CLOSING THE GENDER GAP ISN’T SIMPLE
Progress on the gender pay gap has stalled, with barely any movement in the past 20 years.
“In 2022, American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. That was about the same as in 2002, when they earned 80 cents to the dollar,” a new report from Pew Research finds. “The slow pace at which the gender pay gap has narrowed this century contrasts sharply with the progress in the preceding two decades: In 1982, women earned just 65 cents to each dollar earned by men.”
There are several reasons why momentum has slowed.
Certainly, the far-right has tried to reinforce traditional gender roles, but there is more to it than that. The Pew Research report notes that, “Women generally begin their careers closer to wage parity with men, but they lose ground as they age and progress through their work lives, a pattern that has remained consistent over time.”
The gradual widening of the pay gap over the course of employees’ working life suggests pregnancy and motherhood may explain part of the difference. Pew Research notes that much of the increase in the gender pay gap happens between the ages of 35 and 44.
Pew Research notes that women’s pay may not fully recover even after they rejoin the workforce. The reason: Many women have more responsibility for children, a division of parental duties that disproportionately leaves men free to climb the ladder.
If more of the responsibility for childrearing falls to women, they may take lower-paying jobs with fewer hours or more flexible schedules. That may be a voluntary decision in some cases, but it is a necessity for women compelled to juggle both job and home responsibilities.
Researchers have attempted to quantify the various factors contributing to the gender wage gap. An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development study in 2021 measured the interplay between three factors:
› Firstly, women may take up jobs with lower wages but with specific non-wage characteristics, such as higher working time flexibility or shorter commuting times, that allow them to spend more time in unpaid home work.
› Secondly, female career paths may not allow them to accumulate human capital at the same rate as men, e.g., because they interrupt their careers after childbirth, spend less time at the workplace than their male peers or forego promotions. These two sets of explanations suggest a child penalty for women that hinders their career and wage progression (“glass ceiling”).
› Third, another explanation could be that employers discriminate against women because of conscious or unconscious biases, or because they perceive the average woman to be less productive than the average man. According to this explanation, the gender wage gap would reflect “sticky floors”, i.e., persistent disadvantages over women’s working lives from labor market entry to retirement.
Studying multiple countries, the report found “the ‘glass ceiling’ related to the child penalty accounts for around 60% of the gender wage gap, with ‘sticky floors’ related to discrimination accounting for the remaining 40%.”
The “sticky floor” problem is arguably easier to solve. Antidiscrimination enforcement and managerial training can reduce conscious or unconscious bias. But the glass ceiling, we should concede, is a knottier problem that involves society’s expectations and gender roles. It’s not easy to break away from the paradigm that women by default become the primary child rearer.
If we want to close the wage gap, it will take a full-court press from government, employers, unions, managers, opinion makers and popular culture. We need more high-profile figures to provide role models for couples that don’t want to follow a 1950s division of family responsibilities. But unless and until there is a collective commitment to level the playing field, don’t expect the gender gap to close anytime soon.