Less pay for many female workers

Analysis shows gender gap persists among state of Ohio employees.

Male state of Ohio employees are paid, on average, nearly 6 percent more than female state employees, according to an I-Team analysis of state of Ohio payroll data.

Ohio’s 26,157 female st ate employees were compensated, on average, $50,959 last year. The 33,002 male state employees made a mean average of $54,122.

A difference persisted among workers with the same job title. The most common job title in the state is corrections officer, and female officers made, on average $3,456 less than male COs. The second most common job

title in the state, “administrative staff,” had almost as many women as men. But men made, on average, $9,639 more in that job last year.

One job where females made slightly more than men was “highway technician 1,” though there were only 77 women in the job last year and 1,157 men.

T he I-Team’s analysis comes after Equal Pay Day, meant to highlight

the national pay disparity between men and women.

This newspaper reported on a study last year that found Ohio women in the public and private sector are paid 78 cents for every dol- lar paid to men. The study found this is a burden for working mothers, many of whom are their household’s primary breadwinner.

Sandy Theis, executive director of the progressive group ProgressOhio, called the I-Team’s findings this week “appalling but not surprising.”

“There are lots of studies that show if women received equal pay for equal work, poverty among women and

their families would decrease and kids would be health- ier and happier,” she said. “Folks who market themselves as pro-family need to start advocating pro-family policies.”

But Lisa Gates, vice pres- ident of communications at the conservative Buckeye Institute, cautioned against drawing the wrong conclu-

sions. She said research shows t hat t he pay gap arises “not because men and women are paid differ- ently for the same work, but because the labor market incentivizes them to work differently.”

“The pay gap between men and women is mostly a reflection of different choices workers make,” she said. “Most studies don’t look at all of the variables including uninterrupted hours of work, choices made by individual workers, and the nature of specific jobs. That is also why you can’t take a payroll database and simply find the average pay for men and women across the board or in specific jobs.”