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Last year, a labor economist from the Economic Policy Institute made the widely-quoted estimate that the gender pay gap would be closed within 30 years. Other commentators state confidently that the gap does not reflect discrimination, but other factors, such as the high wages of a few white men, and gendered patterns of occupational and educational choice and work experience. The effect of such assertions is to make women feel complacent about the wage gap—and perhaps to feel that they can avoid its impact by making the right educational, occupational, and negotiation-related choices. Such complacency is unwarranted.

The Wage Gap Exists Within Racial/Ethnic Groups

White men are not the only group that out-earns women, although the wage gap is largest between white men and white women. Within other groups, such as African Americans, Latinos, and Asian/Pacific Islanders, men earn more than women (Source: U.S. Census Bureau).

(For example: white women earned 73.4% of what white men earned in 2001; in the same year, black women earned 84.8% of what black men earned.)

What Difference Does Education Make?

Higher levels of education increase women’s earnings, just as they do for men. However, there is no evidence that the gender gap in wages closes at higher levels of education. If anything, the reverse is true: at the very highest levels of education, the gap is at its largest, as shown in this chart.

The Wage Gap Exists Within Occupations

Some people think that if women move into male-dominated occupations in larger numbers, the wage gap will close. However, there appears to be a gender-related wage gap in virtually every occupational category. In researching this issue at the Center for Gender Studies, we found only four occupational categories for which comparison data were available in which women earned even a little more than men: special education teachers, order clerks, electrical and electronic engineers, and miscellaneous food preparation occupations (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The movement of women into higher paid occupations, whether male-dominated or not, may not have the impact of narrowing the earnings gap. Social psychologists have demonstrated repeatedly that occupations associated with women or requiring stereotypically feminine skills are rated as less prestigious and deserving of less pay than occupations associated with men and masculine skills. Thus, as more and more women enter an occupation, there may be a tendency to value (and reward) that occupation less and less.

Do Women Earn Less Because They Work Less?

Women are more likely than men to work part-time. However, most gender wage comparisons leave out part-time workers and focus only on full-time, year-round workers. A close look at the earnings of women and men who work 40 hours or more per week reveals that the wage gap may actually widen as the number of hours worked increases. Women working 41 to 44 hours per week earn 84.6% of what men working similar hours earn; women working more than 60 hours per week earn only 78.3% of what men in the same time category earn (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). Furthermore, women may work longer to receive the promotions that provide access to higher pay. For example, among school principals, women have an average of 3 years longer as teachers than men do (Source: National Center for Education Statistics). So it is hard to argue that women’s lower earnings are simply a result of women putting in fewer hours per week, or even fewer years than men.

Is the Wage Gap Closing?

The U.S. Census Bureau has made available statistics on women’s and men’s earnings for several decades. By examining this time series of data, it is possible to get a feel for the changes and trends in earnings. One thing revealed by a simple visual examination of the series since 1960 is how closely the shapes of the two lines parallel each other. The dips and bumps in women’s and men’s earnings seem to move in tandem. Clearly, similar economic and social forces are at work in influencing the rise and fall of earnings for both sexes. Men’s earnings do not stand still and wait for women’s to catch up.

Another thing that is apparent from the graph is that there is some minor fluctuation in the size of the wage gap. For example, the gap widened in the 1960s, closed a little in the 1980s, and widened slightly in the late 1990s. Thus, depending on which chunk of years one examines, it may be possible to conclude that the gap is either widening or narrowing. The only way to get a clear picture of what is happening is to examine the whole series rather than a few years at a time.

The series of data points from 1960 onward provides a basis for a forecast of the future, although such forecasts are always estimates rather than hard certainties. When we used forecasting analyses to project the earnings of women and men into the future, to the year 2010, we found no evidence on which we could base a prediction for a closing (or widening) wage gap. The forecast was, in essence, for the two lines to remain parallel, although the 90% confidence intervals (the range within which we are 90% certain the actual future earnings will fall) do overlap a little.

 

A Question of Value

As women and men left their jobs this spring because they were called up for military duty, employers scrambled to make sure that these workers did not suffer losses of salary and benefits. In a number of cases, organizations made up the difference between their employees’ military pay and their normal pay, held jobs open, and made sure that benefits continued during workers’ absence. At the same time, the media made a hero out of a father who chose to ship out with his military unit rather than stay home with his infant son who was awaiting a heart transplant. The message about what we as a society consider important is clear:

• When something perceived as very important needs to be done outside of the workplace, employers feel obligated to provide support for their employees to go and do it
• 
  In the eyes of society, or at least many employers, family concerns and the care of children do not fall into the category of “very important” --- certainly not as important as military duty

Are these the values we want to live by? If women and men continue to accept the notion that the domestic and caretaking work traditionally classified as “women’s work” is not important enough for employers to accommodate, the gender gap in wages will never close. A few individual women may be able to evade the gap by choosing to be childfree, being fortunate enough to have a supportive spouse, and carefully following a model of career advancement that was developed to fit men’s needs. However, to make the wage gap disappear will require that we stop buying into the idea that the rules are gender-neutral and that men just follow them better than women do. One by one, employers must be convinced to re-examine assumptions that unwittingly place higher value on the type of work men do than on the type of work women do. The most important step in closing the wage gap is for all of us to give up the notion that, to be paid fairly, a woman must “make it in a man’s world.”

© Hilary Lips

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Hilary M. Lips is a professor of psychology, chair of the Psychology Department, and director of the Center for Gender Studies at Radford University. She holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Lips is the author of A New Psychology of Women: Gender, Culture and Ethnicity and of Sex and Gender: An Introduction, as well as the award-winning Women, Men and Power. Her work has been published in a number of professional journals, and she is a frequent speaker on topics related to women, power, and achievement.

To learn more about the gender wage gap, visit this section of the Center for Gender Studies website.

Want to know more? Listen to this (always less than 10 minutes): Gender Pay Gap: 80 Cents For Each Dollar A Man Makes Is Not Okay! or read it here.

Want to know more? Listen to this (always less than 10 minutes): Is Negotiation Different For Women?
or read it here.