By now you’ve probably heard of the gender pay gap. It gets especially a lot of attention on Equal Pay Day.
This year, Equal Pay Day was March 21, as that’s how far into 2021 the average American woman had to work (in addition to working all of 2020) to make as much money as the average American man earned in 2020.
Over the past few decades, this gender pay gap has been narrowing. But it’s a slow process and at the current rate, the gender pay gap will remain until 2059.
The gender pay gap still exists for a variety of reasons, even after accounting for non-gender worker characteristics.
Raw Versus Controlled Gender Wage Gap
When comparing the median salary between men and women, a 2021 report from Payscale reports that women earn 82 cents for every dollar men make. This 18% difference is the raw gender pay gap.
However, when accounting for other factors besides gender, such as in education, experience, location, and industry, the gender wage gap shrinks dramatically to just a 2% difference. So the controlled gender pay gap means that women are making 98 cents for every dollar men make.
This doesn’t sound like much, but this 2% difference is still significant for several reasons. One major reason is that the controlled wage gap hasn’t improved much lately. In 2015, the controlled wage gap was 97 cents for every dollar a male made. That’s just 1 cent improvement in more than five years.
Another important reason is that the effect of a pay disparity gets compounded over time. So making 2% less for a few years may not be that much money. Yet over the course of decades, it can amount to a significant difference in money earned.
On top of that, the 2% difference will get magnified when the person making less money takes on a new job and the new employer makes an offer based on the individual’s prior earnings history.
So whether the median pay difference is 2%, 18% or somewhere in between, what are the factors contributing to it?
Why the Gender Pay Gap Still Exists
In the vast majority of jobs, a pay discrepancy based on gender probably has multiple explanations, many of which fall into one of two categories. An OECD paper referred to these as “glass ceilings” and “sticky floors.”
Glass ceilings referred to obstacles that stand in the way of women advancing their careers. An example might include a woman choosing not to apply for a promotion because she knows she needs to work part-time for caregiving responsibilities.
In contrast, sticky floors are disadvantages women consistently face whether they’re just starting their careers or are getting ready to retire. For instance, a boss assumes that women are less competent or qualified in a position, and decides to offer a lower salary when making a job offer.
The OECD concluded that about 60% of a gender pay gap is the result of a glass ceiling while 40% comes from a sticky floor. Regardless of which category the pay gap explanation falls into, this issue is often subtle and difficult to directly address.
First, women may be more likely to look for jobs that possess certain non-wage benefits. To illustrate, imagine a woman working part-time, finding a job with a shorter commute, asking to telecommute or requesting flexible scheduling. These non-monetary benefits could be useful to a worker who has greater family responsibility obligations. These responsibilities tend to fall more on women, especially mothers.
Second, due to career disruptions, women have greater difficulty building up their experience and other soft factors. Motherhood is a common source of disruption, where a new mother will be more likely to take time off from work than a new father. Or because they took parental leave, a mother is less likely to strive for a promotion (or less likely to get it).
Third, women face conscious and unconscious bias. This can include the false perceptions that women are less efficient than men or a woman is more likely going to take advantage of parental leave. Because of these biases, employers are sometimes less likely to provide the same career-advancing opportunities to female employees.
There are laws that prohibit pay discrimination due to this gender-based bias, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). However, these laws aren’t always easy to enforce.
Fourth, industries that women tend to dominate are filled with careers that often pay less than male-dominated fields. This “career preference” can be due to societal or cultural norms and pressures, as well as teacher bias. For example, teachers sometimes assume girls will have inferior math skills compared to boys, which can play an indirect role in dissuading women from entering STEM-related fields.
Fifth, women are more likely to take lower-paying jobs. In fact, two-thirds of low-wage jobs in the United States go to women.
Sixth, women tend to have less time and energy to focus on work because they’re spending more time doing unpaid work at home, like household chores and raising children. Women may be doing as much as 30% more unpaid work than men.
Given these contributing factors, closing the gender pay gap is challenging. But there are sometimes outsides forces that can play a role.
The Effect of the Coronavirus on the Gender Wage Gap
The global pandemic we all know as the coronavirus has not done women any favors in terms of reducing the gender wage gap. At first glance, the coronavirus seemed to improve the gender pay gap.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, from 2019 to 2020, the gender wage gap narrowed from 18.5% to 17.7%. But this wasn’t due to women earning more. Rather, it was the result of a disproportionate number of low-wage female workers losing their jobs due to the coronavirus.
This can stall any long-term improvements to bringing equal pay to women. When these women decide to return to work, they will have the disadvantage of having a gap in their employment history.
So it can be harder to find a new job, which can make it more likely they’ll accept lower pay. And the time away from work also means lost experience that might otherwise justify higher pay later in a career.
How to Address to Gender Pay Gap
There’s been a lot of talk about how to eliminate the differences in pay between men and women. The solution probably requires a multi-pronged approach, with various policy changes working together. Some of these could include:
- Employees sharing wage and benefit information with each other. It’s pretty hard to ask for equal pay if you have no idea what any of your peers earn, but there is a strong element of American work culture that treats salary information as private and rude to ask about.
- Prohibit employers from using salary history information during the hiring process.
- Have companies regularly review internal compensation data to ensure there’s no pattern of pay discrepancy between male and female employees.
- Eliminate salary negotiations.
Guarantee worker access to paid time off in the form of paid sick days and paid family and medical leave. The best way to do this is pass federal legislation, like the proposed Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act.
"pay" - Google News
May 25, 2021 at 11:54PM
https://ift.tt/2TcKLcd
The Gender Pay Gap: Why It’s Still Here - Forbes
"pay" - Google News
https://ift.tt/301s6zB
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "The Gender Pay Gap: Why It’s Still Here - Forbes"
Post a Comment