Women’s Pay as a Share of Men’s Reaches a Record High
The median earnings of full-time female workers was 78.3 percent of the median for men in 2013, up from 76.5 percent in 2012. Still, the gap remains significant.
The Census Bureau released new data Tuesday on the pay gap between men and women, showing a statistically insignificant increase. But the news is better than it might seem.
Women were paid 78 cents for every dollar a man earned last year, up from 77 cents in 2012. The 22-cent pay gap is a record low, down from 40 cents in 1960. (Annualize that and it takes a woman three more months to make what a man does.)
A closer look at the numbers reveals the good news: Within nearly every age group, the pay gap is shrinking even more than the census data shows, said Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University economist and one of the leading scholars on the pay gap.
The census data is a broad generalization — it reports the median earnings of people 15 and older working full-time and year-round ($50,033 for men and $39,157 for women). The reason for the discrepancy is that the baby boomers skew the results — because there are so many of them, because the pay gap tends to widen as women age and because they were the first generation in which women began to approach men in educational and career achievements.
Women’s Pay as a Share of Men’s Reaches a Record High
The median earnings of full-time female workers was 78.3 percent of the median for men in 2013, up from 76.5 percent in 2012. Still, the gap remains significant.
So while the gap looks as if it has remained more or less stable for several years, she said, it has actually been declining. “It adds up — a cent here, a cent there,” Ms. Goldin said.
Still, the gap remains wide, and after it shrank rapidly from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, its reduction has slowed significantly. So what has worked to shrink the gap as much as it has? And why has progress slowed so much?
How the Pay Gap Has Shrunk
The pay gap between men and women widened in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before falling rapidly from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. It has continued to shrink over the past 20 years, but not as rapidly.
The work of economists and sociologists who study gender and pay offers some advice for women on what not to do if they want to be paid equally: Don’t have children, don’t take much time off work, don’t work part-time, don’t work remotely or on your own hours, and don’t get paid in the bottom 95 percent of earners.
But since many of these are unrealistic, not to mention unfair, let’s take a look at some of the changes that have helped shrink the pay gap so far. For one, women are now as educated as men (and younger women are generally better educated).
Women have also gained entry to a much wider variety of industries, and reached executive roles in high-paying professions. Meanwhile, technology and other factors have made it possible for more jobs to be done remotely and on flexible schedules, and for workers to substitute more easily for one another.
Then why has the gap remained stubbornly in place? Some of the causes are difficult to quantify and thus harder to address, like discrimination, negotiating skills and networking over beers.
But much of it comes down to one major event in many women’s lives: the arrival of motherhood. Policy prescriptions that simplify the work-family balancing act, like publicly funded child care and moderate-length parental leave, have proved successful in certain countries.
There has also been pressure for companies to make salary information public, so that people know what men and women earn in the same jobs. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which was blocked by Senate Republicans on Monday, would have protected employees who shared that information.
Other changes have been personal instead of political. In recent years, the pay gap has become a topic of national conversation with developments like Sheryl Sandberg’s book and mantra, “Lean In,” and the equal pay bill, which makes employers more aware of the issue.
