Closing the gender pay gap
By Joshua Rosario | Published March 1, 2018
In 1963, the United States Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, the law provides equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. Despite the law, a disparity remained between genders pay. In 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to help against that disparity. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2015, women were still being paid only 80 percent of what men were being paid.
“In Jersey, a lot of the disparity in professions between male and female is not in so much engineering as it is retail sales, and managerial positions in stores,” said Carol Cohen, President of New Jersey’s American Association of University Women.
AAUW is an organization that works on promoting equity and education for women and girls.
AAUW created a guide of its own on the gender pay gap using statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau called The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap.
The guide describes the pay gap as the difference in each gender’s median earnings, usually reported as either the earnings ratio between men and women or as an actual pay gap.
New Jersey places 17th on the list of where states place in the gender pay gap. According to the AAUW, between 1960 and 2015, women were expected to reach pay equity with men in 2059, but progress has stalled recently since 2001. If change continues at that rate, women will not reach the same pay as men until 2152.
“That’s for white woman, that 80 percent,” said Cohen. “But it’s different for black, and Hispanic women…. even for Asian women, who are only two percent off that 80.”
AAUW’s Guide explains that the 20-cent-on-the-dollar gap between men and women who work year round full time is a statistical fact. However, the pay gap is more complicated than a simple number. It is more than one single cause that leads to the pay gap.
Traditionally, men and women have participated in the workforce differently and have so been treated in such ways by employers. Such differences have shrunk over time, but still contribute to the difference in pay.
“The largest portion of the gender wage gap is due to institutionalized sexism,” said Kean University women’s studies professor, Jill Hersh in an email interview. “There still would be some salary disparity because of occupational sex segregation. Simply put, men and women are doing different jobs. ‘Women’s work’ consistently pays less than men’s work. I think that if women were made equal under the law, they would not see as much disparity in their salaries.”
According to Issues in Management author and business researcher, Joanne Cleaver, women hold back from negotiating pay. She recommends more women be assertive and cultivate their negotiation skills. Women in business can lose over $500,000 in their lifetime by not negotiating. Cleaver also said there is racial disparity amongst women in top business roles. Of the 19.2 percent of women who held board seats in S&P 500 companies in 2014, over 80 percent are white.
In New Jersey, women only made 70 percent of what men were paid, as reported by nj.com. Wisconsin ranked the lowest but New Jersey was still lower than the national female gap of 72 percent. They show around a 15,000-dollar difference in median salary between men and women.
“A man with a high school diploma makes about the same as a woman with a B.A. degree. It also starts the year after both graduate college. A woman could have better grades and she still makes on average 10% less a year after graduation,” said Hersh.
According to nj.com, one of the biggest industries with the biggest pay gap are service-providing industries. Th e Bureau of Labor classify service providing industries as industries involved with things such as equipment and machinery repairing, promoting or administering religious activities, grant making, advocacy, and providing drycleaning and laundry services, personal care services, death care services, pet care services, photofi nishing services, temporary parking services, and dating services. In retail trade the disparity was about 68 percent.
“Raising the minimum wage to a living wage (most minimum wage workers are women in the 30s), providing paid maternity/paternity leave, paid sick days, family friendly workplace policies such as flex-time, on-site affordable child care, tax credits for children’s preschool, union’s collective bargaining, encouraging girls to enter high paying fields like STEM etc. would help to close the gap for women,” said Hersh.
In 2016, NJ State Senator Loretta Weinburg sponsored a bill to help the gender pay gap in New Jersey. The bill passed in the NJ Senate and State Assembly, but former Governor Chris Christie vetoed the law, as reported by nj.com.