Writing in the Des Moines Register, Rehka Basu notes inequities of compensation for women.
... Women should earn as much as men. Not 80 percent. Not 77 percent. Not 69 percent, but 100 percent.
... nearly four extra months it takes the average U.S. woman to make up the wage gap with men for the previous year. ... Women working full time make 77 cents to every dollar that men make for the same work, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. In Iowa as of 2005, it was 75 cents.
(MG) This violates my sense of right and wrong. In corporations where women and men work together in the more highly paid professions (my background is actuarial science, at one time rated the "#1 best profession in America" and this was more than true of that professions from the 60's through the late 70's) the mere presence of a woman in a "traditionally male" role tended to be overwhelming evidence that the woman was a) more highly qualified to begin with, than her male cohorts - the mere fact of her success in a male dominated field meant that she had to separate herself by virtue of talent, dedication, creativity and loyalty.
One year out of college, it's 80 percent, but at 10 years out, 69 percent, and women have less authority and fewer supervisory roles than men, according to a new report by the American Association of University Women.
Instead of narrowing, the gap is widening. That can't be explained away by women having less education or experience. In the 1970s, 38 percent of men between 18 and 24 were in college, compared to 33 percent of women. But by 2003, it was 51 percent of women and only 41 percent of men. Women have higher grade-point averages and are more likely to get professional licenses or graduate degrees.
Partly, it's the fields women choose. Engineering, math and science, which are dominated by men, pay more than education and health-services occupations, which have more women.
(MG) there was a time in America when only two fields were open to women - nursing and teaching. The best and the brightest women either taught or nursed. The decline in US SAT scores which surfaced sometime in the late 60's / early 70's can be correlated to women getting into the work force in "other non-traditional" roles. When the best and the brightest women began to enter the legal, medical, advertising, financial fields, etc, the more highly compensated arenas, the quality level of new teachers had to fall.
But even when women choose the higher-paying fields, there's a discrepancy. Women in math, for example, earn 76 percent as much as men a year into their jobs.
"Too often both women and men dismiss the pay gap as simply a matter of different choices," says the AAUW report, "but even women who make the same occupational choices that men make will not typically end up with the same earnings."
Women are still the ones who take time off to raise children. While motherhood demands substantial economic and personal sacrifices of women, men get a "wage premium."
(MG) calling the extra earnings of men a "wage premium" looks to my eyes like a thinly disguised attempt to deflect the issue of worker compensation - "wage penalty" is what women endure, for being female. The evidence is overwhelming, clear, convincing .... the whole issue of compensation, especially EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION is worthy of a large book of itself.
Less than 2 percent of fathers were out of the work force in 2003 compared to 23 percent of mothers. Men actually spend more time at the office after becoming fathers - maybe to escape the thankless demands of wailing infants and messy homes.
This isn't just a crude game of competition. It has real consequences. For example:
- In retirement, women are twice as likely as men to be living alone, in or near poverty.
- One sexist pattern spawns another. If wives earn less, their jobs get lower priority in couples' decisions about who stays home, and then even fathers who want to take on a bigger share of the child-rearing can't.
- ... especially for single mothers, the earnings gap creates a real hardship.
Mothers, on average, earn less than women without children, but both groups earn less than men. Even women who don't have kids may be penalized by employers' expectation that they will.
While this is discouraging news, some of the recommended solutions have the potential to bring exciting changes in how society approaches work, time and raising children. As women are freed from the bonds of sex roles, so are men. And, with cooperation from employers, all could be liberated from the rigid working world.
One AAUW conclusion is that employers should be more flexible. A particularly intriguing recommendation is to rethink measuring productivity by hours spent at work. The Best Buy chain, for example, instituted a successful program where workers are responsible for their own schedules and meeting their performance goals.
The AAUW's other suggestions range from promoting science and technology careers to girls to extending the Family and Medical Leave Act to include paid leave, possibly using disability insurance, as California is doing.
This issue speaks to so much more than the division of labor by sex. It's also about our quality of life in America, where we're working longer hours than ever, with less time for community or family.
This is an opportunity to think creatively about making life fuller, more meaningful and more equal for all of us.
How about it, employers? What are you gong to do?
