Editor’s note: This commentary is by Hannah Lane, who is the policy research analyst and business manager at the Vermont Commission on Women. She earned her juris doctor from Vermont Law School.
Tuesday, March 31, is National Equal Pay Day, symbolizing the fact that the average American woman must work three months into 2020 to earn what the average American man made in 2019.
Nationally, the gender wage gap for white women compared to white, non-Hispanic men is 22%. The gap is more pronounced for women with disabilities and women of color. On average, Vermont fares slightly better with a wage gap of 16%, or nearly $8,000. This difference is not insignificant; it would pay for half a year’s groceries for a family of four, or for four months of child care for two children.
The wage gap persists at every level of education. When compared to similarly situated male peers, college graduates face a wage gap of 14.7%. Women who have not completed high school face a gender wage gap of 30.1%. In fact, Vermont women, on average, must complete some college to earn the same as a Vermont man who did not complete high school. The American Association of University Women found that even when controlling for factors affecting wages, a 7% unexplainable wage gap existed just one year after college graduation.
If not an education gap, what drives the discrepancy in earnings? We have identified three key contributors to the gender wage gap: occupational segregation; time out of the labor force; and gender norms, bias, discrimination, and violence.
Many workers remain clustered in fields that are predominantly male, which tend to pay more, or predominately female, which tend to pay less. Critics argue that occupational segregation reflects voluntary choices, and not discrimination. However, the wage gap persists within occupations, and occupational segregation is itself driven by discrimination.
Career choices are not made in a vacuum; they are influenced by years of external input. Studies confirm gender socialization and the expectations of behavior, roles and attitudes of parents and teachers guide individuals into professions deemed “gender appropriate.”
The wage gap persists even within occupations and is widest in many occupations where the gender ratio is roughly even. Female financial managers fill 57% of jobs in that field but face a wage gap of 29.3%. Notably, studies have shown that when more women enter predominantly male occupations, the average wage decreases. When computer programming became a predominately male occupation, pay went up; when more women became park rangers, pay went down. Researchers have found that this is a result of the devaluation of work done by women.
Societal values about child-rearing influence women’s careers. Women are more than twice as likely to work part-time than men and are seven times more likely to cite child care obligations as the reason. According to Let’s Grow Kids, 70% of Vermont children age 5 and younger have all available parents in the workforce. Child care can cost a family of four earning $50,000 per year up to 41% of their income. Child care’s high cost puts pressure on parents to reduce hours or leave the workforce entirely to make ends meet. Women more often reduce their hours or leave the workforce, largely because they earn less on average. This time away comes at a high long-term cost: by leaving the workforce until her child is in kindergarten, a 35-year-old new mother earning the median, full-time wage for women loses $433,000 in income, lost wage increases and retirement assets, perpetuating the gender wage gap.
Forty percent of the wage gap can be attributed to gender norms and expectations, biases, or overt discrimination. Women are 28% less likely to be promoted to management, with black and Hispanic women faring even worse. Seventy-six percent of Americans believe that the ideal situation for men with young children is to work full time, while only 33% of Americans believe that it is ideal for women with small children to work full time. These values contribute to decisions women make about their careers, and to decisions about whether and how much time to take out of the workforce when becoming a parent.
Women also lose income as a result of widespread harassment and violence. Eight in 10 women who experience harassment leave their jobs within two years. The estimated lifetime cost to a woman who has experienced intimate partner violence is $103,767. Many women report that their abusers undermined their ability to work to maintain power and control. Women who have been sexually assaulted are nearly three times as likely to be depressed and more than twice as likely to have elevated anxiety, both of which can also affect a person’s earnings.
Women don’t choose to earn less than men; they are socialized to choose occupations that pay lower wages. They carry more responsibility for caring for family, requiring more time out of the workforce. They face gender bias and discrimination. If we want to change this story for women, we must continue to enact well-crafted policy solutions to address these inequities and continue to evaluate and discuss our own internal beliefs and biases about gender’s role in our society, the importance of equitable parenting, and how we (under)value work performed by women.
