Women work on a line at the at Indian Ocean Tuna plant
Kudos to the U of M for figuring out what hundreds of American employers still cant quite grasp: Even if they work the same job, for the same hours, with the same experience, women in the U.S. are on average still paid less than men.
There are plenty of people who roll their eyes heavenward every time a woman mentions the famous "72 cents to a mans dollar" statistic. The rallying cry of the 1970s is dismissed as some as antiquated, even irrelevant in todays job market. Its a nice thought — just imagine the relief millions of working women would feel if that were true.
The facts, of course, dont bear out the idea of equal pay for equal work. According to data provided by the AFL-CIO Working Womens Department, jobs across the socioeconomic board are subject to male-female disparities: The average female lawyer, architect, psychologist, waiter and lab technician all generally makes less than her male colleagues. Even allowing for factors like time worked and previous jobs held, the study shows that between 11 and 40 percent of male/female wage differences remain unexplained.
The bias within a bias
Who fares worst? Women of color and women over the age of 45. According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and analyzed by the Employment Policy Foundation, a non-profit group in Washington, D.C., childless women aged 25 to 35 earned roughly the same amount as their male counterparts. After a womans 35th birthday, however, things take a turn for the worse: The study shows that women aged 36 to 44 earn 80 percent of what men earn, and those aged 45 to 54 take home just 75 percent of mens salary. Across the racial divide, the picture is even bleaker: For every dollar earned by a white man, a black woman earns 65 cents and a Hispanic woman earns just 52 cents.
It certainly doesnt help that many women are also steered towards lower-wage "caregiver" jobs like nursing and teaching — rather than high-powered careers in medicine or finance — because its assumed that women are better at those jobs than men. And perhaps we are. So lets take steps to eliminating the economic burden of taking on those critical jobs: We need to make sure nurses and kindergarten teachers and social workers are paid on par with so-called "male" jobs like construction and plumbing. Is your childs well-being or your parents health care inherently worth less than having an efficient drain? I didnt think so.
We are no longer a society where the women who take those jobs are simply "supplementing" a husbands more substantial paycheck. Many women today who take on caregiving jobs are sole wage earners, responsible for an entire family. Beyond that, theyre taking on some of the most psychologically and physically taxing jobs we have to offer.
Long-term effects
The gap isnt something that only hurts women on payday. Sure, it can sting knowing that your coworkers earn more than you for doing the same job, but the real harm comes later down the road. Lower wages mean less money contributed to 401Ks, Social Security and other retirement-age savings plans. And that means more older women, especially women of color, are living in poverty — even those whove worked full-time jobs for forty or fifty years.
The figures are appalling, and yet they seem, somehow, to have lost their ability to move us. That may be changing, slowly, as more and more women come forward to challenge what has become the biggest open secret in the American workplace. Big chain stores Publix and the Home Depot have shelled out a combined $180 million to settle female employee wage discrimination claims; Wal-Mart is currently facing a discrimination suit.