have a motherhood pay gap. It's entirely true to say that women, on average, earn less than men. But what we'd actually like to know is not whether this is so by why is this so? If employers look at potential employees and cackle with glee as they say "That's a woman, pay her less!" then we've got a problem, and not only a problem but a problem we'd better go do something about. If that difference in average wages is a result of a difference in the way that men and women would like to run their lives then it's not obvious that we do have a problem. And if there's no problem then obviously we don't need any public policies to deal with the non-existent problem. So the why of the difference is very much more important than the existence of it.

Which brings us to a lovely little number which really does help in explaining what is going on. And that number is 5.7%:

The purpose of this article is to attempt to explain why the hourly wages of mothers are approximately 5% lower (per child) than the wages of nonmothers (Avellar and Smock 2003; Budig and England 2001; Gangl and Ziefle 2009; Glauber 2007; Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson 2000; Korenman and Neumark 1992; Lundberg and Rose 2000; Neumark and Korenman 1994; Taniguchi 1999; Waldfogel 1997, 1998a, 1998b). The most frequently hypothesized explanation of the motherhood wage penalty is that childbearing and childrearing disrupt the acquisition of formal education and on-the-job training. However, evidence suggests that differences between mothers and other women in educational attainment and work experience do not entirely explain the monetary penalty for motherhood. The effect of motherhood on wages might also be due to employer discrimination or to differences between mothers and other women in work effort.

That approximately 5% is explained elsewhere in the paper as being in fact the 5.7% I quote. And what is the cause of this? The answer from this paper becomes two things. Firstly, mothers do tend to take breaks from the world of work to have and to raise their children. Secondly, those who always see themselves as going to be mothers (and yes, there's still a substantial portion of the population who do indeed regard life as being one of those things best run by the traditional gender time allocations, whatever you or I might think about that) tend to invest less in education and careers when they know that they're intending to drop out of that rat race.

Thus mothers tend to get paid, because of the choices made associated with being a mother, 5.7% less for each child they have. This does not mean that employers now just say "Look! A mother, pay her 5.7% less!" This is still not that discrimination which is a problem, this is just the outcome of people deciding to live their lives n a certain manner.

There's also another piece of seemingly discriminatory behaviour in the labour market. This particular paper takes it to be discrimination but again, it's not. The behaviour being that fathers earn more than non-fathers among men:

Using the 1979-2006 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate how the earnings bonus for fatherhood varies by characteristics associated with hegemonic masculinity in the American workplace: heterosexual marital status, professional/managerial status, educational attainment, skill demands of jobs, and race/ethnicity. We find the earnings bonus for fatherhood persists after controlling for an array of differences, including human capital, labor supply, family structure, and wives' employment status.

They then wander off into an explanation about the hegemonic patriarchy but let's limit ourselves to sensible explanations here.

We can now plug this into what we know about society as a whole. The fertility rate is currently some 1.88 in the US and some substantial minority of women never do have children. Thus the average number of children for those who do is going to be above 2, meaning that the pay gap against mothers with reference to non-mothers will be over 10%. Fathers make more than non-fathers among men and the gap is of around the same size, some 8% or so by most measurements. And most men are fathers, most women are mothers and that's really all we need to explain the gender pay gap that is observed.

This is of course vitally important for public policy. Because if we try to cure the discrimination by employers that isn't there then we're going to get that public policy wrong. The cause of the gender pay gap as observed is that being a father seems to make men buck up and start providing for the little ones, being a mother makes women desire to care and nurture more than pursuing the joys of climbing the career ladder.

No, obviously this doesn't apply to everyone. No, it also doesn't mean that this is what people should do. It's just a simple observation that this is what our species tends to do. And if we want to change it then we've going to have to change the general behaviour of our species, not anything else. And while human behaviour is pretty plastic I'm really uncertain about how far it is in a mammalian and viviparous species like us. We would be trying to interrupt some of the deepest behavioural roots of our society, even if it really is just the society, and not something deeper in the psyche or even genes that leads us to behaving so.

There are minor things we can do, such as offer paid paternity leave so as to somewhat equalise those career interruptions. And my native UK has indeed done so as a result of my pointing this out a few years back (yes, sorry, I am responsible for that, I persuaded someone who persuaded Nick Clegg). But that is only going to be a minor influence.

Men and women seem to have different employment reactions to the arrival of children on average. The gender pay gap is the result of this different reaction. Thus the only way to fix the gap is to change the reaction.

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The Entire Gender Pay Gap Explained In Just One Number: 5.7%

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I have long been insisting that we don't in fact have a gender pay gap: we have a motherhood pay gap. It's entirely true to say that women, on average, earn less than men. But what we'd actually like to know is not whether this is so by why is [...]

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The Economics of Inequality- The Gender Pay Gap- Part 1

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This comic shows how this man and woman are within the same position, though the desk (which is played as money) is slanted, lowering down on the woman's side. This means that men and women work the same position yet women are still payed less.

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What people miss about the gender wage gap