Wage Gap Woes: Women Continue to Face Pay Discrimination

A new study by the Project for Attorney Retention and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association has revealed that the glass ceiling is still present for female attorneys. The traditional explanation for wage disparities has been that “family responsibilities mean women are less ambitious, more distracted, and less productive than men.” However, the study’s authors assert that “the biggest contributing factors…are not nearly as benign: they include stereotyping, gender bias, and even bullying and intimidation.”

The study interviewed 700 female lawyers. One-half of the female attorneys who are equity partners and two-thirds of female minority and income partners felt dissatisfied with their compensation. This can be compared with a previous study that revealed that three-quarters of male attorneys are satisfied with their pay.

It is not just a feeling (PDF) that reveals that female attorneys receive lower pay than their male counterparts: “A recent Census Bureau report revealed that the median income of female lawyers is only 74% of that of male lawyers. Unfortunately, what starts as a $2,000 dollar annual gap between male and female associates accelerates to a $66,000 annual gap between male and female equity partners.”

Sadly, the wage gap is not limited to attorneys.  On average, women earn 77 cents to man’s dollar. The gap is even more striking for women of color. African-American women only earn 68 cents to every dollar the average man earns, and Latina women a mere 58 cents.

Economists say the gender gap is partly due to women taking more time off due to childcare duties and the fact that women are more likely to work in lower-paying jobs than men. However, though this may account for some of the gap, “even when you control for occupation and a host of other variables, economists still find an unexplained gender gap of anywhere from around a nickel to a dime or more on the dollar.” Wage disparities still hold when those studied have no children.

The continued existence of a wage gap is not only bad for women, but for the entire economy: “studies have found that closing the gender wage gap could result in significant GDP growth.”

The glass ceiling continues to be a reality for all women, even those who are partners in law firms. To learn more about current wage disparities in the U.S., read Time’s article that was published on this year’s Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day – April 20^th – marks the day when the average woman has earned as much as her male counterpart did the year before.

Photo by Tracy O

Women are Key to Economic Recovery Plans

On the eve of the G20 summit, Heather Arnet of the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania and Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women encourage the leaders attending the meeting to remember the importance of women in any economic recovery efforts.

First, they lay out the dismal situation for women:

A main reason women are central to the global economy is they make up 60 percent of the global work force. In ordinary times, women and girls are the majority of the world’s poor and illiterate, but during recessions, the disproportionate burden is placed on women who are more likely in vulnerable jobs, are underemployed, lack social protection and have less control over financial resources.

Worldwide, women make up about 70 percent of those living on less than a dollar a day; add children, who disproportionately depend on women for their care, and you have the majority of the world’s poor.

A new report by the international agency Plan International found that the global recession is hitting girls the hardest because they are the first in their families to go without food, to be pulled from school and to lose jobs. The report forecasts that 22 million women will become unemployed, driving more girls into the sex trade.

They discuss the situation of women in Pittsburgh, the G20 host city, as being pretty much up to speed in most areas with the rest of the world: the wage gap has women making less than 70 cents for every dollar a man makes and there is a startling absence of women on many corporate boards or publicly traded companies based here. And most of the money in the economic stimulus packages went to work in repairing the physical infrastructure of our society, which is dominated by male workers.

But the authors argue that we need to invest in the social infrastructure of our society as well, in the industries of education, public health and child care, where women are disproportionately employed.

The world leaders meeting this week should also not fall into the trap of thinking of women as helpless beings who need to be served by economic policy, but as able agents making those decisions themselves:

Women need to be considered, not just as those being served by development programs, but they need to be at the decision-making tables in increased numbers. Research has confirmed that women are better at mitigating risk, and a recent study showed that banks with at least 30 percent women in senior management positions were far less likely to have made risky and unsustainable loans.

One of the only two female finance ministers of the G-20, Sri Mulyani of Indonesia, is credited for her work in putting Jakarta’s financial house in order by dismantling the cronyism that plagued Indonesia’s financial architecture from the Suharto era. Indonesia now enjoys one of the most conservative balance sheets in the world and over 4 percent economic growth — and Ms. Mulyani is credited for her role as a tough regulator.

…

While we cannot add more female finance ministers to the G-20 table this year, we can demand that our world leaders begin to respond to the overwhelming amount of data that points to the immediate and long-term economic gains of investing in the development, education and economic security of 60 percent of the world’s work force.

Wage Gap Exists Across Occupations and Sectors

The New York Times printed a telling graphic on Sunday that helps us visualize the wage gap between men and women.  The graph shows how much less women make per occupation, and also overall. Economists claim that discrimination against women in the workplace and personal choices made by women in their careers constitute the two main reasons the gap exists. This graph expresses information that is a major concern of women’s rights activists and we have blogged about this issue previously here and here.

Progress is Stalled for Women in the Corporate World

A study conducted by Catalyst, a nonprofit that promotes opportunities for women in business, revealed that women in 2008 made no significant gains in achieving more top U.S. business jobs. Women also did not make gains in becoming board directors, corporate officers or top earners at Fortune 500 companies. Women currently make up only 15.1 percent of board directors, and percentage of top earners in 2008 who were women is a meager 6.2 percent. The Chicago Tribune recently ran a story that supported these findings, reporting that female executives are losing ground at Chicago’s top firms.

This news comes after a Pennsylvania study revealed the gender wage gap growing in this state (we blogged about it here). Reuters story on the study is available here. Full results of the boards of directors study are available here (in PDF format), and the report on corporate officers and top wage earners is here (also in PDF format).

Wage Gap Widens in Pennsylvania

Bad news for Pennsylvania women: according to a new report by the Keystone Research Center, women stopped closing the wage gap with men. The wage gap was consistently improving between 1970s and the early 1990s, but according to the study, it has come to a halt.  In fact, since 2003, women have been losing ground and from 2003 to 2007, the pay gap grew by 28 cents. Women comprise 47% of Pennsylvania’s workforce and now earn $13.20/hour, as opposed to $17/hour that men earn.

The press release about the study can be found here, and information specific to the Commonwealth is here (in PDF format). The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a story about the study,  as did the Patriot-News in Harrisburg.