What are the latest stats on pay inequality, anyway? What I mean is, how big, exactly, of a problem is this these days? The numbers I'm using are quite cheerful (especially with no evidence of pay inequality between men and women who never marry and never have children, the group I'm in.), but those are about a year old.

Thanks for the link. The Female Impersonator blog is signed up!

Ojibway Migisi Bineshii is signed up and ready to blog for fair pay tomorrow!

=)

Alice, I recently attended a lecture given by a woman who researches women and leadership. She mentioned that from the most recent data she has seen, when removing other factors (like years away from the job, different occupations, etc.) the pay inequity was still somewhere around 8-10%. It's far worse for women who take time off to raise children (she basically told us to keep working part time, no matter what, because young women don't seem to realize the extent of the negative impact it's going to have on their careers if they take a few years away to stay at home).

It's important for me to point out that she didn't explicitly say that the difference is 8-10% between men and women of all races, so I don't know if this is solely based on white women's pay vs. white men's pay.

Alice, here are the latest stats (depressing as they are):

* Women in the United States are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men;
* African-American women earn only 63 cents; and
* Latinas earn only 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

Some more details on the wage gap are available here: http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/2007%20Paycheck%20Fairness%20Act.pdf

Oops, just to clarify what I posted above -- African-American women earn 63 cents for every dollar earned by white men; and Latinas earn 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

Well, now I've got different researchers telling me different things, and I don't have the statistics expertise to pour through the raw numbers myself yet. Most annoying.

However, I must call BS on some of the statistics from the link posted by Robin@NWLC:

"Minority women fare significantly worse. In 2005, the median earnings of African American women working full-time, year-round were $29,680 5 compared to $46,437 6 for white men; the median for Hispanic women was only $24,214. 7 This means that an African American woman earned just 64 cents for every dollar earned by a white man, while a Hispanic woman earned only 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart."

These numbers are meaningless on account of being uncontrolled for anything. Of course median wages for those groups would be what they are, purely based on past discrimination and the fact that, in practice, economic class is strongly heredity. They say nothing about racism in the present.

Since any half-competent statistician would have thought of all that (I thought of them, and I'm not even a statistician yet) I can only assume these numbers are there simply to be scary. I can't reasonably assert that the same is true of the other statistics reported, but you can see how it makes me more suspicious of them than I otherwise would be.

Despite what Robin and the NWLC say, here's an analysis by June O'Neill, an economist and former directory Congressional Budget Office, and current directory of the Center For The Study Of Business And Government at CUNY:

Study titled:
Recent Trends and Current Sources of the Gender Wage Gap in the U.S.

http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/events/transatlantic/papers_2003/oneil.pdf

From the bottom of the first page:

"The residual gap is about 6 percentage points when both field of college major and occupational characteristics are included. I conclude that the unadjusted gender gap can be explained to a large extent by non-discriminatory factors. Those factors seem rooted in the role differential between women and men in the home."

So we have NWLC saying 23% different. A very well respected economist saying 6%.

As long as you have both sides of the story, you can make up your own minds.

By the way, in certain cities, women in their 20s make more than men in their 20s. NYC for example, women make 17% more than men.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html?hp

At the very least, the evidence for pay discrimination is not convincing. I'll wait until there is more of a consensus before I start worrying about a problem that probably doesn't even exist.

Hmm... I thought Equal Pay Day was April 22nd..?

http://www.aauw.org

http://www.pay-equity.org/day.html

SweetZoeJane, I believe the blogging effort has been moved up to encourage the Senate to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Good question about the dates, SweetZoeJane. Equal Pay Day is always recognized on a Tuesday in April, and this year it’ll be recognized next Tuesday, April 22. However, the official Equal Pay Day — the point in 2008 when the average woman's wages finally catch up with what the average man earned in 2007 — is today, April 18.

Also, I checked in with my co-worker, Kristina Gupta, on the stats. Here’s what Kristina said:

“First, the following stats are for full-time, year-round workers: ‘Women in the United States are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men; African-American women earn only 63 cents; and Latinas earn only 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.’ So it does control for some factors (full-time, year round status).

“However, it is true that it doesn’t control for a whole host of factors, like marital status, number of children, education, job tenure, experience, hours worked (even full-time female workers on average work less than full-time male workers), occupation, field, etc. Many economists have done studies to control for these factors, and have still found that they can’t account for all of the difference between male and female wages — this remainder is attributable to discrimination. The evidence for discrimination includes numerous court cases in which discriminatory practices by companies have been exposed.

“The overall pay gap between men and women points to two other problems. First, many economists have argued that the jobs traditionally performed by women are paid less than comparable jobs traditionally performed by men, because women’s labor is less valued.

“Second, the overall pay gap suggests that women suffer financially as a result of their disproportionate responsibility for child-caring. In part because of women’s childcare responsibilities, men and women have different work patterns — women are more likely to work part-time, work fewer hours, and take time away from the labor force. Women also may enter less financially rewarding fields if they offer more flexibility.

“Because of all of these different factors, on average women have significantly fewer financial resources than men over the course of their lifetimes — which is a problem for many reasons. For example, women have higher poverty rates than men, women are less likely to be in decision making positions in the economic and political arenas, and women may be more likely to be dependent on others for financial support and stability.

“The solution to the wage gap is both to mandate equal pay for equal work and to enact policies to allow men and women to combine work with childcare responsibilities, without suffering a financial penalty. Countries that have done this, like Sweden, have basically eliminated the wage gap between men and women. So, please support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as one important way to address the pay gap.�

Also, here's what Kristina Gupta noted about the NYT article billdiamond mentioned:

"The New York Times piece demonstrates that the wage gap can vary across location, age group, profession, and educational status. According to the piece, women in NYC in their 20s make, on average, more than men. Clearly, women have been making big strides in closing the pay gap.

"However, the piece itself makes several points that are worth emphasizing:
* The wage gap between women and men in their 20s nationwide remains large – women working full time in their 20s made on average 89 percent of what men working full time in their 20s made.
* The wage gap can vary significantly by area, occupation, age group, educational status, and race and ethnicity.
* The wage advantage women in NYC have in their 20s may or may not continue in later life. The piece states, “Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.�
* Some of the narrowing of the wage gap nationwide is attributable to the fact that men’s wages have remained stagnant or even declined over the past few decades. So women aren’t necessary closing the gap by getting ahead. The article implies, but does not state explicitly, that this may be the case in NYC as well."