Posts Tagged ‘wage gap’
Fair Pay Now—Not in 2058
UPDATE: Disappointing news: the Paycheck Fairness Act stalled on Capitol Hill. Below is our official statement:
Catalyst’s Statement on Blockage of Paycheck Fairness Act in US Senate
A crucial bill targeting the gender pay gap in the United States was blocked today as too few senators voted to move forward with the legislation. Among other remedies, the Paycheck Fairness Act would have required employers to provide an explanation for wage differences between women and men doing the same type of work. Today, women working full-time and year round are paid 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This harms women, their families and American business. The Act’s blockage represents a defeat for this nation’s working women, and our economy.
The gender pay gap will persist in the United States until 2058 if we fail to act. Equality—and equity—can’t wait.
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(Original Post)
What will the world look like in the next 50 years? It will be filled with helper-robots, flying cars, quantum computers—oh, and one more thing—gender pay gaps!
Technologies keep marching forward, but companies do not. Today, women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. And the rate of change is glacially slow: less than half a cent a year. At this pace, it will take until 2058 for full-time wages between women and men to be equal.
Who’s got 48 years to wait for equality?
A 23-cent-a-dollar difference today adds up over the span of a career. Over 40 years, a woman in the United States will lose an average of $431,000 in pay. This is money that could be spent on doctor’s visits, tuition fees, cars, and just about anything that keeps us healthy and happy and our economy ticking.
The stakes are high—that’s why Congress must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act when it comes up for a vote in Congress later this month.
Critics claim that the Equal Pay Act of 1963 gives women enough protection from wage discrimination. When this law was passed, full-time working women made 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Forty-seven years later, the gap closed by only 18 cents! Does this law seem effective to you?
The Equal Pay Act has loopholes big enough to drive trucks through, and the Paycheck Fairness Act plugs them. The new act would require employers to provide an explanation for wage differences between women and men doing the same type of work, ensure that women can obtain the same legal remedies as those subject to racial or ethnic discrimination, bolster the federal collection of wage data, and prohibit retaliation against workers who ask bosses about their wages.
Pay gaps should be a thing of the past, not an everyday reality for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. Too much is at stake. The Paycheck Fairness Act was already approved by the House, and the Senate is poised to act on it as soon as November 17, 2010.
Here is Catalyst’s statement on the bill—please support all efforts to get it passed!
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Cross-posted in The Huffington Post
Numbers Game
Read the research—the numbers tell the whole story.
A lot of ink has been spilled over a recent New York Times article which argued that childless women had careers that tracked men’s. “Women do almost as well as men today, as long as they don’t have children,” a Columbia University professor told the Times.
The article hinged on a recent study of M.B.A. grads from the University of Chicago that probed “women’s underperformance in the corporate and financial sectors.” But what did this report really show?
The authors found a vast wage gap exists between women and men. According to the report, women earn $115,000 on average at graduation and $250,000 nine years out, while men earn $130,000 and $400,000, respectively. “Mean earnings by sex are comparable directly following M.B.A. receipt,” they wrote, “but they soon diverge.”
How’s that for an understatement? Their “comparable” earnings are a $15,000 difference. I’m not sure about you, but I’d be pretty ticked at making $15k less just because I’m a woman.
Was this dramatic finding headline news? Nope.
Instead, media coverage fixated on a detail buried deep into the report. On page 243, the authors’ state:
“Limiting the sample further to women without children, and with no career interruptions by 10 years out, makes the career paths of the women in the sample similar to those of men. For that comparison, the gender earning gap starts out slightly larger than for all women, but grows less rapidly.”
This suggests that for women without children, there’s still a gap at the start of their career after business school, and the gap still grows over time—albeit less quickly than it does for women with kids or who have taken time off.
Not really breaking news, is it? Catalyst actually reached a similar conclusion in Pipeline’s Broken Promise, which found that even among women and men without children, women still started behind men and the gap still grew over time.
The original New York Times article is accurate in saying there’s a bigger penalty for women who have kids and/or take time off (which isn’t surprising), but was misleading in suggesting to the reader that women without kids will face a level playing field with equal pay. The numbers are clear: Women are paid less than their male colleagues. They don’t call it a gender wage gap for nothing.
C This
Where is the women’s movement heading? What can we do better? Philosopher Nina Power outlines ten areas feminists should focus on. We must “campaign for fairer and better work, even in the midst of an economic crisis,” she writes. More of her points plus news about the gender pay gap, The Catalyst Canada Honours, and the new UN agency for women in C This.
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Feminism 2.0
British philosopher Nina Power charts a new path for feminism. One suggestion: Don’t fixate on female firsts. “Feminism should not be misled by the successes of individual women at the top of their professions (politicians, CEOs, etc.),” she writes. “Feminism would do well to remember how the struggle for real equality and fair income can sometimes be disguised by the purported success of the odd individual woman.”
READ: “10 Things That Feminism Could Do Better,” by Nina Power, Alternet, 7/9/10
Frozen Gap
The latest data from the US Department of Labor reveals almost zero progress on closing the gender wage gap for women ages 16–19. The gap persists because young women still start and stay behind equally skilled men.
READ: “The Persistence of the Pay Gap,” by Heather Boushey, XXfactor, 7/14/10
Financing UN Women
The new UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women—now called UN Women for short—has an initial annual budget of $500 million, less than 1 percent of the $27 billion budget for the entire UN in 2008. “With the UN’s own working group proposing that by 2015, 15 percent of overall development assistance will be allocated toward gender, why is that not happening?” said Daniela Rosech of Oxfam International.
READ: “New UN Agency for Women–First Battle Won,” IRIN, 7/16/10
Secrets to Success
The recipients of The Catalyst Canada Honours share some insights with The Toronto Star. “You just have to understand, we would not be what we are if we did not recruit the best people,” said Ed Clark, President and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group. “If you don’t do this you will not be a high performing company 20 years from now.”
READ: “Making a Business Case for the Advancement of Women,” by Emily Mathieu, Toronto Star, 7/15/10
Campus Satisfaction
A survey by The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education revealed that male academics are more satisfied with their work than their female colleagues. The differences, noted COACHE Research Director Cathy Trower, “cut across disciplines and, in fact, are most evident in disciplines in which women are relatively well represented.” Physical sciences and humanities professors reported being most satisfied with their positions, while those in visual and performing arts and education reported being least satisfied.
C This
This edition of C This looks at the relevance of cavemen to modern office behavior; some lessons from feminists that resonate even more today; the widening financial gap between white and black Americans; and how stilettos may (or may not!) be a predictor of market performance. Enjoy!
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Pre-historic Caves and Modern Offices?
Hearkening back to old stereotypes of “violent cavemen battling with clubs while passive women, fetching in furs, wait helplessly to see who wins her,“ the author ponders recent research on the stereotypes around expectations of strength for men and penalties for women if they show the same assertiveness at work. Men are rewarded; women are accused of poor social skills. I agree with the study’s author on this point: maybe we should be training employers to look beyond stereotypes of how men and women should behave in the workplace. Evolutionary biology is not destiny.
Early Feminists Fighting to Change the World – Lessons for Us?
With a respectful nod to the audacious utopian feminists of the 19th and 20th centuries, this article challenges women in the UK and around the world to imagine what might be and to act on it.
Read: “Feminists Fighting to Change the World,” by Sheila Rowbotham, The Guardian, 5/21/10
The Widening Gulf Between White and Black Wealth
Dr. Tom Shapiro, who directs the Institute of Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, shares his study on wealth on black and white upper and middle income families over the past twenty-plus years. The study shows that the gap between white and black families more than quadrupled during those years. He points to the whys and ways to restore fairness to a system that may favor the wealthy and white.
Read: “The Black-White Wealth Gap Is Growing,” by Tom Shapiro, The Root, 5/24/10
Stilettos Sink to New Lows
Are high heels an economic indicator? This article explores the so-called correlation between this year’s lower “kitten heels” and our sinking market to the five inch stilettos paraded two years ago.
Read: “Stilettos—So Two Years Ago,” by Ray A. Smith, The Wall Street Journal, 5/22/10
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