Women Earn Less Than Men in Most Jobs

Equitable Pay? Studies Detail How Women

Earn Less Than Men in Most Jobs

By Adrienne Mand

ABCNews.com

June 7, 2004 — Christina Tucker used to work in retail
and was training to be a manager. Her husband joined
the same company about six months after she did.

But when it came to making money, their experiences
were quite different. According to Tucker, women’s
wages at her employer would start around $4.75 an hour
for unloading trucks and merchandising, while men got
paid $6 an hour — including her husband, despite being
hired later.

"I didn’t think it was fair," said Tucker, who lives in
Pembroke Pines, Fla. "I worked just as hard as he did,
lifted just as many boxes as he did, and got paid
less."

It’s no surprise to her that American women overall
earn less than men. But two new studies show that,
while women have lower median incomes than men, their
range of earnings is also narrower, even in higher-
paying professions.

"It’s clear that there’s less difference between women
at the 90th percentile and women at the 10th percentile
than men," said Dan Weinberg, author of a Census Bureau
study and chief of its housing and household economic
statistics division. Plus, he said, there’s a bigger
range for men than for women in terms of earnings
within an occupation.

The study focused on fields with at least 10,000 year-
round, full-time workers and included 505 categories.
It found two occupations whose median earnings are
$100,000 or higher: physicians and surgeons, with
median earnings of $120,000, and dentists with salaries
of $100,000.

However, discrepancies exist when these professions are
looked at by gender. The median earnings for men who
are doctors and surgeons are $140,000, compared with
$88,000 for women. Similarly, male dentists’ median
earnings are $110,000, while female dentists’ median
earnings are $68,000. Among chief executives, men’s
median earnings are $95,000, while women’s are $60,000.

Weinberg speculated that, with the doctors at least,
different degrees of specialization may affect females’
salaries. For example, they may practice lower-paid
medical specialties, such as pediatrics, or work with
lower-paying HMOs than men. "But it’s not by any means
a definitive explanation," he said.

More Evidence of a Gap

Another new report by the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research and research firm ORC Macro found similar
disparities, including that women in their prime
earning years make 38 cents for every dollar that men
earn — and 62 percent less than men earn during a 15-
year time frame.

"Over the 15-year time period, women make substantially
less than men — only about two-fifths," said Heidi
Hartmann, co-author of the report and president of
IWPR. "It’s just shocking for those of us who have
studied this for decades."

Some of the reasons found for the gap in earnings are
gender segregation in the labor market; sex
discrimination in hiring, pay and promotion; different
access to education and training; and differences in
hours worked between women and men.

Hartmann said women and men actually face the same
penalty for taking off a year — in the other years
they work, they earn 30 percent less. "But women are
much more likely to take a year off and much more
likely to take more than a year off," she said.

Disparity in Different Occupations

The Census study notes 15 of the 20 occupations with
the highest median earnings listed for men also are on
the list for women, and in all cases, the female median
is less than that for men. And, at $68,000, the third-
highest salary for women in the study is about equal to
that of the last on the top-earners list for men.

The situation is similar among lower-paying
occupations: 16 occupations appear on lists of jobs for
men and women, and in all cases but one — dining room
and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers — women
make less than men in the same job.

In Tucker’s case, there wasn’t much she felt she could
do about the situation. "It becomes acceptable after a
certain point," she said. "You know you’re not going to
be paid as much as a man does. You’re not supposed to
discuss it."

Similarly, Judy Wink of Morrison, Colo., a government
employee for nearly 36 years, said men in her office
routinely get overtime wages for working more than
eight hours, while women don’t. She also claims she did
work at a higher pay level than her own but was not
compensated, and men with less training and experience
in her field are promoted ahead of women. She has filed
a formal complaint based on pay discrepancies and
unfair treatment, though it has not yet been resolved.

"My male counterparts create problem after problem and
do a [poor] job of sort of ’fixing’ the problem," Wink
said, "But they get big cash awards and promotions,
while here I sit. They never get penalized for their
many major failures, and I never get rewarded for my
many successes."

Progress in Some Areas

Women have, however, achieved some equality in
seemingly disparate occupations, the Census study
found. There were five jobs in which female median
earnings were at least 100 percent of male median
earnings: hazardous materials removal workers,
telecommunications line installers and repairers,
meeting and convention planners, dining room and
cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers, and helpers
in the construction trades.

The report also shows which occupations have the most
similar and most dissimilar earnings. The most similar
were postal service clerks, postal service mail
carriers and occupational therapist assistants and
aides. The most dissimilar were farmers and ranchers,
securities commodities and financial services sales
agents and animal breeders.

Things have improved for women somewhat since 1999, the
year for which data was provided to the Census Bureau.
According to the Current Population Survey, the female-
to-male earnings ratio at the median was 77 percent in
2002 — or 77 cents earned by women for each dollar
earned by men — an increase of 5 percentage points
from 1999.

"The fact that there is a gap between men and women is
something we’ve known for a long time," Weinberg said,
adding that the ratio, which was 60 percent in 1960,
"is much higher than it was when we first started
keeping track."

Hartmann said 1993’s Family Medical Leave Act allowed
has helped people take off some time to care for their
families, but overall Americans lack paid leave and
subsidized child care, which would keep more women in
the labor force.

In fact, about 15 percent of the women studied actually
earned more than their husbands over 15 years, she
said, but their husbands typically worked more. "It’s
such a cultural decision where the man works more and
women work less, even in those families where economics
would seem to reverse it," she said.

And while additional support for family life would ease
the situation, Hartmann said, there’s no easy answer to
fixing the gender gap.

"You see enormous salary differences," she said, "so
it’s quite challenging for this society to figure out
all the things we need to do to eliminate those
differences."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Business/US/wages_gap_040607-4.html