What Stands in the Way for Equal Pay for Women?

(and the hits just keep coming!)


What Stands in the Way for Equal Pay for Women?
3/14/2023 by Martha Burk and Carrie N. Baker


Women protest for women’s rights and equal pay at a rally on International Women’s Day outside The United Nations on March 8, 2023, in New York City. Union organizations gathered in support of various female causes around the world and advocated for equal pay, and equal rights amongst other issues. (Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images)

March 14 is date this year when U.S. working women finally reach the wages white men earned by the end of last year. And that’s only when all women are lumped together—Black women won’t meet white men’s last year wage benchmark until Sept. 21 (59 cents compared to white men’s $1), Hispanic women Oct. 8 (56 cents compared to white men’s $1), and Native women will have to wait until Nov. 30 (51 cents versus white men’s $1), according to a new Government Accountability Office report, “Women in the Workforce: Underrepresentation in Management Positions Persists, and the Gender Pay Gap Varies by Industry and Demographics.”
Twenty years ago, the wage difference between what U.S. women and men earn overall was 80 cents on the dollar. Now it’s 82 cents. Mighty poor progress.

On top of that, the problem with these figures is that the wage gap only includes wages. But earnings include a lot more than just wages. Other forms of compensation must be calculated in earnings: health insurance, retirement account contributions, bonuses and self-employment income. Once you factor in these other forms of earnings, men actually earn 75 percent more than women, according to the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality—meaning that women on average earn only 57 cents on a man’s dollar. A study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found an even greater gap when measuring total earnings, with women workers earning a mere 49 percent—less than half—of men’s earnings. If Equal Pay Day was based on this more comprehensive measure of the gendered earnings gap, the day would fall much later in the year—more like October. And for women of color, you’d have to wait until the next year!

As women age, the income gap persists. Women are less likely to have pensions than men and they receive less social security on average than men—particularly poor women and women of color—in part because women’s care-giving labor for children, the elderly and ill family members is usually unpaid and given zero value in calculating Social Security payments. In 2017, the average annual Social Security income received by women 65 years and older was $14,353—compared to $18,041 for men. As a result, women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older.

There are a number of causes for the aptly named gender pay gap, including job segregation: “Men’s jobs,” like plumbing, pay more than “women’s jobs,” like teaching. But, plain old sex discrimination plays a big part. According to a new report by the Pew Research Center, the gap widens when family responsibilities come into play. Mothers aged 25 to 34 earn 85 percent as much as fathers the same age, but the men get a so-called “fatherhood bonus”—not only making more than mothers, but pulling down 16 percent more than their non-father counterparts. Sexual harassment also fuels sex segregation by driving women out of higher paying fields.


Michelle and Matt ready their three kids—from left, Laila, 1, Brayden, 8, and Tallulah, 4—in Centennial, Colo. Gender stereotypes around parents have a significant impact in how mothers are treated in the workplace and how employers compensate fathers. (RJ Sangosti / The Denver Post via Getty Images)

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https://msmagazine.com/2023/03/14/equal-pay-for-women/