Women Still Face a Wage Gap
I was pretty stunned over the weekend when I read an article that said that the gender=based wage gap is an issue for White House staffers. Women reportedly make more than $9000 less than male White House staffers. This, despite all of Obama’s promises to make some changes at the top.
The wage gap isn’t just an issue for White House staffers, though. It still permeates both American and European societies. Full-time working women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that full-time working men make. (This doesn’t take into account, of course, the unpaid labor that women perform in the home.)
There are several contributing factors to the wage gap. According to the European Commission on Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities:
Frequently women earn less than men for doing jobs of equal value. One of the main causes is the way women’s competences are valued compared to men’s. Jobs requiring similar skills, qualifications or experience tend to be poorly paid and undervalued when they are dominated by women rather than by men. For example, the (mainly female) cashiers in a supermarket usually earn less than the (mainly male) employees involved in stacking shelves and other more physical tasks.
Maternity accounts for some of the wage gap. According to a new study out of the UK, pregnancy and motherhood has a very strong negative impact on women’s wages.
- Before becoming parents, men and women are equally likely to be employed but childbirth marks the start of a great divide which continues even after children have left home. Just over half (57%) of mothers with children under 5 are in paid work compared to nine tenths of fathers.
- Even those women working full time experience a pay penalty ‘“ partnered women without dependent children earn 9% less than men on average but for mothers with two children working full time the pay gap is 21.6%.
- Pregnancy can make women particularly vulnerable to discrimination. During the recent downturn there has been a marked increase in the numbers of women seeking help because they believe they have experienced pregnancy related discrimination.
On a related note, a recent article in the American Bar Association Journal says that women who take time off for motherhood are hurting their careers:
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch thinks women who take time off for family are making a risky career move.
Speaking to Human Resource Management at its annual conference on June 28, Welch said women who take time off for family could be passed over for promotions if they are ‘œnot there in the clutch,’ the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports.
‘œThere’s no such thing as work-life balance,” Welch said. “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”
Welch said women who take time off can still “have a nice career,” but their chances of reaching the top are smaller, according to the Wall Street Journal account. “We’d love to have more women moving up faster,” he said. “But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”
That’s easy for Welch to say – no one ever assumes that men with children will have to make a choice between their careers or their families. What do you think – does motherhood hurt women’s careers? Do you think biology is to blame for the wage gap? And do you think Obama will give women who work at the White House their dues? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Photo credit: Guerrilla Girls
I don’t see how women who are pregnant can NOT face a wage gap or discrimination in the work place.
It’s impossible. I’m just imagining being a consultant with a HUGE belly at 9 months, then taking another year or so off for mat leave?
It’s like killing your career 2 years at a time, and if you plan on having 3 kids, that’s 6 years, plus rushing to pick them up or to turn down things because of your kids
It’s why I’m hoping to get into something where being self employed is the key to being a working mother.
Right now, I work 3 months and take the other 9 months off (I earn enough in the 3 months to do that). How great would it be if I could be a SAHM for 9 months and work 3 months here and there, or whenever I need to?
It’s all ideas kicking around in my head….
Thanks for the great post.
FB – I think anyone would appreciate “working” at a waged job for 3 months and then taking 9 months off to be with the familia. ;^)
By the way, here’s a great series about gender and the work-life balance as a follow up response to the Welch quote:
http://www.gloriafeldt.com/powered-women-blog/2009/7/7/the-problematic-of-work-life-balance-part-1.html
http://www.gloriafeldt.com/powered-women-blog/2009/7/11/the-problematic-of-work-life-balance-part-2-a-project-of-the.html
http://www.gloriafeldt.com/powered-women-blog/2009/7/19/the-problematic-of-work-life-balance-part-3-to-be-or-not-to.html
Well I know this is not going to be a favorite response but why should a woman who takes off years of time make the same as one who does not take that same time off to have a family? If it is truely about equal pay for equal work then you have to do equal amounts of work. I know kids are a job in and of themselves but it is not the one that pays money at this point. Now when the women and men do the same work and the women still make less then it is true discrimination and I have a problem with it. Take my own profesion, registered nurse. If you just examine the numbers male nurses make more money. But when you look at the whole picture, male nurses work longer hours in more intensive care (and therefore higher paying) areas and they work much more overtime. Simply put they do more work and are paid accordingly. I choose not to do that. I choose to earn less money than my male counterparts.
Hi Candirn – I think you make a fair statement. People who take a break from paid labor are understandable at a different wage level than people who have worked continuously.
My point in sharing the quote about workers who choose family over their jobs is this – it’s a very gendered outlook. If men were taking paternity leave at the same level as women take maternity leave, I don’t think there would be any penalty for workers.
One of the really annoying things about this situation (for me, personally) is that, even if you don’t have kids, even if you don’t want kids, if you are a young woman, many prospective employers are going to assume you do anyway. This affects not only a woman’s wages but her chances of getting hired in the first place, especially if she works in a male-dominated field. This idea, that women are supposed to be the ones to sacrifice their careers for the kids, needs to die and it needs to die fast. This isn’t about parents getting paid less than non-parents. This is about dad being paid more than moms while childless men are being paid more than childless women. How anyone can see this as anything other than sexism is completely baffling to me.