Do Women and Men Earn Equal Pay in 2007?

Do women and men earn equal pay? I blogged some about this last year, but the gender gap in wage earnings was in the spotlight again when kgw.com (and other media) reported that five restaurant owners in Oregon plan to drop their prices for female customers by 23 cents. The restaurants want to raise awareness about women earning 23 percent less than men in the workplace.

The American Association of American Women, which is sponsoring the event, says that when the new prices go into effect, 23 percent of the 2007 will have passed, thus, that's the number of extra days women will have to work in 2007 to catch up with men.

Likewise, as reported on nysun.com, Senator Hillary Clinton is pushing the "Paycheck Fairness Act," a bill that would intensify anti-discrimination laws, create a negotiation skills training program for women and stop retaliation against employees who disclose their salaries. Sen. Clinton also says that women make 77 percent of what men earn (or 23 percent less). Is that number accurate? Do women and men earn equal pay? Is this a case of comparable pay versus equal pay?

How would earning 77 cents on the dollar affect your salary?  Find out with our salary calculator.

Do women earn less than men on the pay equity table?

Do women earn less than men on the pay equity table? According to money.cnn.com, the oft-quoted "77 cents" sounds like women are earning less than men are to do exactly the same job. This gender gap in wage earning stat is from a 2004 study by the Census Bureau, which was actually a comparison of median earnings of working men and women who clocked in at least 35 hours per week. It didn’t compare men and women working the same job, as rhetoric often suggests, but rather, median income from any job.

According to Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the wage gap "is a good measure of inequality, not necessarily a measure of discrimination…parsing out [the actual reasons for the wage gap] is difficult to do."

Being paid unequal wages for different jobs is the American way. The socialists among us may not like it, but professional football players make more than surgeons, surgeons make more than nurses, and nurses make more than nursing assistants.

Gender discrimination may be a factor in why the jobs that pay better have a higher fraction of men, and the jobs that pay lower wages have more women. However, there are many reasons besides gender discrimination why women may choose, rather than be forced into, the lower median salary jobs. These reasons are often not only legitimate, but can be wise.

Comparable Pay versus Equal Pay

As reported by money.cnn.com, Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap – and What Women Can Do About It, believes this is a case of comparable pay versus equal pay, or apples and oranges. He says men are more likely to make life-decisions that will lead to a higher annual salary. He says males are more apt (than women) to relocate or travel for work, take on more dangerous jobs (over 90 percent of workplace deaths are reportedly men), work in the difficult (read boring) sciences, seek jobs that require financial risk and work jobs in unpleasant environments.

In contrast, he says, "women commonly prefer jobs with shorter and more flexible hours to accommodate the demands of family. Compared to men, [the majority of] women generally favor jobs that involve little danger, no travel and good social skills. Such jobs generally pay less.” For women who earn over $100,000 per year, Farrell says they are more likely [than men at the same pay] to give up a portion of pay to spend more time with their families. Of course, not all women choose to forgo pay, as my post on top paid female executives discussed.

The Positive Effects of Equal Pay Rates

In some careers, Farrell says women actually earn more than their male counterparts do, and he's not just talking about the field of modeling. According to Farrell, the median salaries of women exceeded that of men's by at least 5 percent, and in some careers, up to 43 percent in 39 occupations. Some of the 39 professions include: sales engineers, statisticians, legislators, transportation workers, automotive service technicians and mechanics, speech-language pathologists and library assistants.

While the 77% number is not all overt sexism, gender discrimination may still be part of the story. A Cornell study found that mothers with kids are less likely to be hired, and, even if they are, the moms are paid a lower annual salary than males and females without kids. A Carnegie Mellon study found that female job applicants were less likely to be hired by male managers, if they tried to negotiate a higher salary, unlike men. Some years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that female scientists were paid less than men are.

Pay scale difference between men and women out of college

What about right after men and women graduate college? Those men and women should be the least likely to show a pay gap, as typically they are not yet parents. According to a recent study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation (mentioned on pamshouseblend.com), there is a pay scale difference between men and women out of college. One year out of college, women who are working full-time are earning 80 percent of what men earn. The study also says that, ten years after graduation, women were earning 69 percent as much as men.

Like the 77 cents on the dollar number, this study was based on median income from all jobs. There is a logical reason behind some of the disparity. According to CNN.money.com, the gender gap in wage earning study said, “Female students tended to study areas with lower pay, such as education, health and psychology, while male students dominated higher-paying fields such as engineering, mathematics and physical sciences.”

We see in the PayScale data exactly the same trends. In our database, the salaried jobs most popular with women are substantially less well paid that the salaried jobs most popular than men.

Equal Pay for Same Job?

Still, one year after graduation, the AAUW study says that the gender gap in wage earning also occurred between females and males who had the same major. The study says that women earned 95 percent as much as men earned in the field of education. In math positions, women earned 76 percent as much as men earn.

However, the same major still is not apples to apples. For example, female math majors are more likely to go into education (poorly paid) than male math majors are.

The AAUW study did make one definitive statement about gender discrimination one year out of college:

"[...A]fter controlling for all the factors known to affect earnings, college-educated women earn about 5 percent less than college-educated men earn. Thus, while discrimination cannot be measured directly, it is reasonable to assume that this pay gap is the product of gender discrimination."

Whether this 5% difference is really gender discrimination by employers, or still some other residual difference that was not measured, is not so definitively proven. As someone who spends all day trying to construct questions to figure out why employees' pay varies so much, I know it is hard to "control" for all the factors influencing pay. The AAUW study controlled for the factors they had measured.

I happen to have one personal data point where a woman was paid ~5% less than a man (me), by the same employer, to do exactly the same job, when each of us had nearly the same credentials.

When I was hired in 1992 to work as an assistant professor at Duke University, I was offered $45,000/year. I figured $3,000/year was nothing to a University - I already had negotiated for ~$100,000 worth of research support - so I asked for $48,000/year, and got it.

A fellow female physics professor was hired at the same time. She was offered the same $45,000, and she took it. A couple years later, over lunch she learned I was earning more. She promptly went to the department chair, asked for a raise, and got it.

Was this discrimination on the part of the department chair, or just fiscal prudence? While one cannot draw any conclusions from one data point so long ago, it does show that Senator Hillary Clinton may be on the right track in emphasizing negotiating skills.

Do you have the data you need to negotiate your next raise, or even pick a high paying career? The PayScale Salary Calculator is a quick and easy way to explore possible careers. When you want powerful salary data, with comparisons customized for your exact position, be sure to build a complete profile by taking PayScale's full salary survey.

Cheers,

Dr. Al Lee

• Curious about salaries? Email Dr. Salary
• Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report
• Wage Disparity was Unfair - TribuneEmployeeTalk.blogspot.com

Comments

[KatrinaB]

You make many pertinent points and comparisons in this piece. I am very interested in gender discriminations and what I prefer to think of as gender differences. I think male and female motivations are quite different (thank heavens) and the fact that we often use salary as an arbitrary indicator of gender value (or discrimination) incenses me. Clearly, *individuals* should be paid equally for identical jobs. However, there is nothing in the literature that suggests the distribution of talent for a particular job will be split evenly between men and women. I have written a number or articles on the topic. Here is one: http://www.eqsq.com/columns/gender-discrimination-work.html

[Jeff]

The difficulty I have with issues such as equal pay compressions is that it always drives the conversation to cold, hard, numbers. These numbers are merely “average” facts and do not speak to the “up-close” human element.

It is easy to see the potential inequality from a 1000 mile view, but inequality (as with many work related issues) really can only be gauged at a much closer view.

I have been fortunate enough to have worked in several fields, including the military, police, and now in the private software arena. In the military and police I saw equal pay for equal work, but based on merit (job performance and testing). Yet in the military and police work women candidates physical fitness standards were half of what was expected of a man.

In my current professional I have not witnessed any “perceived” equality that could not be explained when you take a closer look at the individuals. This is not to say there aren’t people experiencing inequality, but utilizing average data only tells a quarter of the story.

Jeff
http://arendezvouswithdestiny.blogspot.com/

[charlie_gordon]

Well, just about as much as one can expect from the kind of intellectual who would choose the bigoted, sexist atmosphere of Duke, and, unflinchingly unrepentant, furthermore attempt to justify before the world, without a smidge of compassion for something he will never subjectively have to experience, how wrong those crazy co-workers are to want equal pay and raise such a fuss over the whole 77% issue. Ad hominem observations aside though, I'm amused at the bias of this article, and how unquestioningly others have accepted its unproven premises.

Sure, pay should be commensurate to skill, which in an ideal world would somehow correlate to more impressive job titles. However, if one applied this pay equity theory to say - a middle eastern dictatorship - perhaps one could deduce that everything is very equitable there too as women don't have any jobs at all and therefore get paid nothing, and men have jobs, and get paid correspondingly. What an exemplar of equity! Why don't those women have jobs? Oh, well - one could reference some negligible theories of dictatorship, and oppression, and the abusive nature of a theocracy - but really, can't we just all agree it's because women want to stay at home and be the doormats of men?

Sure, you can say - what an extreme and irrational scenario - we can all agree that someone shouldn't get paid for a job they don't do. Or - cough - surely CHOOSE not to do.

But there's a big difference here. A lot of these women want those high paying jobs. They know the meaning of sacrifice - and they work themselves to the ground to acheive their goals. Until graduation, they get results, aveage outperforming men in school - and not just in liberal arts - but the scientific fields our author seems to insinuate are somehow masculine in nature.

Sure, life is not school, you may say, and men and women rarely get the recompense they may strive all their lives to earn irrespective of gender, but this ought to be the land of equal opportunity - the lack of which surfaces in the discrepency between pay of women and men who graduate with the same academic backing, into the same field.

DUH - they are not going to have the same job titles - *that is part of the problem.* Because almost all employees start off at some worm level and work their way up from there; it's very rare that someone skips this step, much less numerous people at a time. So how do you explain that so many academically qualified women get mysteriously...clearly ALL of their own chosing ... relegated to some disreputable, low paying, uninteresting, "shit" jobs that most men would never deign to stoop to.

The truth is women are not actually chosing these jobs at all. They are routinely humiliated and devalued simply because of their gender by unqualified, and therefore fearful men who know if the glass ceiling is broken - they won't enjoy the job security they would if they could just somehow consign half of their employees into jobs that offer no growth, and boost their own egos in the process. Only these darn statistics seem to be getting in the way. And that is where spinelss cowards like our dear author, instead of being ashamed of what the world does to some humans, show up and say "well, you know - they don't have the qualifications even if they have the degree" or "we couldn't give her that job because it's too much responsability - and you know what, she probably would have babies later and not be able to show up...why don't you give it to a more serious applicant" or "this involves hard math stuff, you probably wouldn't like it" or "why don't you go into something more people-oriented instead of 'numbers' oriented" after which later, promoting more assholes like himself, he would have the audacity to proclaim that "women just aren't interested...I don't know, turns out they want to be lower-paid members of society."

Aren't you people disgusted by this? Don't you know what democracy means? Don't you believe in the American dream? Do you really want to let this guy walk all over your wives and daughters and perpetuate a backwards system of inequality by glossing over the discrimination women face with semantics, statistics, and rationalization that completely eschew the hidden problems so core to women's becoming fully respected American citizens?

Hopefully when women gain more economic power men like this will enjoy the wonderful life of being a socioeconomic minority, and thoroughly entertain us with his simplifications then.

[Dr. Al Lee, PhD]

Dear Charlie,

This post does not really have much of my opinion about the origins of pay differences between men and women. It is more a summary of other people's opinions and data.

Please see these later posts: http://blogs.payscale.com/ask_dr_salary/2007/05/do_only_women_c.html and http://blogs.payscale.com/ask_dr_salary/2007/06/majors_and_care.html

where I look in more detail at the AAUW data. I am trying to figure out why it is women college graduates choose majors and careers that, on average, pay less well than those chosen by men.

My point in these later posts is that major and job choices are the cause of the bulk of the pay differences, at least for college educated workers.

You are completely right that women and girls may not be choosing these paths; they may be being forced into low-paying majors and careers. That is why I want people to focus on what is causing the different "choices".

By the way, you must have a connection to UNC or NC State: no one else would have that level of hostility towards Duke :-)

Cheers,

Al Lee (Dr. Salary)

ps. I don't know about you, but I am "forcing" my daughter to take the most advanced math and science courses her high school offers. I will also "force" her to major in math, a hard science, or engineering in college. After that, it will be up to her.

[Bryan]

Charlie you should really look at facts and not get your feelings involved, or else you are the one who sounds biased...

[Cynthia Miller]

Hi Dr. Salary

I am trying to get some data on if women are paid less than men doing the same job. In addition, I would like to draw a histogram.

Could you help and advise if you have any info on the subject matter.

[john]

to charlie - Way to hostile. I see many rude posts like that on neo-feminist forums.

I don't believe women are in any way forced into low paying jobs. My daughter can do whatever she wants to do and I don't think anyone shames any women into low paying jobs. They only people who get shamed now a days are males.

[john]

"DUH - they are not going to have the same job titles - *that is part of the problem.* Because almost all employees start off at some worm level and work their way up from there; it's very rare that someone skips this step, much less numerous people at a time. So how do you explain that so many academically qualified women get mysteriously...clearly ALL of their own chosing ... relegated to some disreputable, low paying, uninteresting, "shit" jobs that most men would never deign to stoop to."

Just want to say, if they are doing "shit" jobs, it's only because they let themselves be relegated to it. If they are willing to pull up tent and move to where the better job and pay is, then it won't happen. I think men are more willing to say "I'm not taking it" and then leave. This is clearly indicated all over the place and even taken advantage of by many companies. Take for instance the Mexico border companies that only hired women because they could pay them less and they wouldn't form unions and fight back. You have to be willing to stand up and fight and move to get paid.

[Another John]

Hey John...I used to be convinced that my daughters could choose anything they wanted as well, until our High School Head Boys Hockey Coach tried to run them out of boys youth hockey in Sauk Rapids Minnesota. Both my daughters made the boys Bantam (13 and 14 year old boys full contact) team fair and square, but when he found out that his precious allstar was going to be playing with girls he thew a fit and filed formal complaints to run them out. We protested through USA Hockey and Minnesota Hockey Division 10 and won. The girls played, but it was a bitter victory, as we have been retalliated against ever since...vandalism to our house...girls black balled and harrassed by other coaches...etc., etc. I'm no longer a believer....To add insult to injury we complained to the Office of Civil Rights under Title IX and they decided it was OK to discriminate ..... a little.....Women are still riding in the back of the bus and if you look around you will notice it everywhere....

[annoyed Male]

First off, I have to say I am all for equal rights and pay, but I have to say something about this "Another John"'s story. I think that girls should be able to play with guys, but, if that is so, why can't guys play with girls? There are guys who have the same skill as girls. Hockey is not a sport where you are getting up close and personal like basketball or wrestling, but what I don't get is women being all negative and complaining that they can't play in mens leagues, and be hypocritical and say we can't play in theirs. I mean, I think it is unfair how women are treated unfairly, but it just pisses me off how much they complain that they are discriminated against, and then they turn around and descriminate against males by making all female gyms. I think it is a load of bs.

[Pat]

When I returned to college in 1996 as a father of two girls, I was shocked and surprised to hear professiors claiming the 70% factoid. I had presumed that this should have been a thing of the past some twenty years earlier.

I ended up researching the issue and found out that many of the claims about women making less money for the same work simply are not true.

One point I do recall is a study that claimed that women out of college make more money, not less than men. Apparently there are studies that claim the opposite, so there is no clear consensus.

What is true is that women have more choices than men about how to live their lives and have a better chance of being supported by others than men.

[Brittany]

I'm surprised to hear a man say that.

[Joanne]

Women don't earn equal pay because overall in every career field, women don't work as many hours, or as many consistent hours. There aren't as many women in most career fields as there are men. And even if women work full-time, their schedules change to part-time when they have children. For women to earn equal pay, more of them need to work full-time over the course of a decade or two, without having children. Of course, this will never happen. I'm not talking about a woman and a man doing the same job for the same amount of time, for the same hours. Those people should receive equal pay. The problem is that women may start a career, but they inevitably put it on hold for children. If they pick it up again, it is after several years and they most likely have fallen behind in their knowledge of said career. I am a woman who works with all women, and I make more than all of them (except the boss) because I've worked 40 hours a week for nearly 10 years. What upsets me is that women who start a career and then take time off for having children, come back to work and expect everything to just pick up where it left off. But while they have been home with kids, other women without kids (like me), have been working at their careers, learning more, earning more. That's just a fact.

[bob]

where did you get your information?
i want to do a school report on this subject but don't know if this website is true. Please respond as soon as possible.
thank you