Wage Gap Article

Due: Thursday, Dec 6th

Directions: Read the following article and answer the questions below in full sentences on a separate typed page. Be sure to include a correctly formatted CITATION in at least ONE of your answers.

The Wage Gap: A History of Pay Inequity
by Borgna Brunner

The wage gap is a statistic used to compare the status of women's earnings relative to men's. It is also used to compare the earnings of other races and ethnicities to those of white males, a group generally not subject to race- or sex-based discrimination. The wage gap is expressed as a percentage (e.g., in 2004, women earned 77% as much as men) and is calculated by dividing the median annual earnings for women by the median annual earnings for men.

Rosie the Riveter: Patriotic and Underpaid
Because of the large number of American women taking jobs in the war industries during World War II, the National War Labor Board urged employers in 1942 to voluntarily make "adjustments which equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations."

Not only did employers fail to heed this "voluntary" request, but at the war's end most women were pushed out of their new jobs to make room for returning veterans.

Help wanted—Separate and Unequal

Until the early 1960s, newspapers published separate job listings for men and women. Jobs were categorized according to sex, with the higher level jobs listed almost exclusively under "Help Wanted—Male." In some cases the ads ran identical jobs under male and female listings—but with separate pay scales. Separate, of course, meant unequal: between 1950 and 1960, women with full time jobs earned on average between 59–64 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned in the same job.

It wasn't until the passage of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963 that it became illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. Demonstrable differences in seniority, merit, the quality or quantity of work, or other considerations might merit different pay, but gender could no longer be viewed as a drawback on one's resumé.
The act was gradually expanded over the next decade to include a larger segment of the workforce, and between June 1964 and Jan. 1971 back wages totaling more than $26 million were paid to 71,000 women.

Lingering Inequality

The workplace has changed radically in the decades since the passage of the Equal Pay Act.
But what has not changed radically, however, is women's pay. The wage gap has narrowed, but it is still significant. Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2002 they
earned 76% of men's wages—an improvement of less than half a penny a year. Even worse, African-American women earn just 68 cents to every dollar earned by white men, and for Hispanic women that figure drops to merely 57 cents per dollar.

The wage gap between women and men cuts across a wide spectrum of occupations. In 2004 female physicians and surgeons earned 52.2% of male physicians’ weekly wages, and women in sales occupations earned just 62.1% of men's wages in equivalent positions.

If working women earned the same as men (those who work the same number of hours; have the same education, age, and union status; and live in the same region of the country), their annual family incomes would rise by $4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half. Why is there still such a disparity?

Why Such a Wide Wage Gap After Nearly Four Decades?

A variety of explanations for the persistent wage gap have been offered. One is that older women are factored into the wage gap equation, and many of these women from an older generation work in jobs still subject to the attitudes and conditions of the past. In contrast, the rates for young women coming of age in the 1990s reflect women's social and legal advances. In 1997, for example, women under 25 working full-time earned 92.1% of men's salaries compared to older women (25–54), who earned 74.4% of what men made.

Equal Pay in the Millennium?

Does this imply that once the oldest generation of women has retired the wage gap will shrink considerably? Perhaps. But even the narrow wage gap of 92.1% that applies to women under 25 looks less rosy when you consider commentator Katha Pollitt's take on it:

Young men and women have always had earnings more compatible than those of their elders: starting salaries are generally low, and do not accurately reflect the advantages that accrue, or fail to accrue, over time as men advance and women stay in place, or as women in mostly female kinds of jobs reach the end of characteristically short career paths. (The Nation, April 14, 1997)

Women have made enormous progress in the workforce since the Equal Pay Act, but the stubborn fact remains that four-and-a-half decades later the basic goal of the act has not been realized.

QUESTIONS: Answer the following questions in full sentences on a separate, typed page.

NOTE: One of your answers must include a correctly formatted citation in parenthesis.

1. What is the wage gap and how is it calculated?

2. How were jobs advertised until the 1960s?

3. Describe the Equal Pay Act and its effect on women.

4. What is the wage gap today and how does it differ from before the Equal Pay Act?

5. At what rate has the wage gap been changing?

6. How does the wage gap differ by occupation?

7. What would happen to poverty rates if the wage gap were eliminated?

8. How does the wage gap differ by age?

9. According to the final section, what are two possible ways of interpreting the difference in the small wage gap among younger women?