THE EVER-WIDENING GENDER GAP
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
I love it when conservatives start talking about the absence of a gender gap,
especially conservative women. For close to decades now, conservatives have
maligned the idea of the gender gap -- the phenomenon expressed in the wage
differentials of American women and men saying that OF COURSE there's a gender
gap . . . women work fewer hours, leave the workforce more frequently, have less
education and typically work in fields paying less than the average wage for
which a man typically works -- and this is my favorite -- and when we account
for length of time in the workforce, education and job type, the gender gap
virtually disappears according to the Independent Women's Forum. To be fair,
there are kernels of truth in their argument. Women do typically work fewer
hours, with more women working part-time rather than full-time because of either
childcare limitations or a desire to be with their children. Women also
currently lag behind men in educational attainment, but dont expect that to last
for long: women outnumber men 55 to 45 percent in American colleges and
universities, with the ratio being so lopsided at some colleges, like the
College of Charleston in South Carolina, that some people believe male recruitment efforts are not far away.
But what about this idea that when researchers control for age, length of time
in workforce and so on, the gender gap disappears? I would tell that to
the women members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty whose
university released last week a report detailing that female professors often
received lower pay and had access to fewer resources, according to the New
York Times. MIT, my alma mater and a bastion of male dominance, has been
brought to task for such blatant inequality before in 1999 a report on the
MIT School of Science produced similar findings: women faculty members were
subject to systemic marginalization, lower pay and fewer resources, the New York
Times reminded us this week.
And then, last year, U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and John D. Dingell
(D-MI), asked the General Accounting Office to provide them with information on
the challenges women face in advancing their careers. The GAO study,
Women in Management: Analysis of Selected Data from the Current Population
Survey, dealt only with women and men in management position, which should raise
a few eyebrows, if only because the gender gap, though still present, decreases
in management positions. The study focused on 10 industries and used data from
the Current Population Survey in 1995 and 2000 to arrive at
their conclusions. Some of their findings were predictable: female managers
often had less education, were younger, and were more likely to work part-time
(information we already knew), not to mention they were less likely to be
married than their male counterparts.
The most telling fact of all however is that in both 1995 and 2000, full-time
female managers earned less than full-time male managers, AFTER controlling for
education, age, marital status and race. These are precisely the factors
conservatives would tell you should statistically eliminate the wage disparity
among women and men! And instead of the gap narrowing, as it is doing with
aggregate data, it is widening when we look at managers in certain industries.
The GAO studied communications, public administration, business
services, entertainment and recreational services, educational services, retail
trade, medical services, hospital services and financial services. They found
that the gap that existed in 1995 when women earned between 76 cents and 90
cents for every dollar men earned in management, had widened by 2000, so that
some managerial women earned as little as 62 cents for every dollar men earned.
However you view it, the widening of the gender pay gap is big news. The GAO
study was released last fall. Why pay attention now? Because March
is Womens History Month, and part of women's history has been the struggle for
equal pay. When the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, few thought so little
would have changed in forty years. Women have come a long way, but not far
enough that we can take a step backward and accept the widening gender gap, or
conservative carping that no gender gap exists.
The GAO managerial study looks at women on the top those who have education,
training and access. If we took a look at women on the bottom, those who earn
the minimum wage or a little more, we see even more signs of inequality. We'll
have to do more than celebrate women's history to get a handle on closing the
gender pay gap.