SOMETIME IN THE 23RD CENTURY
White women will catch up in 2056, but Hispanic women won’t until 2248
It’s a long road to pay SAN FRANCISCO equity.
Despite strides in the 1980s and 1990s, the pay gap between the sexes hasn’t budged in more than a decade. That’s even with growing research and outcry that’s prompted some companies to review — and vow to fix — broad discrepancies in their own workforces.
The numbers are glaring: Women make up half the U. S. college- educated workforce, but those with full- time jobs were on average paid 80 cents for every dollar earned by men in nearly every occupation for which there was sufficient earnings data in 2015, according to the non- profit In-
stitute for Women’s Policy Research ( IWPR).
The gap is especially pronounced when comparing median weekly earnings and are far deeper for women of color.
While women overall earned about 82% of the full- time weekly paycheck of aman, black women’s earnings were just 68% compared with white men and Hispanic women’s were 62%, according to IWPR. Asian women fare better compared with white men, but compared with Asian men, they made only 78%.
Youhave to look hard to find a profession where this gap isn’t the case. Median earnings for women are lower than for men in 18 of the 20 most common jobs for women.
“It’s been stagnant the last 10 to 15 years even though women are better educated,” says Ariane Hegewisch, program director of employment and earnings at IWPR. She calculates that if the current trends continue, women on average will not receive equal pay until 2059.
For women of color, the rate of change is downright glacial — black women will wait until 2124 and Hispanic women will have to wait until 2248, Hegewisch says, compared with 2056 for white women.
Against that backdrop comes the view from a growing number of companies that by failing to recruit, retain and advance women, they’re missing out.
Facebook, whose advertising revenues have swelled thanks to growth in small businesses using Facebook Pages to reach customers, says 40% of its pages are women- owned. That’s a 60% increase from last year.
“When you give people opportunity and lower barriers of entry, business grows at a critical mass,” says Maxine Williams, Facebook’s global director of diversity.
Full- scale gender equality could add 11% to 26% to the global GDP by 2025 — a staggering $ 12 trillion to $ 28 trillion, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study.
Primary and secondary school teachers have one of the narrowest gender wage gaps. Kisha Mattox is a third- and fourth- grade school teacher in the Oakland public school system.
“Male and female teachers in public schools get paid the same because we have a union,” she says. “I think other industries need unions, mainly because women and teenagers are taken advantage of in some professions.”
The hurdles, from outright discrimination and low- paying occupations to cultural expectations that still place the burden of child- rearing on women, are steep.
Pamela Sandy says a key reason she became a financial planner was her belief that its commission- based structure made it a profession where what you earn is based on how hard you work.
Yet when she began her career at a large insurance company, she found that her gender remained a roadblock to getting paid the same as her male peers.
“Women within the profession ... often have life balance issues to manage,’’ says Sandy, a Cleveland- based certified financial planner who also is chairwoman of the Financial Planning Association.
“I was a mother, for example. You have other things pulling at you, and that can affect your earning power.”
“There is a pay gap, and there is a promotion gap,” says Elizabeth Ames, senior vice president of marketing, alliances and programs at Anita Borg Institute. “Women have a harder time being advanced. Many are consistently well- reviewed but not promoted. Their attitude is, ‘ If I do my job well, I will be recognized.’ ”